VI. Empirio-Criticism and Historical Materialism

The Russian Machians, as has already been seen, are divided into two camps: Mr. Chernov and the collaborators of the Russkoye Bogatstvo are genuine and consistent opponents of dialectical materialism, both in philosophy and history. The other company of Machians, in whom we are more interested, call themselves Marxists and try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels. But these assurances remain only assurances, for not one Machian, desirous of being regarded as a Marxist, has made the slightest attempt to expound, even in outline fashion, the actual tendencies of the founders of empirio-criticism in the field of social science. We shall briefly pause on this question, taking up at first the statements of the German empirio-criticists, to be found in the relevant literature, and then those of their Russian disciples.

In 1895, when Avenarius was still alive, there appeared, in the philosophic periodical edited by Avenarius, an article by his disciple F. Blei, under the title “Die Metaphysik in der National-Oekonomie.” Since all the founders of empirio-criticism have combated the “metaphysics” not only of explicit, conscious materialism, but of the natural sciences, which instinctively cling to the viewpoint of the materialist theory of knowledge as well, the disciple took it upon himself to wage war on the metaphysics of political economy. This war has been directed against the various schools of political economy, but at present we are interested only in the character of the empirio-critical argument against the school of Marx and Engels.

“The purpose of the present investigation,” writes Blei, “is to show that the whole of modern political economy operates with metaphysical assumptions in its interpretation of the phenomena of economic life; it ‘derives laws’ of economics from the ‘nature’ of its subject matter, and man appears here only as something accidental in relation to such ‘laws’. . . . With all its modern theories political economy rests on metaphysical grounds, all its theories are unbiological and, therefore, unscientific, thus having no validity for knowledge. . . . The theoreticians do not know on what ground they build their theories, and of what soil the fruits of those theories are. They deem themselves realists who operate without any assumptions, for they are supposedly engaged in ‘sober,’ ‘practical,’ ‘tangible’ [sinnfällige] economic phenomena. . . . And all of them have those native resemblances with many tendencies in physiology, which are regarded as cognitive characteristics of children (in our case the physiologists and economists) of common parentage (metaphysics and speculation). One school of economists analyses the ‘phenomena’ of ‘political economy’ [Avenarius and his school put ordinary words in quotation marks as if to imply that they, true philosophers, understand the essentially ‘metaphysical character’ of such a vulgar use of words, unrefined by ‘epistemologic analysis’] without putting it into relation with the behaviour revealed by the conduct of individuals: The physiologists dismiss the behaviour of the individual in their investigations as being an ‘effect of the soul,’ while economists of that tendency declare the behaviour of individuals to be negligible in relation to the ‘immanent economic laws’ [pp. 378-379]. With Marx, the theory progresses from these inferred processes to economic laws, although the laws are supposed to have existed, in the primary period of vital series, while the economic processes take place at the final period. . . . Political economy was transformed by the economists into a transcendental category, in which they discovered such ‘laws’ as those of ‘capital’ and ‘labour,’ ‘rent,’ ‘wages’ and ‘profit. Man was transformed by them into a Platonic idea of a ‘capitalist,’ or a ‘worker,’ etc. Socialism ascribed to the ‘capitalist’ the property of being ‘greedy for profit,’ liberalism ascribed to the worker the property of being ‘pretentious,’ and both laws have been explained as sequences of the ‘law of action of capital’ [pp. 381-382].

“Marx came to the study of French socialism and political economy with a socialist Weltanschauung, and his purpose was to provide a ‘theoretical foundation’ for it in order to ‘secure’ its initial value.

Marx found in Ricardo the law of value . . . but the inferences which the French socialists had drawn from Ricardo could not satisfy Marx in his endeavour to ‘secure’ the initial value which unequally distributed had given rise to differences in the state of life.—These inferences had already entered as a component part into his conception of value as the aspect of ‘indignation against the exploitation of the workers,’ etc. The inferences had been refuted as ‘being formally untrue in an economic sense,’ for they are simple ‘applications of morality to political economy.’ But what is untrue in the formal economic sense, may be true in the historic sense. If the moral consciousness of the mass declares a certain economic fact unjust, then it is proof that the fact has outlived itself, that other economic facts have appeared, due to which this fact becomes intolerable and incapable of being observed. Behind the formal economic injustice a true economic content ‘may, therefore, be latent’ (Engels in the preface to Poverty of Philosophy).

“In this quotation,” Blei continues to cite from Engels, “the middle section [medialabschnitt] of the dependent series which interest us here is taken away [‘abgehoben’—Avenarius’ technical term for ‘having reached consciousness’]. After the ‘recognition’ that behind the ‘moral consciousness of injustice’ the ‘economic factor’ may be latent, comes the last section [Finalabschnitt: the theory of Marx is the statement, the E-value, the vital difference which passes through three stages, three divisions, the beginning, middle and end, Initialabschnitt, Medialabschnitt, Finalabschnitt] . . . that is ‘the consciousness’ of that ‘economic factor.’ Or, in other words, the task now is to ‘find again’ the initial value, that is, the Weltanschauung in the ‘economic facts’ for ‘securing’ this initial value. This definite variation of the dependent series already contains the Marxian metaphysics, regardless of whether what is ‘cognised’ appears or not in the final division (Finalabschnitt). ‘The socialist conception’ as an independent E-value, the ‘absolute truth,’ is subsequently grounded upon a ‘special’ theory of knowledge, by means of the economic system of Marx and the materialist theory of history. The ‘subjectively true’ in the Marxian doctrine, through the conception of surplus value, finds its ‘objective truth’ in a theory of knowledge of ‘economic categories.’—Hence, the securing of initial values is completed and metaphysics is subjected to a critique of knowledge by way of supplement” (pp. 383-6).

The reader is probably indignant that we have so long indulged in this impossibly vulgar word jugglery, this quasi-erudite buffoonery in the garb of Avenarius’ terminology. But wer den Feind will verstehen, muss im Feindes’ Lande gehn. And the philosophical journal of Avenarius is really hostile territory for Marxists to venture into. And we invite the reader to overcome for a while his justified aversion to the clowns of bourgeois science and to analyse the arguments of the disciple and collaborator of Avenarius.

Proof number one: Marx is a “metaphysician” who did not grasp the epistemological “critique of ideas,” who did not elaborate the general theory of knowledge and who surreptitiously introduced materialism into his “special theory of knowledge.”

There is nothing original in this argument of Blei’s. We have already seen hundreds of times that all the founders of empirio-criticism and all the Russian Machians have accused materialism of “metaphysics,” that is, they repeat the stereotyped arguments of the Kantians, Humeans and idealists against materialistic “metaphysics.”

Proof number two: Marxism is as “metaphysical” as natural science (physiology). Nor is Blei “responsible” for this proof. Rather are Mach and Avenarius, for they declared war against “naturo-historical metaphysics,” dubbing the instinctively-materialistic theory of knowledge with that name to which (according to their own admission and the judgment of those who are even slightly acquainted with the question) the prevailing majority of naturalists adhere.

