German Idealism, in its neo-Kantian incarnation is using the crisis in physics to declare materialism dead. Lenin refers to the "well-known" Kantian Hermann Cohen [1842-1918] who declared in 1896, in a new introduction to the History of Materialism - "the falsified history of materialism written by F. Albert Lange" [1825-1878]-- that the new physics has turned matter into "force" and "energy" thus it has brought "about the victory of idealism."

Heinrich Hertz [1857-1894] ("the famous physicist") is drafted by Cohen as an ally. Lenin says this is an example of how the idealists grasp at any vague or incomplete statement by scientists and try to use it as a support for anti-materialism. Lenin turns to Hertz's work Mechanics to see what he actually thinks.

"If we inquire into the real reason why physics at the present time prefers to express itself in terms of the theory of energy," Hertz says, "we may answer that it is because in this way it best avoids talking about things of which it knows very little...."

After more quotes from this text, Lenin tells us that it is not because "matter" has been abandoned by the physicists that they speak in terms of energy, etc., but because, since the disintegration of the indivisible "atom" they have not yet advanced to a more solid and concrete explanation of nature in the new physics as had been promoted in the old physics. "It is evident from this that the possibility of a non-materialist view of energy did not even occur to Hertz."

Lenin next turns to Eduard von Hartmann [1842-1906] ("far more reactionary that Cohen") and his book Die Weltanschauung der modernen Physik, Leipzig, 1902) where he remarks, "Modern physics had grown up on a realist basis and it was only the neo-Kantian and agnostic movement of our own time that led it to re-interpret its results in an idealist spirit."

Lenin likes von Hartmann because he goes all the way! "It is highly instructive," Lenin says, "to see how this irreconcilable partisan idealist (non-partisans in philosophy are just as hopelessly thick-headed as they are in politics) explains to the physicists what it means to follow one epistemological trend or another."

The physicists, von Hartmann thinks, have begun to follow idealism as a fashion. To be serious they will have to begin to see that the external world is completely psychical in nature and to abandon all their views about realism when it comes to nature. There is no compromising mishmash such as produced by Bogdanov, et al.

SECTION SIX: THE TWO TRENDS IN MODERN PHYSICS, AND FRENCH FIDEISM

Once materialism has been abandoned and Machism adopted it will come back to bite you. Here is what happened to Poincaré. This great physicist adopted Mach's outlook with regard to physics-- that our knowledge is a symbolic representation of our sense data, only to find that the philosopher E. Le Roy (1870-1954) pounced upon his ideas to justify religion. Science is just one symbolic way at looking at the world of experience, so religion is just another way. Neither has any claim to a so-called "objective reality." I'm not sure the religious folk really like this sort of defense, but Poincaré was, Lenin says, "abashed" by these conclusions and sought to distance himself from Le Roy (in the Value of Science).

What Poincaré failed to see was that Le Roy's views do follow from the idealism that is the source of Mach's views. Both religion and science claim to see a world dependent on human beings and the mind. Poincaré, however, still thinks that even if he agrees with Mach, that science is made up of conventional symbols, yet there is something "objective" about it. The objects of science "are real in as much as the sensations they invoke in us," says Poincaré, "appear to us to be united by some sort of indestructible cement and not by an ephemeral accident."

Poincaré may be a great scientist, Lenin remarks, but "only the Voroshilov-Yushkeviches can take him seriously as a philosopher." He flees from materialism via Machism and at the first sign of religion “takes refuge under the wings of materialism’’ and the existence of objective external objects.

The last six or seven pages of this section Lenin devotes to the philosophy of Abel Rey (1873-1940) which he says is "imperative." Rey, unlike Ward, Cohen, Hartmann et al, seeks to prove "the illegitimacy of the idealist (and fideist) conclusions drawn from the new physics." We first met Rey back in installment 17, now we see him in a little more depth.

Rey calls the two trends in physics "conceptualism" [this is Machism and allied idealist views] and neo-mechanism [materialism]. Rey wants to keep some form of viable Machist philosophy and at the same time deny any support to religion.

He says that Mach's meaning when he refers to "experience" has been misunderstood. Rightly understood it would be seen not to be a prop for religion. He says, "Experience is that over which our mind has no command.... Experience is the object that faces the subject." A little later he says, "Objective is that which is given from without, imposed by experience; it is that which is not of our making, but which is made independently of us and which to a certain extent makes us."

So Rey is really, Lenin says, what Engels called a "shamefaced materialist". "The fundamental characteristic of materialism is that it starts from the objectivity of science, from the recognition of objective reality reflected by science, whereas idealism needs 'detours' in order, in one way or another, to 'deduce' objectivity from mind, consciousness, the 'psychical.'"

Rey's "embellishment" of Mach tries to remove the differences between his thought and materialism. But, says Lenin, he ignores a major thesis of Mach regarding cause and effect, namely ‘’that there is no physical necessity, but only logical necessity!”

And this is Rey's problem. The reason he became "muddled" is "because he had set himself the impossible task of 'reconciling' the opposition between the materialist and the idealist schools in the new physics."

There is a very interesting note in this section. Lenin quotes the French physicist Alfred Cornu [1841-1902] who said that the more we learn about nature the more we see that Descartes [1596-1650] was right in holding "that in the physical world there is nothing save matter and motion." Cornu goes on to say that the recent new discoveries in physics are attempts to give us a more detailed knowledge of matter and motion and that "the return to Cartesian ideas is obvious." Lenin remarks that Cornu and others were/are ignorant of the fact "that the dialectical materialists Marx and Engels had freed this fundamental premise of materialism from the one-sidedness of mechanical materialism.”

Attempts to reconcile modern physics and idealism, such as Rey's, result from ignorance of diamat. His own epistemology is materialist for he admits that a law of nature has practical significance and in his book says this "is fundamentally the same as saying that this law of nature has objectivity." The muddle is to try and unite this view with the views of Mach & Co. All of this is further evidence of Lenin's thesis that there are only two trends in modern physics, materialism and idealism, and there is no "third way."

 Next Up: We will begin with Section 7 "A Russian 'Idealist Physicist'"

The fact that old concepts of matter no longer apply in the new physics has led many to conclude that "matter has disappeared." The Russian Machist "Marxist" Valentinov, for example, says, "The statement that the scientific explanation of the world can find a firm foundation ‘only in materialism' is nothing but a fiction, and what is more, an absurd fiction." Lenin says Valentinov shows a "virgin innocence" of the nature of materialism and doesn't realize our knowledge of matter is "penetrating deeper." Hmmmm.

