Abstract
In May 1909, Lenin published Materialism and empiriocriticism, a polemical assault on forms of positivistic empiricism popular among members of the Bolshevik intelligentsia, especially his political rival Alexander Bogdanov. After expounding the core claims on both sides of the debate, this essay considers the relation of the philosophical issues at stake to the political stances of their proponents. I maintain that Lenin’s use of philosophical argument was not purely opportunistic, and I contest the view that his defence of realism was designed as a philosophical rationale for revolutionary vanguardism, arguing instead that Lenin primarily saw himself as defending the world-view of ordinary rank-and-file Marxists against varieties of philosophical obscurantism. Although of marginal influence at the time of its first publication, Materialism and empiriocriticism was later celebrated as a model of philosophical excellence, as the cult of Lenin was fashioned by Stalin. As a result of the text’s subsequent prominence, Lenin’s manner of philosophizing, with its vitriol and abuse, had a disastrous influence on the subsequent course of Soviet philosophical culture.
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Notes
In Lenin’s Collected works, a note to the “Letter to his Mother” of December 10th, 1908, observes that the contract was for 3000 copies (Lenin 1967–1975, vol. 55, 504n261, 1977, vol. 37, 662–663n265), but Robert Williams reports that the print-run was actually 2000. Interestingly, Krumbügel had the book printed at the presses of A. S. Suvorin’s notoriously reactionary publishing house, where it would be unlikely to attract the attention of the censor (see Williams 1986, 138).
The extent of Bogdanov’s creativity is nicely conveyed in Gloveli (1998).
Bogdanov’s rehabilitation in both Soviet Russia and the West is carefully discussed in Biggart (1998). More recent developments include the publication of Oitinnen (2009) and Kremenstov (2011), and the inauguration of the “Bogdanov Library”, edited by David Rowley and Evgeni Pavlov, in Brill’s Historical Materialism book series, which will offer English translations of a number of Bogdanov’s seminal works. The first volume, The philosophy of living experience, appeared in 2016. Others are in preparation. Bogdanov’s works began to be republished in Russia in 1989, with the re-appearance of Tektologiia, followed by a collection entitled Voprosy sotsializma [Questions of socialism] (1990), presenting a wide sampling of writings from various periods.
Bogdanov (2016, 43) defines matter as the realm of that which resists human labour (the realm of “nature”).
Though Valentinov admits that his passion for philosophy was such as to sometimes make him ridiculous.
One might respond that Akselrod herself was guilty of rudely criticizing Bogdanov in 1906, when she and Abram Deborin, as students of Plekhanov, endorsed their mentor’s vitriolic polemic against Bogdanov in “Materialismus militans” (Plekhanov 1976), the style of which undoubtedly influenced Lenin’s manner of philosophizing. See the discussion in Pavlov (2017, 52–61).
Bogdanov writes (2016, 23), “If religious thinking has authority and tradition at its foundation, then subsequently it naturally itself becomes a support for both those things. These characteristics are observed in all religions known to history. They are inseparable from one another; they are the essence and soul of the religious understanding of the world. They are connected by a definite, inevitable correlation. To be precise, authority always has a propensity to protect tradition; it is always conservative”.
It has been argued, that Ilyenkov’s defense of Lenin against Bogdanov was really a means to criticize positivism and the fetishism of technology in Soviet culture during the enthusiasm for the “scientific-technological revolution” in the 1960s and 70s (Bakhurst 1995, 164). But even if this is so, Ilyenkov is still unfair to Bogdanov. As Gloveli comments, the accusations of technocracy and the subjugation of the individual, so often brought against Bogdanov, are ill-founded: “For Bogdanov, the industrial worker would not be the ‘living machine’ of Taylorian theory: collectivism and industrialism did not exclude but rather presupposed ‘the singularity of individual experience and talent, and a blending of these individual experiences into an integral whole’” (Gloveli 1998, 54, quoting Bogdanov 1919). Bogdanov also warned against the working class exchanging “the yoke of capitalism for the yoke of engineers and scientists” (Gloveli 1998, 56). His vision required the transformation of the proletariat into a new organizing class able to master its world through its knowledge of universal laws of organizational science. This presupposes collectivism, but not the diminution or subjugation of the individual.
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Bakhurst, D. On Lenin’s Materialism and empiriocriticism. Stud East Eur Thought 70, 107–119 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-018-9303-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-018-9303-7