Proof number three: Marxism avers “personality” to be a negligible quantity, an accident, subject to certain “immanent economic laws”; it is characterised by an absence of analysis of the immediately given. This proof repeats in toto the empirio-critical idea of “essential co-ordination,” that nest of idealist duplicity in Avenarius’ theory. Blei is absolutely right when he says that it is impossible to find the slightest notion of this idealist confusion in Marx and Engels, and that from the standpoint of such confusion one must completely reject Marxism from the very beginning, in its most fundamental philosophic assumption.

Proof number four: The theory of Marx is “unbiological,” is innocent of “vital-differences” and of similar factitious biological terms which constitute the “science” of the reactionary professor, Avenarius. Blei’s argument is correct from the standpoint of Machism, for the gulf which separates the theory of Marx from the “biological” baubles of Avenarius is indeed immediately evident. We shall soon see how those Russian Machians, who are so intent upon being considered Marxists, actually followed in the footsteps of Blei.

Proof number five: Concerning the partiality of Marx’s theory and his preconceived solution. The whole of empirio-criticism, and not merely Blei’s brand of it, pretends to be impartial both in philosophy and in social science; it adheres neither to socialism nor to liberalism. Its task is not to make clear the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between the philosophy of materialism and idealism, but to endeavour to rise above them. We have traced this tendency of Machism in a whole series of problems dealing with epistemology, and we ought not be surprised to encounter it in sociology.

Proof number six: The mockery at “objective” truth. Blei sensed at once, and quite correctly, that historical materialism and the entire economic doctrine of Marx thoroughly reflect the recognition of objective truth. And Blei correctly expressed the drift of the doctrines of Mach and Avenarius when, from the very start, he refuted Marxism precisely because of its emphasis on the idea of objective truth, when, at one stroke, he proclaimed that there was really nothing behind the teaching of Marxism save the “subjective” views of Marx.

And if our Machians renounce Blei (as they surely will), we shall tell them: “You must not accuse the mirror if it shows a wry face.” Blei is the mirror, which correctly reflects the fundamental tendencies of empirio-criticism, and the possible renunciation of the Machians would only bear witness to their noble intentions and their absurd eclectic endeavours to connect Marx and Avenarius.

We shall proceed from Blei to Petzoldt. If the former is a mere disciple, the latter, however, is declared to be “one of the masters” by no less an outstanding empirio-criticist than Lessevich. If Blei directly raises the question of Marxism, then Petzoldt, who does not condescend to take Marx or Engels into account, expounds the positive views of empirio-criticism in sociology, thus offering an opportunity to compare them with Marxism.

The second volume of Petzoldt’s Einführung in die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung is entitled “Auf dem Wege zum Dauernden.” The author assumes as the basis of his investigation the tendency towards stability. “The final, stable state of humanity, in its main features, can be revealed on its formal side. Thus we arrive at ethics, esthetics and the formal theory of knowledge” (p. iii). “Human development bears its goal in itself”; it tends towards a “perfect state of equilibrium” (p. 60). Evidence for this is abundant and varied. For example, is it not true that many violent radicals become “more sensible” with old age, that they reach a stage of emotional equilibrium? True, such “premature stability” (p. 62) is the property of a Philistine. But do not Philistines comprise the “compact majority”? (p. 62).

The inference of our philosopher is this: “The fundamental goal of all our reasoning and creative activity, is stability” (p. 72). An explanation follows: “Many cannot bear to see the picture hanging crooked on the wall or the key lying obliquely on the table. And such people are not necessarily pedants. They have a feeling that something is not in order” (p. 72, Petzoldt’s italics). In a word, the “tendency toward stability is a tendency toward the ultimate, towards the final stage” (p. 73). All this is taken from the fifth chapter of Volume II, entitled “Die Psychische Tendenz zur Stabilität.” The proofs of this tendency are, indeed, most weighty! For instance: “The endeavour to attain the topmost, to reach the highest in the primeval, spatial sense, expresses itself in those who like to climb mountains. They are not always prompted by a desire to perceive the outlying landscape or by the joy of physical exercise in climbing in free air and open sky, but by the longing, deeply ingrained in every organic being, to pursue the direction of activity once taken until the natural purpose has been attained” (p. 73). Another instance: What sums of money people pay to accumulate a complete collection of postage stamps! “One is dazed upon looking at the price list of the dealer in postage stamps. . . . And yet nothing can be more natural and conceivable than this urge for stability” (p. 74).

Philosophically untutored people have no conception of the breadth of principles of stability or economy of thought. Petzoldt develops in detail his “theory” for the benefit of the ignorant. “Sympathy is an expression of the immediate need for a state of equilibrium,” runs the thought of paragraph 28. . . . “Sympathy is not a repetition, a duplication of the observed suffering, but a suffering on account of this suffering. . . . The qualitative immediacy of sympathy must be greatly emphasised. If we recognise it, we admit that the welfare of others can just as genuinely and naturally interest a man as his own welfare. Thus we reject every utilitarian and eudemonistic foundation of morality. Human nature, precisely because of its yearning for stability and rest, is basically not evil, but is characterised by a readiness to help the needy.

“The immediacy of sympathy is frequently manifested in immediate help. In order to save another, people often throw themselves into the water to lend a helping hand to the drowning one without thinking of their action. The appearance of a person who struggles with death is unbearable and compels the one, who offers help, to forget his other duties, to jeopardise his own existence and that of his nearest, in order to save the useless life of some degraded drunkard; sympathy can, under certain circumstances, provoke action which could not be justified from a moral viewpoint. . . .”

And hundreds and thousands of pages of empirio-critical philosophy are filled with such impossible vulgarities.

Morality is inferred from the conception of “moral stability” (the second section of Volume II, “Die Dauerbestände der Seele”; chapter 1, “Vom Ethischen Dauerbestände”). “The state of stability contains no conditions of change, not even in any of its components. From this it follows, without any further argument, that his state leaves no possibility for war” (p. 202). “Economic and social equality follows from the idea of the final, stable state” (p. 213). This “state of stability” does not follow from religion but from “science.” The “majority” cannot realise it, as the socialists suppose, nor can the power of the socialists “help humanity” (p. 207); no, “free development” will lead to the ideal. Does not the profit of capital, as a matter of fact, decrease? Do not wages increase constantly? (p. 223). All the assertions regarding “wage slavery” are not true (p. 229). The slaves used to be beaten without their masters incurring any punishment; and now? Nay, “moral progress” is indubitable; look at the university settlements in England, at the Salvation Army (p. 230), at the German “ethical societies.” In the name of “esthetic stability” (chapter II, section 2) is “romanticism” rejected. And to romanticism belong all tendencies which aim at unduly widening the ego, namely, idealism, metaphysics, occultism, solipsism, egoism, and the “forcing of majority rule on a minority by the majority” and the “social-democratic idea as regards the organisation of labour by the state” (pp. 240-241).

The sociological excursions of Blei, Petzoldt and Mach may be reduced to the unlimited dulness of the Philistine, who in his self-contentment retails the most vulgar rubbish under the cover of “recent empirio-critical” systematisation and terminology. A pretentious cloak of verbal legerdemain, a sham contrivance of syllogistics, a subtle scholasticism, in a word, just as in epistemology so in sociology—the same reactionary content under the same glaring labels.