The notion that "matter disappears" (it becomes energy, electricity, etc.) "means that," Lenin says, "the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears...." Marxists (materialists) are not arguing with physical scientists about how physical reality appears to us-- i.e., about new properties of matter-- but about the source of our knowledge about it. It is an epistemological problem that divides materialists from idealists. "For," Lenin writes, "the sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, or existing outside the mind."

What is "the error of Machism in general"? It does not understand the basis of materialism and does not differentiate metaphysical from dialectical materialism. Changes in our scientific understanding of the world is not a problem for diamat! Lenin, for example, uses the "ether" as an example of something existing independently of the human mind and reproaches the idealists for thinking it only a mind dependent convention. But the science of your day may not be the science of tomorrow. The "ether" turned out to be a construction of the human mind.

So Lenin was wrong about the “ether”, but his real claim, that "dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties," is not wrong, and so, where it matters, Lenin was right.

The people who really got it wrong were Bogdanov (in 1899) and Valentinov and Yushkevich with "their ignorance of dialectics" and their talk about "the immutable essence of things" and "substance". If they had understood Engels they never would have discoursed on physics in that way. Any particular physical theory of reality is subject to revision. The unchanging requirement for diamat, Lenin says, is the "unconditional recognition of nature's existence outside the mind and perception of man...." Matter has far from disappeared.

SECTION THREE: IS MOTION WITHOUT MATTER CONCEIVABLE?

To the idealists of Lenin's day there was no problem with talking about "motion" after they had eliminated "matter" from their systems. The idealists still "think" there is motion going on-- the motion of the succession of their "sensations." But, Lenin says, the "concept matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation. Therefore, to divorce motion from matter is equivalent to divorcing thought from objective reality, or to divorcing my sensations from the external world-- in a word, it is to go over to idealism."

The purpose of this argument is not to refute idealism but to show that the Russian Machist "Marxists", Bogdanov et al, are closet idealists. In order to establish this Lenin once again analyzes the philosophy of energetics as propounded by Ostwald (Lectures on Natural Philosophy, Leipzig, 1902). But first, recall that for diamat matter and motion are inseparable-- you can't have one without the other, and that Bogdanov, before he was influenced by Mach, was following Ostwald's "energetics.

One of Lenin's favorite words is "muddle", which he uses to describe many of the idealist positions he discusses in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Here is why energetics is a "muddle." Ostwald writes, "That all external events may be presented as processes between energies can be most simply explained if our mental processes are themselves energetic and impose this property of theirs on all external phenomena." This is, as Lenin, points out, a form of Kantianism: external reality reflects our mind rather than vice versa.

Ostwald is trying to subsume "mind" and "matter" under energy. But this is just playing with words. "Motion" also for him is a form of energy and in his system, then, we have everything reduced to energy and thus we have motion without matter. But as a scientist, Ostwald mostly talks about material motion not "mental processes." When Marxists criticize Ostwald it is for deviations away from material motion, for idealists the criticism is just the opposite.

Here is Bogdanov in Empirio-monism: Ostwald, "every now and again converts 'energy' from a pure symbol of correlations between the facts of experience into the substance of experience, into the 'world stuff'." Bogdanov and the other Russian Machists are deeply rooted in the idealist philosophy and, whatever may be their political convictions, they are far from Marxism in their philosophical understanding of the world.

SECTION FOUR: THE TWO TRENDS IN MODERN PHYSICS AND ENGLISH SPIRITUALISM

In order to explain the two trends in physics Lenin will have one representative of each present his own case. The first will be the physicist Arthur W. Rucker [1848-1915] representing natural science, the second will be the philosopher James Ward [1843- 1925] representing epistemology.

Rucker says, "The question at issue is whether the hypotheses which are at the base of the scientific theories now most generally accepted [1901--tr] are to be regarded as accurate descriptions of the constitution of the universe around us, or merely as convenient fictions." This latter viewpoint is the position of Bogdanov, Yushkevich, and the Russian Machists.

Now, Rucker admits that this latter method is able to achieve "great scientific successes", but he does not think that "it is the last word of science in the struggle for truth." So, Rucker asks, "Can we argue back from the phenomenon displayed by matter to the constitution of matter itself ... whether we have any reason to believe that the sketch which science has already drawn is to some extent a copy, and not a mere diagram of the truth?"

After discussing atoms, the ether, and electrons Rucker prefers the copy theory. Lenin says, "The gist of his position is this: The theory of physics is a copy (becoming ever more exact) of objective reality. The world is matter in motion, our knowledge of which grows ever more profound."

This may be an argument over words. How can the Ptolemaic geo-centric universe of Dante, or even the Copernican universe, which still uses epicycles, be a "copy" of the universe as it is as opposed to a symbolic representation? Physicists today don't know what the universe is really like.* Seventy four percent of it is composed of something called "dark energy" and they have no idea what that is, so how can their descriptions be a "copy" of anything?

It should be enough, for materialism, to hold that whatever is out there has been around before there were any humans (even before there was the Earth) and so it exists in objective reality independent of the human mind (i.e., the cerebral cortex of human brains).

Now for the other school, represented by James Ward,1843-1925 (Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1906). Ward says both members of his school (such as Gustav Kirchhoff [1824-1887] and Poincaré) and those who think like Rucker practice physics in the same way (use "the same methods of verification"). "But the one believes that it is getting nearer to the ultimate reality and leaving mere appearances behind it; the other believes that it is only substituting a generalised descriptive scheme that is intellectually manageable, for the complexity of concrete facts.... In either view the value of physics as systematic knowledge about things is unaffected; its possibilities of future extension and of practicable application are in either case the same." So why all the commotion? It is because the "speculative difference" is so great that it is important to know which is correct. Now it would seem to me that two theories with the same practical application are the same theory on a deeper level.

Be that as it may, Lenin takes Ward's words very seriously as he sees in them an opening for religion. Lenin maintains that materialism recognizes the objective reality of the entities reflected in theory and Ward doesn't "regarding theory as only a systematisation of experience...." In Ward's case he ends up deducing spiritualism from his philosophy ["the real world is an aggregate of interacting 'spirits' or monads"--Great Soviet Encyclopedia]. So Lenin has a point.