Let us now consider the Russian Machians.

In his article “The Development of Life in Nature and Society,” Bogdanov quotes a certain part of the preface to the Critique of Political Economy, where the “greatest sociologist,” expounds the fundamentals of historical materialism. Having quoted from Marx, Bogdanov declares that the “old formulation of historical monism, without ceasing to be true in the main, does not, however, fully satisfy us” (p. 37). The author wishes, therefore, to make certain corrections and to develop the theory, taking its foundations as the starting point. The chief conclusion of the author is as follows:

“We have shown that social forms belong to a more extensive genus of biologic adaptation. But we have not thereby defined the province of social forms; for in definition, not only the genus must be established, but the species as well. . . . In their struggle for existence men could not have associated unless they had been endowed with consciousness: without consciousness there could have been no communion. Therefore social life in all its manifestations is a consciously psychic life. . . . Sociability is inseparable from consciousness. The social being and social consciousness in the exact meaning of the words are identical” (p. 51, Bogdanov’s italics).

That this inference has nothing to do with Marxism had already been shown by Orthodox. But Bogdanov merely responded with abuse, caviling at an error in the quotation—maintaining that instead of being quoted “in the exact sense of the word” Orthodox quoted him “in the full sense of the word.” The mistake was obvious, and the author had a perfect right to correct it, but to raise a noise on account of the “mutilation,” “substitution,” etc., is simply to obscure the question at issue by wretched words. Whatever “exact” sense Bogdanov could have given to the words “social being” and “social consciousness,” it is beyond doubt that the proposition we have quoted is not correct. “Social being” and “social consciousness” are not identical, just as being in general and consciousness in general are not identical. From the position that men enter into social relations as conscious beings, it does not by any means follow that “social consciousness” is identical with “social being.” Entering into social relations, people are not conscious of the kind of social relations that are being formed, or according to what principles they are developing; this in any complicated social order, especially in the capitalist order. . . . For instance a peasant while selling grain comes into “social relations” with the world producers of grain on the world market, but he is not conscious of it, neither is he conscious of the kind of social relations that are formed on the basis of the exchange. Social consciousness reflects social being—this is Marx’s teaching. The reflection may be a true, though approximate copy of the reflected, but to speak of their identity is absurd. Consciousness in general reflects being—this is the general position of all materialism. It is impossible not to see its direct and inseparable connection with the position of historical materialism, that is, that social consciousness reflects social being.

Bogdanov’s attempt to correct and develop Marxism in the “spirit of his fundamental ideas,” is but an obvious distortion of these materialistic fundamental conceptions in the spirit of idealism. It would be ridiculous to deny it. Let us recollect Bazarov’s exposition of empirio-criticism (not of empirio-monism, for this would be impossible, since between these “systems” there is such a great, great difference!): “Sense-perception is the reality existing outside of us.” This is open idealism, an open avowal of the identity of consciousness and being. Let us further recollect the formulations of Schuppe, the leader of the immanentist school (who has just as much as Bazarov, et al., maintained that he was not an idealist, and who, like Bogdanov, ascribed a special “exact” meaning to his words): “Being is consciousness.” Compare with this the refutation of Marx’s historical materialism by the follower of the immanentist school, Schubert-Soldern: “Each material process of production is always a phenomenon of consciousness in relation to its observer. . . . In the epistemological relation not the external process of production is the prius, but the subject or subjects; in other words, the purely material process of production does not lead us out of the invariable connection of consciousness.”

Bogdanov may condemn the materialists as much as he pleases for “mutilating his thoughts,” but no condemnation will change the simple fact. The modification of Marx’s theory and the development of Marx supposedly in the spirit of Marx by the empirio-monist, Bogdanov, does not differ in the least from the refutation of Marx by the idealist and epistemological solipsist, Schubert-Soldern. Bogdanov assures us that he is not an idealist; Schubert-Soldern assures us that he is a realist (Bazarov went so far as to believe him). In our time it is impossible for a philosopher not to declare himself a “realist” and an “enemy of idealism.” It is about time you understood this, Machian gentlemen!

The followers of the immanentist school, the empirio-criticists and the empirio-monists haggle about details, about the formulations of idealism, while we reject from the very beginning all the fundamental doctrines of philosophy, which this philosophic trinity has in common. Let Bogdanov with the best intentions, and accepting all the conclusions of Marx, preach the “identity” of social being and social consciousness; we will say: Bogdanov minus “empirio-monism” (rather minus Machism) is a Marxian. For this theory of identity of social being and social consciousness is a thoroughgoing absurdity, and certainly a reactionary theory. If certain people reconcile it with Marxism, with the Marxian tendency, we may recognise that these people in themselves are better than their teachings, but we may not justify the outrageous theoretical distortion of Marxism.

Bogdanov reconciles his theory with the conclusions of Marx, thereby sacrificing elementary consistency for its sake. Each separate producer in the world economy is conscious that he introduces a certain change into the technique of production, each owner knows that he exchanges certain products for others, but these producers and these owners are not aware that in doing this they change social existence. The sum-total of these changes in all the ramifications of the world economy not even seventy Marxes could embrace. What could be obtained at most is that the regulation of these changes would be discovered, that the objective logic of these changes and their historic development would be shown in its general outlines. It is objective, not in the sense that the society of conscious beings, men, could exist and develop independently of the existence of conscious beings (Bogdanov stresses these trifles in his “theory”), but in the sense that social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. That you live and keep house, beget children, manufacture and exchange products, all these comprise the objectively necessary chain of events in social development, independently of our social consciousness, which never fully embraces these facts. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend the objective logic of the economic evolution (the evolution of social existence), to comprehend the most general and fundamental features with the purposes of adapting its social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries to it in clear, exact and critical fashion.

Bogdanov acknowledges all this. What does it mean? It means that his theory of the “identity of social existence and social consciousness” is actually thrown overboard by him, and remains an empty trinket, as empty, dead and useless as the “theory of universal substitution” or the teaching about “elements,” “introjection” and the rest of the Machian confusion. But the “dead seizes the living”; the dead scholastic trinket, against one’s will and independently of Bogdanov’s consciousness, converts his philosophy into a serviceable tool of the Schubert-Solderns and other reactionaries who in a thousand ways and from hundreds of professorial chairs disseminate this same lifeless doctrine as if it were alive, with a view to suppressing the living. Bogdanov is a sworn enemy of every sort of reaction in general and of bourgeois reaction in particular, yet his “substitution” and his theory of “identity of social existence and social consciousness” serve this reaction. This is a sad fact, but a fact it is.

Materialism generally recognises the objectively real being (matter) as existing independently of mind, sensation, experience, etc. Historical materialism recognises social being as existing independently of the social consciousness of humanity. Consciousness here and there is only an image of being, at best an approximately true (adequate, ideally exact) image of it. You cannot eliminate even one basic assumption, one substantial part of this philosophy of Marxism (it is as if it were a solid block of steel) without abandoning objective truth, without falling into the arms of the bourgeois-reactionary falsehood.

Here are other examples of how the dead philosophy of idealism seizes the living Marxian, Bogdanov.