This is also a contemporary problem for people who want to reconcile science and religion. Either science is telling us something about ultimate reality (and religion is just an illusion) or it isn't. Ward thought all scientific truth was relative and "tentative" and thus, to quote Lenin, "it cannot reflect reality." Lenin says this is the price paid in capitalist countries for the "cohabitation" of theology and science. Science goes its way but leaves epistemology to the philosophers and theologians.

At least this is true for "cultured fideism", it does not apply to the yahoo fundamentalism of backwoods Protestantism which denies evolution and, like Mike Hukabee (former  Republican governor of Arkansas), thinks the world is 6000 years old! Lenin, on the other hand, maintains, as a fundamental principle of diamat, that the only proper epistemology for science is materialism and this rules out religious superstition altogether.

Now it is time for an interesting metaphysical speculation. Ward writes that materialism is dependent upon the hard solid indestructible atom and since we now know the atom is destructible, materialism must fall by the wayside. Lenin responds by saying, "The destructibility of the atom, its inexhaustibility, the mutability of all forms of matter and its motion, have always been the strong hold of dialectical materialism. All boundaries in nature are conditional, relative, movable, and express the gradual approximation of our mind towards knowledge of matter. But this does not in any way prove that nature, matter itself, is a symbol, a conventional sign, i.e., the product of our mind."

Granted that Lenin is correct about "matter itself"-- what about our theories about the nature of matter and the universe? Are they not the product of our mind? Are they "copies" even "photographic copies" of "matter itself" or are they conventional and often far from the truth of what "matter itself" really is "in itself" versus what it is "for us" at any particular time? Does Kant still have a right to a hearing? If the nature of reality turns out to be based on string theory how can the atomic models of Lenin's day be a copy? An approximate copy is not a copy. Ponderous pondering indeed.

Next Up: We will begin with Section 5: "The Two Trends In Modern Physics and German Idealism."

​In this section Lenin points out that the so called Russian "Marxist" Machists, Valentinov and Bogdanov, try to show the weaknesses of materialism by criticizing the ideas of contemporary bourgeois materialists such as Buchner [1824-1899] Vogt [1817-1895] and Moleschott [1822-1893]. They then apply these criticisms to Marxist materialism.

This is a big distortion according to Lenin. No one has criticized the bourgeois materialists more than Marx and Engels. But Marx and Engels criticized them for the limitations in their materialism, not for the materialism itself, which is what the Machists object to.

Engels points out three basic limitations of the bourgeois materialists. They did not advance beyond the materialism they inherited from the eighteenth century-- i.e., they did not develop it. The three limitations are, first, they were mechanical materialists. Today we would call them "reductionists.”  Engels says (in his Ludwig Feuerbach) that they indulged in "the exclusive application of the standards of mechanics to processes of a chemical and organic nature."

Second was the “anti-dialectical character of their philosophy.” Because of this Engels calls them metaphysical materialists, using "metaphysics" as equivalent to "non-dialectical." This usage has spread in Marxism but it is not the way the word is used in philosophy and it sometimes causes misunderstandings, especially when people talk about dialectics as a form of metaphysics.

Third, Lenin says, "was the preservation of idealism 'up above', in the realm of the social sciences, a non-understanding of historical materialism." So M & E were not attacking them because of their materialism but because they were not materialist enough. For not seeing that, Lenin calls Valentinov and Bogdanov "ignoramuses."

The rest of this section is basically a repeat of the above arguments applied to Dühring. The Machists in Germany attacked him as an extreme leftist materialist, while Engels didn't think much of Dühring as a philosopher of materialism at all. This is the reason for the section's title. While the Machists thought Dühring was too much of a materialist, Lenin says, "For Engels, on the contrary, Dühring was not a sufficiently steadfast, clear and consistent materialist."

SECTION EIGHT: HOW COULD J. DIETZGEN HAVE FOUND FAVOUR WITH THE REACTIONARY PHILOSOPHERS?

We have talked about Dietzgen before. He was a self educated worker who arrived at Dialectical Materialism on his own, but had sometimes a confused way of expressing himself. Lenin writes, "Dietzgen, unlike Engels, expresses his thoughts in a vague, unclear, mushy way. But apart from his defects of exposition and individual mistakes he not unsuccessfully champions the ’materialist theory of knowledge’, ‘dialectical materialism.’”

At one time his writings were well known on the left and he was a big influence. But today he is not so well known. This is no doubt because the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin are widely available and much clearer.

Some of the Machists appealed to Dietzgen to support their views but at heart he was a true materialist and follower of Marx and Engels. Lenin says, "J. Dietzgen could find favour with the reactionary philosophers because he occasionally gets muddled."

At the close of this section Lenin lists the "socialist authorities." They were, in 1908: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Paul Lafargue* [1842-1911], Franz Mehring** [1846-1919], and Karl Kautsky [1854-1938]. We know Kautsky fell from Grace due to his support of WWI. The new list then became Marx, Engels, Lenin. After Lenin died Stalin added himself. Stalin's theoretical writings were never on the same level as Marx, Engels and Lenin and he was removed from the list in 1956 (for violations of socialist legality and for creating a cult around himself). He also killed many innocent people in a drive to always be numero uno). Different national parties often try to make their ephemeral leaders "socialist authorities" but this rarely succeeds. Mao is still holding on in some parties, but for the wrong reasons . Gramsci is highly respected in some circles, not to mention Che. My own feeling is that a generation from now the list will be Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Ho, Castro and probably someone we haven’t heard from yet.

* A famous quote from Marx concerns Paul Lafargue’s views at one time:

"Lafargue was the subject of a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Lafargue and the French Workers' Party leader Jules Guesde, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles. Marx accused them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggles. This exchange is the source of Marx's remark, reported by Friedrich Engels: "ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste" ("what is certain is that [if they are Marxists, then] I myself am not a Marxist")."-- Wikipedia This sentence is the essence of Lenin’s famous work Left-Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder.” Both Marx’s sentence, and Lenin’s book, are also constantly misappropriated by social democrats and revisionists to water down  Marxism-Leninism.

** Franz Mehring wrote the first (and some think the best) biography of Karl Marx. He was also one of the three top leaders of the Spartacist League along with Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE RECENT REVOLUTION IN NATURAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM

(Preliminary remarks before Section 1)

Lenin's preliminary remarks are to remind us that he is not dealing with physics but with epistemology. His time was a time of revolutionary advances in physics-- relativity theory, quantum mechanics, radioactivity, etc., similar to our times-- i.e., string theory, multiple universes, the big bang, etc. The "Marxist" Machists were using the new developments in physics in Lenin's day to try and attack materialism because many of the principles of that philosophy had been  formulated before the "new" physics.