In the article “What Is Idealism” (1901, p. 11 ff.), he says: “We come to this conclusion: Where people agree in their judgments of progress, and where they disagree, the basic criterion of the idea of progress remains one and the same; namely, an increasing fulness and harmony of conscious life. Such is the objective content of the concept of progress. . . . If we do now compare the psychological character of the idea of progress with the previously explained biological idea [“biological progress is called an increase in the sum total of life,” p. 14], then we will easily be convinced that the former fully coincides with the latter and can be deduced from it. . . . Because social life is reduced to the psychical life of the members of society, here, too, the content of the idea of progress remains one and the same—the increasing fulness and harmony of life; but we must add only the social life of men. And, of course, the idea of social progress never had nor can have any other content” (p. 16).

“We found . . . that idealism expresses the victory in the human soul of moods that are more social over those that are less social, that a progressive ideal is a reflection of socially progressive tendencies in the idealist psychology” (p. 32).

It goes without saying that there is not a grain of Marxism in this whole play at biology and sociology. Both in Spencer and Mikhailovsky we can find as many definitions as we please which are no worse than these, and which define nothing but the “good intention” of the author and show a complete lack of understanding of what idealism and materialism are.

In the article “Social Selection” the author begins by refuting the “eclectic socio-biological attempts of Lange, Ferri, Woltmann and others,” and on page 15 we find the following conclusion of the “inquiry”: “We can thus formulate the fundamental connection between energetics and social selection:

“Every act of social selection is marked by an increase or decrease in the energy of that social complex to which it is related. In the first case we have a positive, in the second—a negative selection.” (Author’s italics).

And such an impossible word jugglery is offered as Marxism! Can one imagine anything more sterile, more dead or scholastic than such a jumble of biological and energetical terms which says nothing at all of the province of social science? There is not a shadow of concrete economic inquiry, not a hint of Marx’s method, the method of dialectics linked with the doctrines of materialism, but a simple network of definitions, and attempts to force the ready-made conclusions of Marxism into them. “The rapid growth of the productive forces of the capitalist society undoubtedly marks an increase in the energy of the social whole.” The second half of the phrase is, undoubtedly, a mere repetition of the first half, expressed in meaningless terms which seem to make the statement “more profound” but which actually do not in the least differ from the eclectic biologico-sociological attempts of Lange, et al.! “But the disharmonious character of this process leads to its being completed by a ‘crisis’ by the great loss of productive forces, by an acute decrease of energy; the positive selection is changed for the negative” (p. 18).

Does this not recall Lange? A biologico-energetic label is tacked on to ready-made conclusions concerning crises, without offering any concrete material whatsoever, without elucidating the nature of crises. All this, to be sure, is done with the very best intentions, because the author wishes to confirm and to widen the conclusions of Marx, but in reality he is diluting them by an intolerably tedious and deadening scholasticism. The only “Marxism” in Bogdanov lies in his repetition of previously established conclusions while all his “new” ways of substantiating Marxism, his “social energetics” (p. 34) and “social selection” are mere jumbles of words, a real caricature of Marxism.

Bogdanov is not engaged in a Marxian inquiry at all, but in bedizening the results previously attained by this inquiry, in the ornamental phraseology of biology and energetics. The entire attempt, from beginning to end, is useless, because there is no available application of the ideas of “selection,” “assimilation and dissimilation” of energy, energetic balance, and so forth, in the province of the social sciences. They are simply shallow phrases. In reality no inquiry concerning social phenomena, no elucidation of the method of social sciences can be given with the aid of these ideas. Nothing is easier than to tack on the labels of “energetics” or “biologico-sociology” to the phenomena, say, of crises, revolutions, class struggles, etc., but there is nothing more sterile, more scholastic and deadly than an occupation of this sort. It is not important that Bogdanov wishes to reconcile all or “almost” all of his results and conclusions with Marx (we have seen what “correction” he made in the question of the relation of social existence to social consciousness). But it is important to realise that his method of reconciliation—“social energetics”—is thoroughly false and does not differ in principle from the method of Lange.

“Mr. Lange,” Marx wrote to Kugelmann on June 27, 1870, “praises me exceedingly . . . in order to pose as a great man. The thing is that Mr. Lange has made a great discovery. All history can be subsumed under a single great natural law. This natural law consists of the phrase ‘struggle for existence’ (the expression of Darwin in this usage becomes a shallow phrase) and the content of this phrase embraces Malthus’ law of population, or rather migration. Hence, instead of analysing this struggle for life, as it historically manifested itself in various social forms, there remains nothing to do but to transform each concrete struggle into the phrase ‘struggle for existence,’ and this phrase into the Malthusian phantasy as regards population. It must be granted that this is a very convincing method . . . for a pampered, bombastic ignorance and laziness of thought which poses at being scientific.” (Briefe an Kugelmann, 1924, pp. 75-76.)

The basis of the Marxian criticism of Lange is not that Lange tries to impose forcibly a special interpretation of Malthus’ doctrine in the province of sociology, but that the application of biologic ideas in general to the domain of social sciences can only result in a meaningless phrase. Whether such a transference of categories is undertaken with good intentions, or in order to emphasise false sociological conclusions, does not make an empty phraseology any less empty. And the “social energetics” of Bogdanov, his modification of Marxism through the doctrine of social selection, exemplifies that sort of phraseology.

Just as in epistemology Mach and Avenarius did not develop a new idealism, but only overlaid the old idealist fallacies with pretentious, terminologic nonsense (“elements,” “essential co-ordination,” “introjection,” etc.), so in sociology, even though it be in sincere sympathy with the conclusions of Marxism, empirio-criticism leads to the perversion of historical materialism through a pretentious, shallow and verbose energetic and biologic phrase-mongery.

The historical peculiarity of the modern Russian Machism (or rather the Machian pestilence which characterises a certain section of social-democracy) can be traced to the following circumstance. Feuerbach had been a “materialist at heart, and an idealist at the surface”; the same to a certain extent is true of Büchner, Vogt, Moleschott and Dühring, with the essential difference that all these philosophers were pygmies and miserable scribblers in comparison with Feuerbach.

Marx and Engels had grown away from Feuerbach, and plucking up courage in their struggle with the scribblers, naturally paid more attention to developing the philosophy of materialism from the top down, that is, they took their point of departure not from the basis of the materialist epistemology but from the materialist conception of history. Marx and Engels in their work emphasised dialectic materialism rather than dialectic materialism. They insisted on historical materialism rather than historical materialism. Our Machians, who desire to be Marxians, approached Marxism in an entirely different spirit from that regnant in the period of historicism; they approached it at a time when bourgeois philosophy had specialised particularly in epistemology and, adopting certain component elements of dialectics in a one-sided and mutilated form (relativism, for instance), had paid more attention to the defence and restoration of idealism from the bottom up than from the top down. At least positivism, in general, and Machism, in particular, have been continually engaged in a subtle falsification of epistemology; have concealed their idealism under a counterfeit materialistic terminology, and have paid comparatively little attention to the philosophy of history. Our Machians did not understand Marxism, because they happened to approach it from the other side, so to speak, and they adopted, or rather learned by heart, the economical and historical theory of Marx, without having made its fundamentals clear to themselves, that is, without having grasped philosophical materialism. Bogdanov and the others should therefore be called Russian Büchners and Dührings turned inside out. They wanted to be materialists from above, but they were unable to rid themselves of muddled idealism from below! “Above,” in the case of Bogdanov, means his historical materialism, albeit vulgarised and greatly affected by his idealism; “below” means his idealism, disguised by counterfeit Marxian terms. “Socially organised experience,” “collective labouring process”—these are Marxian terms, but they are terms only, which conceal an idealist philosophy that declares things to be complexes of “elements,” or sensations; which regards the outer world as “experience,” or as the “empirio-symbol” of humanity; and maintains that physical nature is “derived” from the “psychical,” etc.

A subtle and continual falsification of Marxism, a crafty and constant dissemination of anti-materialist doctrines disguised in a Marxian garb—this is how modern revisionism must be characterised—in the field of political economy, in questions of tactics and in philosophy as a whole, in both its epistemological and sociological aspects.

The Outlines, etc., which close with the above-mentioned article by Comrade Suvorov, represents a bouquet with an unusually strong effect because of the collective character of the book. When, together with Bazarov, who says that, according to Engels, “sense-perception is the reality existing outside of us,” we have Berman who declares the dialectics of Marx and Engels to be mysticism, and Lunacharsky who goes so far as to speak of religion, and Yushkevich who introduces “Logos into the irrational stream of experience,” and Bogdanov who calls the philosophy of Marxism, idealism, and Helfond who purges Dietzgen’s philosophy—of its materialism, and, lastly, Suvorov with the article “Foundations of Social Philosophy,” then one begins to feel at once the “spirit” of the new alignment. Quantity has passed into quality. The “seekers” who have hitherto been searching individually and in separate articles and books, have come out with an actual programme. Individual differences of opinion are overlooked by the very nature of the collective attack against the philosophy of Marxism, and the reactionary traits of Machism as a movement become manifest.

Suvorov’s article is still more interesting under these circumstances, for the author is neither an empirio-monist nor an empirio-criticist, but merely a “realist.” He has been, therefore, drawn into their company not by the philosophic peculiarities of Bazarov, Yushkevich and Bogdanov, but by the common opposition against dialectical materialism. A comparison between the sociological doctrines of this “realist” and the doctrines of the empirio-monist will help us to discover their common tendency.

Suvorov writes: “In the gradation of laws which regulate the world process, the individual and complicated laws are reduced to common and simple laws, and all of them are subject to the universal law of evolution—the law of the economy of forces. The substance of this law is that the less expenditure there is in each system of forces, the more adapted it is for conservation and development; the greater its accumulation becomes and the more effectively is that accumulation served by expenditure. The forms of mobile stability, which have long since evoked the idea of objective expediency (the solar system, the cycle of earthly phenomena, the process of life), are produced and developed because of the saving and accumulation of energy which belong to them in virtue of their inner economy. The law of economy of forces appears as a unifying and regulating principle of every development—of the inorganic, biological and social” (p. 293, author’s italics).

Our “positivists” and “realists” “cook” their “universal laws” quite easily! It is only to be regretted that these laws are not a whit better than those which Eugene Dühring “cooked up” quite as easily and quickly. Suvorov’s “universal law” is just as shallow a phrase as Dühring’s universal laws. Try to apply this law to the first of the three domains which the author himself points out, to inorganic evolution. You shall see that no “economy of forces,” without the law of conservation and transformation of energy, can here be applied and that you will not succeed in applying them “universally.” And the author had already singled out the law of “conservation of energy” (p. 292) as a separate law. What remains, then, in addition to this law in the domain of inorganic development? Where are the additional data, the complications, the new discoveries, or the new facts which give the author the right to change (“to perfect”) the law of conservation and transformation of energy into a law of “economy of forces”? There are no such facts or discoveries and Suvorov has made no attempt to speak of them. In order to appear very important, he permits his pen to glide over the paper and thereby creates a new “universal law” of “real-monistic philosophy” (p. 292). Let the world know who we are! We are no worse than Dühring!

Let us take the second field in which the development is supposed to have taken place—the biological. Is the law of economy, or the “law” of distribution of forces, through the development of organisms, the struggle for existence and the mechanism of selection, universally evidenced here? No trouble at all! The “meaning” of the universal law can be interpreted by “real-monistic philosophy” one way in one field, another way in another field. Here, for example, it is interpreted as the development of higher organisms out of lower. What does it matter if the universal law becomes a shallow phrase because of such an interpretation, so long as the principle of “monism” is respected? As for the third domain (the social), the “universal law” can be interpreted in its third meaning as the development of productive forces. That is why it is a “universal law”; it can be made to express anything we want.

“Although social science is still young, it already possesses both a solid foundation and some definite generalisations; in the nineteenth century it attained its theoretical height, and this constitutes the chief merit of Marx. He raised social science to the level of social theory. . . .” Engels said that Marx transformed socialism from a utopian doctrine into a scientific doctrine, but this is not sufficient for Suvorov. It is more imposing, he believes, if we introduce a distinction between science (was there a social science before Marx?) and theory. It matters not if the distinction is absurd!

“. . Having established the law of social dynamics, due to which the evolution of productive forces appears as the determining principle of all economic and social development. But the development of the productive forces corresponds to the growth of the productivity of labour, to the relative reduction in expenditure and to an increase in the accumulation of energy [see how productive “real-monistic philosophy” is itself, a new foundation for Marxism has been developed by means of energetics!] . . . this is the economic principle. Thus into the foundations of social theory Marx put the principle of the economy of forces. . . .”

This “thus” is truly without precedent! Because there can be found in Marx the phrase political economy, let us therefore chew on the word “economy,” and name the products of the mastication “real-monistic philosophy”!

No, Marx did not put any principle of economy of forces into the basis of his theory. These are trifles which have been invented by people for whom the laurels of Eugene Dühring are still green. To the notion of growth of productive forces Marx gave a perfectly exact definition, having studied the concrete process of this growth. And Suvorov invented a new word in order to signify the notion which had been analysed by Marx. It turns out that the invention is very unsatisfactory, for it only confuses matters. For what is meant by the “economy of forces”? how can it be measured? how can this conception be applied? what exact and definite facts will fit into it?—these Suvorov did not explain, nor can they be explained, for it is the rankest confusion. Let us proceed:

“. . . This law of social economy appears not only as the principle of the inner unity of social science [reader, do you understand anything here?] but the connecting link between social theory and the universal theory of being” (p. 294).

Well, well, the “universal theory of being” is again discovered by Suvorov after it had been discovered in various forms by the numerous representatives of scholastic philosophy. We congratulate the Russian Machians for their new “universal theory of being”! Let us hope that their future collective work will be dedicated entirely to the exposition and development of this great discovery!