This being the case, it is good that Lenin quotes a passage from Ludwig Feuerbach in which Engels says that "with each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science ["not to speak of the history of mankind"], materialism has to change its form."

So, what are we to deal with in this chapter on (epistemology) physics? There are many new schools of physics, as well as philosophy, looking to meet up. If we want physics to be materialism's suitor we must show that the latter is the most compatible of the contending match ups.

SECTION ONE: THE CRISIS IN MODERN PHYSICS.

Well, from our point of view this is not "modern physics" so I am not going to spend a lot of time on it. The roots of our own contemporary physics however do go back to this time: the discovery of the electron, relativity, etc. The concept of the "ether" is still in use, however, at this time (1908).

Lenin discusses two books. First, The Value of Science by Henri Poincaré. This book says that the old physical "laws" are being undermined by the new discoveries. The author concludes that physics isn't really about an objective reality and he ends up saying, in his own words: "whatever is not thought is pure nothing." So, he is in the camp of Mach and the idealists.

The other book is by Abel Rey (1873-1940): The Physical Theory of the Modern Physicists. Lenin gives his take on Rey's views: "Anti-intellectualism is a doctrine that denies the rights or claims of reason. Hence, in its philosophical aspect, the essence of the 'crisis in modern physics' is that the old physics regarded its theories as 'real knowledge of the material world', i.e., a reflection of objective reality. The new trend in physics regards theories only as symbols, signs, and marks for practice, i.e., it denies the existence of an objective reality independent of our mind and reflected by it." In essence, Rey is saying that "matter" has disappeared!

Next Up: We will start with Section 2. "Matter Has Disappeared").

SECTION FOUR: IN WHAT DIRECTION IS EMPIRIO-CRITICISM DEVELOPING?

How was this philosophy doing 20 years on from its hay day with Mach and Avenarius? Like any ideology, Lenin says, it "is a living thing which grows and develops," so let us see what it was doing in 1908. Lenin picks a book to look at (Introduction to Philosophy,1903) by Hans Cornelius (1863-1947). Cornelius is recommended by Mach himself. Well, Cornelius ends up with immortality and God, yet claims to be neither an idealist nor a materialist!

This shows that Lenin's contemporary, Bogdanov, is all wet in understanding what is going on in philosophy as he makes the claim that God, free will, and immortality cannot fit into Mach's philosophy. How then can Mach see Cornelius as a disciple?

The whole thrust of this section is show how, in philosopher after philosopher, English, French, or German, Mach's and Avenarius' philosophy of empirio-criticism is used to justify fideism and all sorts of religious notions. We need not go over these philosophers as they are not particularly well known today. The Russian Machist "Marxists" seem oblivious to all this and write as if Machism is a new form of philosophy outside of the confines of fideism.

SECTION FIVE: A. BOGDANOV'S "EMPIRIO-MONISM"

Bogdanov claims to be following Engels' views (referred to as "the sacramental formula of the primacy of nature over mind") but Lenin will show that this is hooey. In Empirio-monism Bogdanov writes that "he regards all that exists as a continuous chain of development, the lower links of which are lost in the chaos of elements, while the higher links, known to us, represent the experience of men -- psychical and, still higher, physical experience."

But this is not Engels and it certainly is not materialism. "Nature," Lenin points out, "is in fact reached [by Bogdanov] as the result of a long transition, Through abstractions of the ’psychical’”. A few lines later Lenin says; The essence of Idealism is that the psychical is taken as the starting-point; from it external nature is deduced, and only then is the ordinary human consciousness deduced from nature.” We know that the "elements" referred to in the "chaos of elements" are equal to "sensations."

Bogdanov denies all religions, yet his philosophy is a gateway to fideism since the inchoate elements/sensations have a physical origin from which the human mind deduces the physical world. No matter how "atheistic" a philosopher may be, this road always leads to "God" in one form or another.

Bogdanov speaks of "cognitive socialism" arising as a result of humans socially organizing their experiences. This is "insane twaddle" according to Lenin. "If socialism is thus regarded, the Jesuits are ardent adherents of 'cognitive socialism', for the starting-point of their epistemology is divinity as 'socially-organised experience.' And there can be no doubt that Catholicism is a socially-organised experience; only, it reflects not objective truth (which Bogdanov denies, but which science reflects), but the exploitation of the ignorance of the masses by definite social classes."

However, no philosophy is stagnant and Bogdanov's has evolved over the years from his first book (1899) to the present (i.e., Lenin's present, 1908). There have been four stages in the development of Bogdanov's thought: 1) a "natural-historical" materialist phase when he was "semi-consciously and instinctively faithful to the spirit of natural science”; 2) he became a follower of Ostwald's "energetics"* described by Lenin as "a muddled agnosticism which at times stumbled into idealism." Ostwald's Lectures on Natural Philosophy is dedicated to Mach. 3) Bogdanov, without completely leaving Ostwald behind, soon went over to Mach. 4) Trying to eliminate the subjective idealist elements in Mach, Bogdanov wrote his Empirio-monism in order "to create a semblance of objective idealism."

Lenin says that Bogdanov is now 180 degrees from his starting point. He now has a 5th stage to go through and he can return to the ranks of the materialists. He must reject all that remains of Machian idealism in his thought. Lenin will have to wait and see if he does. [But you can check out the Bogdanov article in Wikipidia to see what happened to him.]

Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1909. There is a short but interesting article about his life at: HYLE--International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 12, No.1 (2006), pp. 141-148. HYLE Biography Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) by Mi Gyung Kim-- or you can just google: Wilhelm Ostwald energetics.

SECTION SIX: THE "THEORY OF SYMBOLS" (OR HIEROGLYPHS) AND THE CRITICISM OF HELMHOLTZ

This section is a supplement dealing with some criticisms from the Machist side of propositions coming from the Marxist side. Our old friend Bazarov has a good time making fun of an error of Plekhanov-- namely his theory that sensations are symbols or "hieroglyphs” of real things and not their copies and images. Sticking with Engels, Lenin says, "Engels speaks neither of symbols nor of hieroglyphs, but of copies, photographs, images, mirror-reflections of things."