We can judge of the nature of the exposition of Marx’s theory which our representative of realistic or real-monistic philosophy gives from such an example as this: “In general the productive forces of people form a genetic gradation [!] and consist of labour energy, of harnessed elemental forces of nature, and of a nature which has been modified by culture and the tools of labour, or productive technique. . . . In relation to the process of labour these forces fulfil a purely economic function; they save labour energy and raise the productivity of its expenditure” (p. 298). The productive forces fulfil economic functions in relation to the process of labour! This is as if one were to say that the vital forces fulfil a vital function in relation to the process of life. This is not an exposition of Marx but a clogging up of the pure stream of his thought with verbal litter.

It is impossible to tell all about the litter in Suvorov’s article. “The socialisation of classes is expressed in the growth of its collective power over men and their property [p. 313]. . . . The class struggle is directed toward the establishment of forms of stability between social forces [p. 322]. . . .” Social strife, hostility and struggle are essentially negative, anti-social phenomena. “Social progress, in its basic content, is a growth in sociability, in the social relations between men [p. 328]. . . .” We could fill volumes with collections of such platitudes, and the representatives of bourgeois sociology actually do fill their volumes with these commonplaces; but to hand this out as the philosophy of Marxism—that is entirely too much! If the article of Suvorov were an attempt to popularise Marxism, it would not be judged very severely; everyone would recognise that the author’s intentions were good but his attempt was unsuccessful, and that would be the end of it. But when a group of Machians present it to us under the title of Foundations of Social Philosophy, when we see the same sort of an “improvement” upon Marxism in the philosophic books of Bogdanov, we must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that there is an inseparable connection between reactionary epistemology and a reactionary position in sociology.

It remains now to examine the question concerning the relation of Machism to religion. But this broadens into the larger question, as to whether there are in general “parties” in philosophy, and what is the meaning of impartiality in philosophy?

During the whole of the preceding exposition, in each of the problems touched upon in epistemology, in every philosophical question set by recent physics, we have traced the struggle between materialism and idealism. Behind the mass of new terminologic contrivances, behind the litter of quasi-erudite scholasticism, we have found, without exception, two principal alignments, two fundamental tendencies in the solution of philosophic problems—that is, whether to take nature, matter, the physical, the outer world as the prius or whether to start with consciousness, spirit, sensation (experience in conformity with the popular terminology of our time), the psychical, etc. This is the fundamental problem which still divides philosophers into two great camps. The source of thousands upon thousands of errors and colossal confusion in this domain is precisely the fact that due to the arbitrary nature of terms and definitions, due to scholastic trickery and verbal distinctions, these two fundamental tendencies are overlooked. (Bogdanov, for instance, refuses openly to admit his idealism, because instead of the “metaphysical” notions of “nature” and “spirit,” he has taken the “empirical,” the physical and psychical. A mere change of terms!)

The genius of Marx and Engels lay in the fact, that during a long period, for nearly half a century, they developed materialism by advocating one fundamental tendency in philosophy. They did not lose time in repeating solutions of epistemologic problems already solved, but consistently developed them, and showed how to carry materialism into the domain of the social sciences, mercilessly brushing aside, as litter, nonsense, and pretentious word jugglery, the countless attempts to “discover” a “new” alignment in philosophy, to invent a “new” tendency, etc. The verbal character of such attempts, the scholastic play upon new philosophic “isms,” the obfuscation of the essence of the question by artificial distinctions, the inability to comprehend and clearly present the struggle of the two principal epistemologic tendencies—these were the things which Marx and Engels fought throughout their entire lifetime of activity.

We said, “for nearly half a century.” Indeed, as far back as 1843 when Marx had just, so to speak, become Marx, i. e., the founder of scientific socialism, the founder of modern materialism (immeasurably richer in content and incomparably better grounded than all previous forms of materialism), he had already drawn the basic lines of division in philosophy with astounding clarity. Karl Grün quotes a letter of October 30, 1843, to Feuerbach, in which Marx invited Feuerbach to write an article in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher against Schelling. This Schelling, writes Marx, is a shallow braggart with his pretence at embracing and transcending all previous philosophic tendencies.

“To the French romanticists and mystics Schelling says that the self represents the connection of philosophy and theology; to the French materialists he says that the self is the connection of body and ideas; to the French sceptics, that the self is the destroyer of dogmatism.” That the “sceptics,” whether they are termed Humeans or Kantians (or Machians in the twentieth century), object to “dogmatism” and materialism and idealism, Marx realised even at that time, and, without letting himself be drawn into one of the thousands of miserable and petty systems, he was able, thanks to Feuerbach, to take a materialist stand against idealism. Thirty years later, in the afterword to the second edition of the first volume of Capital, Marx clearly and completely contrasts his materialism with Hegelian idealism, the most consistent and advanced representative of all idealisms. He contemptuously rejects Comteian “positivism” and declares the modern philosophers to be miserable epigoni who imagine that they have destroyed Hegel, when in reality they have reverted to the repetition of the pre-Hegelian errors of Kant and Hume. Also in the letter to Kugelmann of June 27, 1870, Marx contemptuously treats Büchner, Lange, Dühring, Fechner, etc., for the reason that, being unable to understand Hegelian dialectics, they despised it.

And finally, take the separate remarks of Marx in Capital and other works, and you shall see the same unchanged basic motive—an insistence upon materialism and his contemptuous derision of every obscurity, every confusion and every deviation towards idealism. All the philosophic remarks of Marx revolve around these two principal distinctions. In this “narrowness” and “one-sidedness” from the viewpoint of professorial philosophy, lies their defect. Indeed, the greatest service of Marx who continually advanced along a very definite philosophic road, consists in this unwillingness to take account of the illegitimate products of an attempted reconciliation between materialism and idealism.

Fully in the spirit of Marx and in close collaboration with him, Engels in all his philosophic works briefly and clearly contrasts the materialist and idealist alignments in all questions, without taking seriously, either in 1878 or in 1888 or in 1891, the innumerable endeavours to “transcend” the “one-sidedness” of materialism and idealism, or proclaiming as a new tendency whatever “positivism,” “realism” or other professorial charlatanism might have been current. The struggle with Dühring was led by Engels wholly under the slogan of a consistent pursuit of materialism. He accused the materialist Dühring of a verbal obfuscation of the real issue, for his phraseology, for his mode of argument which smacks of compromise with and desertion to idealism. Either a materialism consistent to the end, or the falsehood and confusion of idealism—that is the alternative presented by every paragraph in Anti-Dühring; only people whose minds have been corrupted by the reactionary official philosophers can fail to notice it. And until 1894, when the last preface had been written for the last time to the revised and completed edition of Anti-Dühring, Engels, who had been constantly following up recent philosophy and the recent developments in science, continued with his old determination to insist on his lucid and firm position, clearing away the litter of latter-day puppet systems.

That Engels followed the developments of recent philosophy, can be seen from his Feuerbach. In the preface of 1888, there is mentioned even the occurrence of the renaissance of classic German philosophy in England and Scandinavia. As far as the dominating tendencies of Neo-Kantianism and Humism, in Engels’ own writings, there is nothing but utter contempt for them (both in the preface and in the text of the book). It is quite obvious that Engels, in noticing the repetition by the fashionable German and English philosophers of the old pre-Hegelian errors of Kantianism and Humism, expected a certain amount of good (in England and Scandinavia) even from the change to Hegel. He expected that the great idealist and dialectician would help philosophers to discover petty idealist and metaphysical confusions.