Bazarov attacks Plekhanov, however, not to correct him according to the views of Engels, but to indirectly attack Engels by making fun of materialism from a Machist standpoint disguised as "Marxism." To clarify what is going on, Lenin will discuss Helmholtz's* ["a scientist of the first magnitude"] theory of symbols (symbols and hieroglyphs, are the same) and how it was criticized by both materialists and Machists, as well as by other idealists.

Like most scientists Helmholtz's philosophical opinions are confused and inconsistent, according to Lenin. But let's see if we can give Helmholtz the benefit of the doubt. The following quote from his Physiological Optics Lenin cites as an example of "agnosticism": "I have ... designated sensations as merely symbols for the relations of the external world and I have denied that they have any similarity or equivalence to what they represent."

Helmholtz is seemingly contradicting Engels. But let us agree our sensations give a "photograph" like an image of reality. But a photograph of a cat is completely different from a cat. To actually be an agnostic Helmholtz would have to say that he doesn't know if there is anything in the external world responsible for his "cat" image (or "symbol") and that perhaps it comes from some internal psychic process that we do not know about. But he does not say that.

Here is what he says, "Our concepts and ideas are effects wrought on our nervous system and our consciousness by the objects that are perceived and apprehended." Lenin says this is "materialism." The objects exist independently of us. But this does not contradict the previous statement. When I see a red rose I do so because my eyes have evolved to react to visible (to humans) light which is a small band of waves on the electromagnetic spectrum along with radio waves, X rays, infrared and ultraviolet waves, etc. Bees have evolved eyes that can see ultra- violet waves which we don't detect. Our "red rose" looks very different to a bee. The rose is red for us, in itself it is much more than it is for us. This is the sense which Helmholtz means by our sensation being a symbol.

Lenin and Helmholtz may be just having a verbal disagreement and not a disagreement of substance. Lenin says because Helmholtz says our sensations are symbols of the external world which, when we learn to read them properly, can "direct our actions so as to achieve the desired result....," he has lapsed into "subjectivism" and a denial of objective truth and reality. This is too strong and I believe it is incorrect. The rose is part of objective reality-- it is red for us and ultra-violet for the bee. That the red rose is a symbol of my love-- is that objective or subjective?

I also think Lenin is wrong to say that Helmholtz presents a "flagrant untruth" when he says "An idea and the object it represents obviously belong to two entirely different worlds...." Helmholtz is only saying, more or less, what Plato (I think truthfully) would have said, viz., when I look at the "Mona Lisa" my sensation is not the same as the picture on the wall, and the picture on the wall is not the same as the woman painted by Leonardo.

That this is so is seen when Helmholtz says, "As to the properties of the objects of the external world, a little reflection will show that all the properties we may attribute to them merely signify the effects wrought by them either on our senses or on other natural objects." Lenin also says this is materialism.

All these terminological arguments are rooted in the Kantian background of many German thinkers. Most of them would be on exhibit in Lenin's Museum of Reactionary Fabrications of German Professordom. Lenin wants us to believe that our knowledge comes from interaction with the real world and is not a priori (google this term)-- i.e., given to us before any possible experience. But is not the following an a priori statement, even a Kantian one (!)-- before you see anything at all in the world you know it must reflect a certain narrow band in the electro-magnetic spectrum. If it doesn't it may exist but you will never naturally see it, just as you will never hear the sound your dog hears from the dog whistle. And if this is an a priori truth gained from experience then it is a synthetic a priori truth, and Kant's philosophy is back on the table. Materialism will have to deal with it.

Lenin concludes that Helmholtz is a "shame faced materialist" with a Kantian slant, just as Huxley, save that the latter's slant was towards Berkeley. That Kantian element in Helmholtz is totally non necessary because he has a basically realist (materialist) position. Lenin provides a quote from Feuerbach's student Albrecht Rau to back this up. "Had Helmholtz remained true to his realistic conception, had he consistently adhered to the basic principle that the properties of bodies express the relations of bodies to each other and also to us, he obviously would have had no need of the whole theory of symbols; he could then have said briefly and clearly: the sensations that are produced in us by things are reflections of the nature of those things." Helmholtz has fallen victim to Ockham's razor.

Lenin ends this section by noting the critics of Helmhottz from the Machist side object to his being too much of a materialist, and concludes that Plekhanov did make a mistake when he was explaining materialism, but that Bazarov only muddied the waters and finally, from Kant and Helmholtz "the materialists went to the left, the Machists to the right."

Next Up: We will begin with section 7 of this chapter: "Two Kinds of Criticism of Dühring."

*Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science. In physiology and physiological psychology, he is known for his mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone, perception of sound, and empiricism. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy, work in electrodynamics, chemical thermodynamics, and on a mechanical foundation of thermodynamics. As a philosopher, he is known for his philosophy of science, ideas on the relation between the laws of perception and the laws of nature, the science of aesthetics, and ideas on the civilizing power of science. A large German association of research institutions, the Helmholtz Association, is named after him.-- from Wikipedia. The whole article is worth reading. Helmholtz University was one of the major institutions of the DDR.

SECTION SIX: "Freedom and Necessity"

This is a short section but exceedingly interesting. It begins with a quote from A. Lunacharsky (1875-1933) praising Engels for having a "wonderful page" in Anti-Duhring which he says is a "wonderful page of religious economics." Lunacharsky says this might lead a non-religious person to "smile." Lenin says it rather leads not to a smile but a feeling of "disgust" with his (Lunacharsky's) "flirtation with religion." This, along with the last section we covered, is giving me the impression that Lenin didn't care much about religion. 

The passage from Engels is so important that Lenin quotes it in its entirety, and I must also, if we are to see how whacked out Lunarcharsky's interpretation is. Here is what Engels wrote:

"Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the appreciation ["recognition" is usually used] of necessity. 'Necessity is blind  only insofar as it is not understood.’ [Actually, Hegel got this from Spinoza. It ultimately derives from the Stoics.--tr] Freedom does not consist in an imaginary independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good both in relation to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily mental existence of men themselves --- two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man's judgment in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined.... Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity."

According to Lenin, Engels is making four important points in this passage (none of them having anything to do with being soft on religion). First, the recognition of objective laws of nature and natural necessity-- i.e., materialism. Second, "the necessity of nature is primary and human will and mind secondary." Third, he accepts "blind necessity" i.e., "the existence of a necessity unknown to man. Fourth, he jumps from theory to practice and it is this practice which "provides an objective criterion of truth."

All this adds up to the fact that Engels' views are entirely based on the philosophy of dialectical materialism. The Russian Machists take a little bit of diamat from Engels (the "wonderful pages"), a dash from Marx, then some idealism and agnosticism from Mach, mix it all together "and call this hash a development of Marxism." As far as Lenin is concerned they are nothing more than "philosophical obscurantists." The Russian "Marxists," inspired by Mach, continue to see him and empirio-criticism, not as a part of the subjective idealist movement or as an eclectic mix, but as compatible with the ideas of Marx and, for most, those of Engels as well. Now it is time to move on to Chapter Four.

SECTION ONE: "The Criticism of Kantianism from the Left and from the Right" 

The first point Lenin makes is that Mach himself states, in Analysis of Sensations, that he started out as a Kantian and then identified more with Berkeley and Hume. So there is no doubt about his relation to the Idealist tradition. But what of Avenarius?

Avenarius claims that as far back as 1876 he, though liking Kant, was the first to "purify" him by getting rid of the a priori nature of reason (i.e., the categories or filters by which we must experience the world) and by dumping the "thing-in-itself" because it is not experienced but, he writes, "imported into it [experience] by thought."

Lenin says that Avenarius' views are the same as Mach's and that it is not true that he was the first to object to apriorism and the "thing-in-itself." In 1792 Schulze-Aenesidemus, [Aenesidemus (80-10 B.C.) an ancient Skeptic, was the pen name of Gottlob Ernst Schulze 1761-1833, Schopenhauer's teacher at Gottingen] had made the same objections. They had also been made by Fichte. The "thing-in-itself" was too much of a concession to materialism and the categories were not themselves experienced, being preconditions.

The Russian Machists have missed the point that Avenarius and Mach have criticized Kant from the Right (idealism) not the Left (materialism). What is more, they have made (they being Bogdanov, Bazarov, Yushkevich and Valentinov) the charge that Plekhanov has made 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." Lenin says this quote from their works shows a "bottomless pit of utter confusion'' both of Kant and of classical German philosophy [one of the three component parts of Marxism, along with French socialism and British political economy].

Lenin says, "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."

Yes, but here is a question to think about. Why is this not a dialectical unity of opposites, a synthesis of a thesis (idealism) and antithesis (materialism), making Kantianism a higher philosophy than either of the others? Why is dialectical materialism so hostile to Kantianism rather than trying to make a synthetic unity with it?

At any rate, the Russian Machists did not notice, I think, that Lenin is saying when Engels or Plekhanov use the term "thing-in-itself" they are not referring to Kant's transcendental noumena but to the objective independently existing objects we find in the real world. Plekhanov is not trying to "reconcile Engels with Kant."

Lenin ends this section by quoting Feuerbach and his follower Albrecht Rau (1843-1920 ) and Engels' disciple Paul Lafargue (1842-1911) as well as Kautsky (in his book Ethics) about the perils of Kantianism and he concludes by saying, "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."The Russian Machists may call themselves "Marxists" but they are far from Marx and his ideas in philosophy.

Next Up: We will pick up with Chapter 4 Section 2.

SECTION Four: "The 'Principle of the Economy of Thought' and The Principle of 'The Unity of the World'"

This section opens with a discussion of Bazarov, Avenarius and Mach. The idea of 'economy of thought' in nature and in epistemology is one of the reasons that empirio-critics hold sensation is all that exists. Why have "sensation" and "matter" if everything can be explained by the first idea?

Lenin says thought is "economical" when it describes reality without using extra terms and entities which really don't exist. He writes, "Human thought is "economical" when it correctly reflects objective truth, and the criterion of this correctness is practice, experiment and industry."

There is no doubt that Mach and his followers reject the above formulation and subscribe to subjectivist and idealist notions. Lenin cites, in their own words, others who have also come to this conclusion: Richard Honigswald (1875-1947) an Austrian neo-Kantian who was born in Hungary and died in New Haven, Connecticut said Mach is near to the "Kantian circle of ideas (Zur Kritik der Machschen Philosophie,1903), Wundt, whom we have seen before, says Mach is "Kant turned inside out" (Systematische Philosophie,1907), and James Ward [1843-1925 was professor of Mental Philosophy and of Logic at Cambridge] maintains Mach's criterion of simplicity (i.e., economy of thought) "is in the main subjective, not objective "(Naturalism and Agnosticism, 3rd ed.).

Lenin concludes, by saying that those Russians who want to be Marxists and who try to merge empirio-criticism into Marxism are "simply ludicrous."

Lenin next turns to the idea of "the unity of the world." Dühring had said the reason the world appears to be unified (we have one world after all) is due to the unity of thought-- viz., it is a deduction from the unity of thought. Engels says in Anti-Dühring that, "The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved not by a few juggled phrases, but by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science."

Is this clear enough? Not for the likes of Yushkevich who says of this quote, "First of all it is not clear what it is meant here by the assertion that 'the unity of the world consists in its materiality.'"

Lenin is quite frustrated by this and wonders why Yushkevich calls himself a Marxist if the most elementary propositions of Marxism (viz., the objective and materialist basis of reality) are " 'not clear' to him."

As far as the unity of the world is concerned, Yushkevich says of the propositions from which this is deduced that, "it would not be exact to say that they have been deduced from experience, since scientific experience is possible only because they are made the basis of investigation." This is a form of Kantianism, and in the hands of Yushkevich "it is nothing but twaddle."

SECTION FIVE: "Space and Time"

Lenin says that Marxists reject both Kantianism ( space and time are forms in the human mind and have no existence on their own) and Humean agnosticism ( I don't know where these ideas come from). He supports Feuerbach who says, "Space and time are not mere forms of phenomena but essential conditions ... of being."

In other words, what is the answer Marxists should give if asked "are space and time real or ideal, and are our relative ideas of space and time approximations to objectively real forms of being; or are they only products of the developing, organising, harmonising, etc., human mind?"

The answer to this question is the fundamental epistemological dividing line separating different philosophies. Lenin thinks all Marxists need to be on the side of Engels when he asserts that, "The basic forms of all being are space and time, and being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space."

Mach, on the other hand, according to Lenin, holds that "it is not man with his sensations that exists in space and time, but space and time that exist in man, that depend upon man and are generated by man." This is what empirio-criticism leads to and, among some, to "defending medieval 'nonsense' [i.e., religion]."

The truth is, Lenin points out, that the "existence of nature in time, measured in millions of years [in our day by billions of years], prior to the existence of man and human experience, shows how absurd this idealist theory is."