Without going into an examination of the great number of nuances of Neo-Kantianism in Germany and of Humism in England, Engels at the very start refutes their fundamental digression from materialism. He declares the entire tendency of these schools as “scientifically a step backward.” And how does he characterise the indubitably “positivistic” (from the viewpoint of the current terminology) and indubitably “realistic” tendencies of those Neo-Kantians and Humeans, amongst whom, for instance, it was impossible not to recognise Huxley? That “positivism” and that “realism,” which has been attracting the attention of the multitude of muddleheads, Engels declared, to put it mildly, to be at best a Philistine method to smuggle in the same materialism which they continued to denounce and renounce publicly! It suffices to meditate a little upon such an attitude toward Huxley, the outstanding naturalist, and the incomparably more realistic realist and positivistic positivist than Mach, Avenarius, et al., in order to conceive with what contempt Engels would have greeted the modern fad of “recent positivism” or “recent realism,” etc., by a group of alleged Marxians.

From the beginning to the end Marx and Engels were “partial” in philosophy; in each and every “new” tendency they were able to discover deviations from materialism and an unwarranted indulgence in idealism and fideism. Therefore, Huxley was estimated by them exclusively from the point of view of materialistic consistency. Therefore they took Feuerbach to task for his failure to pursue materialism to the end, for his renunciations of materialism because of the errors of individual materialists, for his struggle against religion in order to renew or construct a new religion, for his failure to rid himself of idealist phraseology while proclaiming himself a materialist. And whatever his individual mistakes may have been in his exposition of dialectical materialism, Dietzgen esteemed and adopted this greatest and most precious tradition from his teachers. Dietzgen committed many a sin in his clumsy deviations from materialism, but he never attempted to mark himself off from the principle, never attempted to raise a “new” standard. In the decisive moment he always declared firmly and categorically: “I am a materialist, our philosophy is materialistic.” “Of all parties,” justly said our Dietzgen, “the party of the ‘middle-roaders’ is most wretched.” “Just as in politics,” says Dietzgen, “we see the nation dividing itself into two camps . . . so in science it divides into two general divisions—metaphysicians here and physicists or materialists there. . . . The intermediating movements and conciliating quacks with their different appellations—spiritualists, sensualists, realists, etc., etc.—are carried away by the current. We are steering full steam ahead to a definite and clear outline of things. Pure idealists are those who sound the retreat, and dialectic materialists must be the appellation of all those who strive for the liberation of the human mind from all metaphysical magic. In comparing the two parties to solid and liquid matter we find pulpiness as the intermediary stage.”

This is true. The “realists,” etc., including the “positivists,” the Machians, etc., are all wretchedly pulpy, a contemptible party of middle-roaders in philosophy, in every question confusing the materialist and idealist point of view. The attempt to escape these two basic tendencies in philosophy is nothing but a “conciliatory quackery.”

That the “scientific clericalism” of idealistic philosophy is merely the threshold to a more outspoken clericalism; of this Dietzgen had no doubt at all. “It is necessary to bear this in mind, inasmuch as a scientific priesthood has arisen which is aiding and abetting religious priestcraft [p. 128]. To destroy palpable superstition would be an easy matter if dualist confusion were not on the lookout for the gaps of science in order to lay there its eggs. Such gaps are to be found especially in the field of epistemology.”

“The graduated flunkeys use their sham idealism to keep the people in ignorance [p. 130, that is how Dietzgen looks upon professors of philosophy]. As Lord God found his antipodes in the devil so has the pious professor found his antagonist in the materialist [p. 130]. . . . The epistemology of materialism is the universal weapon against religious belief [p. 132]. And not only is socialism opposed by the formal, the common religion of priestcraft, but also by the most purified and sublime professional religion of hazy idealists” (p. 135).

Rather than the “half-hearted” course of the free-thinking professors, Dietzgen was ready to prefer “religious integrity” (p. 137), for there at least is a system, there at least people are sincere, for they do not separate theory from practice. For the professors, “philosophy is not a science, but a safeguard against social-democracy” (p. 186). “All those who call themselves philosophers, professors, university lecturers, have, despite their pretensions to free-thought, not yet freed themselves from superstition and mysticism. . . . They must be regarded from the social-democratic point of view, as a compact mass of uneducated reactionaries [p. 188]. . . . Now, in order to be able to follow the right way without being misled by any religious or philosophical maze, it is necessary to study the most mistaken of all mistaken ways, namely, Philosophy” (p. 183). Let us now look, from the point of view of “parties” in philosophy, at Mach, Avenarius and their school. Oh, these gentlemen brag about their impartiality, and if they have an antipode, then it is one and only one—the materialist. Through all the writings of all the Machians runs the stupid pretence to “rise above” materialism and idealism, to transcend this “obsolete” distinction, while in fact all these gentlemen continuously deviate toward idealism, and lead an incessant struggle against materialism. The cunning epistemological distinctions of an Avenarius are no more than professorial fictions, no more than an attempt to form a small philosophical sect of “his own”; in fact in the general environment of the struggle of ideas and tendencies in modern society, the objective rôle of these epistemological contrivances is one and the same—to clear the road to idealism and fideism, to be of service to them. It is indeed not a mere accident that the English spiritualists, such as Ward, and the French neo-criticists, who praise Mach for his attack on materialism, and the German followers of the immanentist school, all acclaim the petty school of empirio-criticists. Dietzgen’s expression “the graduated flunkeys of theism” best befits Mach, Avenarius and their school.

The misfortune of the Russian Machians, who wished to “reconcile” Machism with Marxism, arose from the fact that having put their confidence in the reactionary professors of philosophy, they consequently sank lower and lower. The methods which were employed in attempting to develop and modify Marx were not very ingenious. Now it is Ostwald who is read through, who is taken at his word, his doctrines repeated, and called Marxism. Now it is Mach who is read through, who is taken at his word, his doctrines repeated, and, in its turn called Marxism; and the same is true for Poincaré. Not a single professor among those who are able to make the most valuable contributions to the special domains of chemistry, history, physics, can be trusted even so far as a single word when it comes to philosophy. What is the reason for this? It is the same as that which explains why not one professor of political economy, who is able to make the most valuable contributions to the domain of factual, special investigations, can be trusted even so far as a single word, when it comes to the general theory of political economy. For political economy in modern society is just as partial a science as is epistemology. Taken as a whole, the professors of economics are nothing but scientific salesmen of the capitalist class, and the professors of philosophy are scientific salesmen of theology.