There now follow a few pages where Lenin defends the objectivity of time and space against Mach who thinks that Newton's views may not actually be applicable. Here Lenin seems to equate Newton's notion of absolute time and space with the materialist view, the denial of which leaves room for fideism [religion]. Newton was, however, himself a Deist and left room for God in his system. Modern physics has adopted the views of Einstein concerning time and space which are very different from those of Newton.

Since Lenin devotes a chapter (chapter five) to physics, we will postpone a detailed discussion here, as likewise his views on the "atom". Lenin's main point, however, remains, regardless of the further developments in natural science since his time, and that is that the world dealt with by science is not created by the human mind but has an objective and independent existence.

Lenin does agree with Mach in rejecting a fourth spatial dimension. Mach is no "believer" and rejects a fourth spatial dimension so as not to aid "many theologians, who experience difficulty in deciding where to place hell." Lenin, of course, doesn't worry about the location of Hell. He would probably agree with Sartre that Hell is other people (especially mensheviks). His point is that Mach, thinking that Space and Time are products of the human mind, unconsciously adopts the materialist position (as it was in his time) when he asserts there are only three spatial dimensions because he assumes this to be an objective fact and is thus inconsistent.

Also, in this section, you might think when Poincaré says that space and time are relative and "we impose them on nature" that he is thinking of the new Theory of Relativity (1905). Einstein, however, thought of his theory as an objective fact about the universe.

Lenin also discusses Karl Pearson again, who openly declares that his Machism is based on Hume and Kant and with whom Mach himself says he is in complete agreement. Nevertheless, the Russian Machists, posing as Marxists (they were all members of the bolshevik faction except for two mensheviks) keep claiming that Machism is an advance, is not idealism, and is a "new" philosophy. Bazarov even says "Many of Engels' particular views, as for instance, his conception of 'pure' [i.e., 'objective'] space and time, are now obsolete."

Of course many of Engels' views are obsolete, based as they were on the level of science in the nineteenth century, but the objectivity of space and time is not one of them. I will now quote a delightfully vituperative sentence about Bazarov and idealists in general.

"Like all the Machists, Bazarov erred in confusing the mutability of human conceptions of time and space, their exclusively relative character, with the immutability of the fact that man and nature exist only in time and space, and that beings outside time and space, as invented by the priests and maintained by the imagination of the ignorant and downtrodden mass of humanity, are disordered fantasies, the artifices of philosophical idealism, rotten products of a rotten social system."

In The Future of an Illusion Freud referred to the disordered fantasies of religion as forms of neuroses and religious people as neurotics. The US of A is by these measures, of both Lenin and Freud, populated by an immense number of disordered downtrodden neurotics who, in addition, are both ignorant and infected with false consciousness. It is my hope this  Lenin series will reduce their numbers but I have no expectation that it will.

Lenin ends this section with some choice remarks about Bogdanov and his notion that space and time are forms "of social co-ordination of the experiences of different people" (Empirio-monism). He holds that space and time adapt themselves to our perceptions. Lenin says just the opposite is the case and perceptions "and our knowledge adapt themselves more and more to objective space and time, and reflect them ever more correctly and profoundly."

Next Up: We will begin with section 6 "Freedom and Necessity."

SECTION THREE: "Causality and Necessity in Nature"

Lenin thinks the question of causality is important and wants to begin to look at this issue from the standpoint of materialist epistemology. To do this he turns to Feuerbach's criticism of the philosopher Rudolf Haym [1821-1901, member from the center right of the National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848 and best known for his 1857 biography of Hegel] whom Feuerbach attacked on this issue.

Feuerbach quotes what Haym says about Feuerbach's book The Essence of Religion. "Nature and human reason are for [Feuerbach] completely divorced, and between them a gulf is formed which cannot be spanned from one side or the other."

Haym is responding to Feuerbach's statement in his book that we "apply human expressions and conceptions to [the phenomena of nature], as for example: order, purpose, law; and are obliged to do so because of the character of our language."

Feuerbach goes on to point out that the big split between nature and human reason that Haym sees is not really there. He says his statement "does not assert that there is actually nothing in nature corresponding to the words or ideas of order, purpose, law." He was just trying to deny their identity (Idealism).

Feuerbach in fact claims that it is theism that makes this division, not materialism. "The reason of the theists splits nature into two beings -- one material, and the other formal or spiritual." Lenin discusses this Feuerbach-Haym dispute and concludes, "Feuerbach's views are consistently materialist."

Lenin says, "The recognition of objective law in nature and the recognition that this law is reflected with approximate fidelity in the mind of man is materialism." We should keep in mind the expression approximate fidelity as Lenin often gets a bit carried away and talks about photographic equivalence which many interpret as absolute fidelity. This may be too strong a claim.

Since Marx and Engels were influenced by Feuerbach (he was the bridge between them and Hegel, his philosophy being a materialist mutation of Hegel's Objective Idealism), Lenin makes the following remark about Engels that "to anyone who has read his philosophical works at all attentively it must be clear that Engels does not admit even a shadow of doubt as to the existence of objective law, causality and necessity in nature."

Lenin now makes some comments about Joseph Dietzgen who had been portrayed by the Machists as a subjectivist with respect to causality. Lenin tells us that while "we can find plenty of confusion, inexactnesses and errors in Dietzgen" so that as a philosopher "he is not entirely consistent", nevertheless the Machist view of him is totally false. He was a materialist and, Lenin quotes him as saying "that 'the causal dependence' is contained 'in the things themselves'."

Lenin now demonstrates that Avenarius' line on causality is the same as that of Hume and his agnosticism on this issue. Avenarius, just as Hume, says we do not observe "causes" in nature, ie., "necessity", "All we experience," says Avenarius, "is that the one [event] follows the other.... Necessity therefore expresses a particular degree of probability with which the effect is, or may be, expected." Lenin calls this "subjectivism." With the development of physics in the last one hundred years, especially quantum mechanics, this has become the standard scientific view regarding "causality" and Lenin appears to be wrong in this respect. Materialism can live with a probabilistic universe if it recognizes that probability is an objective feature of reality as it presents itself to us.

But Mach and Avenarius are not justified by these developments. Mach says, "In nature there is neither cause nor effect.... I have repeatedly demonstrated that all forms of the law of causality spring from subjective motives and that there is no necessity for nature to correspond with them."

Modern science and modern materialism detect probability frequencies as objective features of quantum interactions independent of "subjective motives." Since, as Lenin says, the real issue is whether causal connections are the result of "objective natural law or properties of our mind", there is nothing in modern science that does not support the materialist position.

Lenin deals in a similar fashion with Pearson (who says “Man is the maker of natural law”), Petzoldt (who says "Our thought demands definiteness from nature, and nature always accedes to this demand; we shall even see that in a certain sense it is compelled to accede to it"), Willy (who maintains "We have long known, from the time of Hume, that 'necessity' is a purely logical (not a 'transcendental' characteristic...".

Now, two new subjectivists pop up: Henri Poincare [1854-1912, world famous French scientist] ("The only true objective reality is the internal harmony of the world," and this does not exist except in us); and Philipp Frank [1884-1966, Austrian scientist who later became a logical positivist who taught at Harvard] ("experience merely fills in a framework which man brings with him by his very nature....").

All the above were anti-materialism, or at least agnostics, and the reason Lenin added them to his critique was because they only varied here and there from Hume and Kant. These variations led P. S. Yushkevich (1873-1945, Russian Menshevik)) and other Russian Machists to hail them as producing new ideas in philosophy. Lenin thinks that is nonsense. Lenin says the essence of these "new" viewpoints "does not necessarily lie in the repetition of Kant's formulation, but in the recognition of the fundamental idea common to both Hume and Kant, viz., the denial of objective law in nature and the deduction of particular 'conditions of experience', particular principles, postulates and propositions from the subject, from human consciousness, and not from nature."

Lenin then grants that the Russian Machists "would like to be Marxists" and have read Engels' views on causality but are utterly confused. Yushkevich, for example, "preaches" a new fad called "empirio- symbolism" and informs us that energy, in his own words, "is just as little a thing, a substance, as time, space, mass and other fundamental concepts of science: energy is a constancy, an empirio-symbol, like other empirio-symbols that for a time satisfy the fundamental human need of introducing reason, Logos, into the irrational stream of experience."

And let us not forget Bogdanov's "Empirio-monism" where we can read that the laws of nature "are created by thought as a means of organising experience, of harmoniously co-ordinating it into a symmetrical whole."None of this derives from the thought of Marx or Engels but derives from the philosophy of Kant.

Next Up: Chapter Three, Section Four "The 'Principle of Economy of Thought' and the problem of the 'Unity of the World.'"

SECTION ONE: "What is Matter? What is Experience"

Lenin says the first question is posed to the materialists while the second is put to the idealists (including the Machists) and agnostics. About 'matter' Avenarius says, "Within the purified, 'complete experience' there is nothing 'physical'-- 'matter' in the metaphysical absolute conception -- for 'matter' according to this conception is only an abstraction...." This theory Lenin calls "disguised subjective idealism."

Mach says, "What we call matter is a certain systematic combination of the elements (sensations)." This is also subjective idealism. Lenin also has a quote from Karl Pearson's (1857-1936)The Grammar of Science to the same effect. He also says that the Russian Machists are totally off base when they equate these views to those of modern science. They are simply the old views of the idealists dressed up in new clothing.

Matter, Lenin says, "is that which, acting upon our sense-organs produces sensation." Bogdanov doesn't like this formulation and complains that materialists are not advancing and that their arguments, in his words, "prove to be simple repetitions." This only shows his ignorance as there are in fact basically only two main lines in philosophy with regard to this issue.

"One expression," Lenin points out, "of the genius of Marx and Engels was that they despised pedantic playing with new words, erudite terms, and simple 'isms', and said simply and plainly: there is a materialist line and an idealist line in philosophy, and between them there are various shades of agnosticism. The vain attempts to find a 'new' point of view in philosophy betray the same poverty of mind that is revealed in similar efforts to create a 'new' theory of value, a 'new' theory of rent, and so forth."

So much for "matter." Now, how is "experience" used in empirio-criticism?
I should say right off the bat that Lenin says "experience"-- the major concept of empirio-criticism -- is not clearly defined by the empirio-critics! With Avenarius it is vague and circular as when he says "pure experience is experience to which nothing is admixed that is not in its turn experience."

This is a definition which the philosopher A. Riehl (1844-1924) in 1907 said "obviously revolves in a circle". And, Norman Kemp Smith (1872-1958), in Mind vol. XV, remarked, "The vagueness of the term 'experience' stands him in good stead, and so in the end Avenarius falls back on the time-worn argument of subjective idealism." Mach even goes so far as to say, "The acceptance of a divine original being is not contradictory to experience."

The confusion over this term can be seen in its use by Bogdanov. According to Lenin, when Bogdanov says, "consciousness and immediate mental experience are identical concepts" and that matter is "not experience" but "the unknown which evokes everything known" he is being an idealist. Yet he is being a materialist when he says that those who go beyond experience only arrive at "empty abstractions and contradictory images, all the elements of which have nevertheless been taken from experience."

Mach in several works makes pronouncements in a materialist vein, so much so in fact that Lenin says he "instinctively accepts the customary standpoint of natural scientists, who regard experience materialistically."

All this goes to show that Engels was correct in saying there are only two fundamental positions with regard to "experience"-- i.e., the materialist and the idealist.

SECTION TWO: "PLEKHANOV'S ERROR CONCERNING THE CONCEPT 'EXPERIENCE'"

This is a short section where Lenin wants to correct a statement Plekhanov made in his book L. Feuerbach. Plekhanov wrote, "A German writer has remarked that for empirio-criticism experience is only an object of investigation, and not a means of knowledge. If that is so, then the contrasting of empirio-criticism and materialism loses all meaning and discussion of the question whether or not empirio-criticism is destined to replace materialism is absolutely vain and idle." Lenin thinks this is a "complete muddle."

According to Lenin, Plekhanov must have had in mind, and not really understood, the following from Avenarius filtered through his disciple F. Carstanjen (1864-1925) Lenin says, "Fr. Carstanjen is almost literally quoting Avenarius, who in his Notes emphatically contrasts his conception of experience as a 'means of knowledge' in 'the sense of the prevailing theories of knowledge, which essentially are fully metaphysical."

Now, Carstanjen maintains that Avenarius did not investigate if experience , i.e., "all 'human predications', as the object of investigation" was real or not. What he did was simply classify "all possible human predications, both idealist and materialist, without going into the essence of the question." As a result, Plekhanov's muddled conclusion above is unwarranted and in error.

Next Up: We will begin with Section Three of this chapter: "Causality and Necessity in Nature.