The task of the Marxians here and there is to be in a position to grasp and elaborate those conquests which are made by these “salesmen” (for instance, you will not be able to make even a single step in your studies of new economic phenomena, without having recourse to the works of these salesmen), and then to eliminate their reactionary tendency, to pursue the Marxian tendency and to combat the entire tendency of forces and classes hostile to us. And it is because of the absence of this critical activity that our Machians have been impotent, slavishly following the footsteps of the reactionary official philosophers. “Perhaps we stray, but we are seekers,” wrote Lunacharsky in the name of the authors of the Outlines, etc. The trouble is that it is not you who are searching but it is you who are being searched. It is not you who approach with your Marxian (for you desire to be Marxists) viewpoint to each change in the bourgeois-philosophical fashion, but it is this fashion which approaches you; it imposes upon you new adulterations with an idealistic tinge, to-day a la Ostwald, to-morrow a la Mach, the day after a la Poincaré. These foolish “theoretical” contrivances (with “energetics,” “elements,” “introjections,” etc.) in which you naively believe, remain within the boundaries of a narrow little school. As for the ideological and the social tendency of these contrivances, however, they are immediately seized upon by the Wards, by the neo-criticists, by the immanentists, by the Lopatins and the pragmatists, for their own purposes. The fad of empirio-criticism and “idealistic physics” is passing as rapidly as the fad of Neo-Kantianism and “physiological” idealism; and fideism takes its toll from each fad, manipulating these contrivances in the interests of idealism in a thousand ways.

The relation of religion and natural science illustrates very well the actual class utilisation of empirio-criticism on the part of the bourgeoisie.

Take the first question. Do you suppose that it is a mere accident, if, in the collective work against the philosophy of Marxism, Lunacharsky went so far as to speak of the “deification of the highest human potentialities” and “religious atheism”, etc. If it is thought to be accidental it is only because the Russian Machians did not correctly inform the public of the whole Machian movement in Europe and of the relation of this movement to religion. Not only is there lacking in this respect anything resembling the attitude of Marx, Engels, Dietzgen and even of Feuerbach, but the reverse is the case. Beginning with Petzoldt’s declaration that “empirio-criticism contradicts neither theism nor atheism,” we have Mach’s declaration that “religious opinion is a private affair”; the explicit fideism or the explicit reactionary views of Cornelius, who praises Mach and whom Mach praises in turn, and finally Carus and all the immanentists. The neutrality of a philosopher in this question is already a mark of servility to fideism, and Mach and Avenarius cannot and do not rise above neutrality because of the starting points of their epistemology.

If you deny that objective reality is given to us through sensation, you have already surrendered your weapons to fideism, for you have embraced agnosticism or subjectivism; it is exactly this that fideism desires. If the perceived world is the only objective reality, then the door is closed on any other “reality” or quasi-reality (remember how Bazarov believed in the “realism” of the immanentists, who declared God to be a “real concept”). If the world is matter in motion it can and must be infinitely studied in its infinitely complicated and detailed manifestations and ramifications of this motion, of the motion of this matter; but beyond it, beyond the “physical,” beyond the external world, with which everyone is familiar, there can be nothing. Hostility toward materialism is the order of the day in civilised and democratic Europe. All this has been continued until the present. All this has been concealed from the public by the Russian Machians who have not even once attempted to compare the attacks on materialism by Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and the others, with the declarations in favour of materialism by Feuerbach, Marx, Engels and Dietzgen.

But this “concealment” of the illicit relation to fideism borne by Mach and Avenarius will not help matters. The facts speak for themselves. No efforts in the world will break these reactionary professors away from the pillory down to which the kisses of Ward, the neo-criticists, Schuppe, Schubert-Soldern, Leclair, the pragmatists and others have nailed them. The influence of these persons as philosophers and professors, the popularity of their ideas in the “cultured,” that is bourgeois, public, the special literature, created by them is ten times wider and richer than the special little school of Mach and Avenarius. The little school serves those who need it, and it is exploited in full measure.

The shameful things to which Lunacharsky has succumbed are not accidental but are the natural outcome of empirio-criticism, both Russian and German. They cannot be defended by the “good intentions” of the author, by a “special meaning” of his words; for if they had an explicit and ordinary, that is, a directly fideistic sense, we should not even talk to the author, for there cannot be a single Marxist who would not regard such a declaration as revealing an affinity between Anatole Lunacharsky and Peter Struve. If this meaning does not yet exist (and it does not yet exist), it is exclusively because we see the possibility of that “special” meaning and fight while there is still ground for a comradely fight. What is disgraceful in Lunacharsky’s declarations is that he could connect them with his “good” intentions. The evil of his “theory” is that it permits such means and such conclusions in the realisation of good intentions. The trouble is that “good” intentions remain, under the best of circumstances, only the subjective affair of Tom, Dick and Harry, while the social significance of similar statements is beyond dispute, and no explanation and special reservation can help to weaken them.

One must be blind not to see the ideological affinity between the “deification of higher human potentialities” of Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov’s “universal substitution” of the psychical for the physical. They are one and the same doctrine, expressed in one case from the point of view of æsthetics, and in the other, from the point of view of epistemology. The doctrine of “substitution” which approaches the other views by implication, already deifies the “higher potentialities,” by separating the “psychical” from man and substituting for the whole of physical nature the immensely enlarged, abstract, deadly-divine “psychical in general.” And what of the “Logos” of Yushkevich, which is introduced from above into the “irrational stream of experience?”

Enmesh a single claw, and the bird is lost. Our Machians have become enmeshed in idealism, in a diluted and subtle fideism. They became entangled from the moment they took “sensation” not as an image of the external world but as a special “element.” A sensation in general, which belongs to no one, psychology in general, spirit in general, volition in general—to relapse into pitfalls like these is inevitable for those who do not recognise the materialist theory that the human mind reflects the objectively real outer world.

Let us examine the relation of Machism as a philosophic movement to the natural sciences. The whole of Machism, from beginning to end, combats the “metaphysics” of the natural sciences, designating by that name naturo-historical materialism, that is, the instinctive, unconscious, and uncrystallised philosophic convictions of the preponderant majority of scientists as to the existence and objective reality of the external world which is reflected by our mind. Our Machians shamefully pass by this fact in silence, obscuring or confusing the inseparable connection between the instinctive materialism of naturalists and philosophical materialism as a tendency, a connection which has been known long since and confirmed by Marx and Engels hundreds of times.

Take Avenarius. In his first work, Philosophie als Denken der Welt, etc., published in 1876, he combated the metaphysics of the natural sciences (§§ 79, 114 ff), that is naturo-historical materialism, and as he himself recognised in 1891 (without having “corrected” his views, however), he had opposed it from the standpoint of theoretico-cognitive idealism.

Take Mach. From 1872, or even earlier, until 1906, he had invariably waged battle against the metaphysics of natural sciences. He was conscientious enough to admit that an entire “host of philosophers,” adherents of the philosophy of “immanence,” together with certain “isolated scientists as well” are in accord with him. In 1906 Mach also honestly admitted that the “majority of scientists adhere to materialism.”

Take Petzoldt. In 1900 he proclaimed that the “natural sciences are thoroughly imbued with metaphysics.” “Their notion of experience must still be purified.” We know that Avenarius and Petzoldt “purify” experience from every trace of recognition of the objective reality given in sensation. In 1904 Petzoldt declared that “the mechanical conception of the modern scientist is essentially no better than the conception of the ancient Indians. It is immaterial whether the world rests on the fabulous elephant or on molecules and atoms, so long as we assume either of them to be real in an epistemological sense, and not merely metaphorically” (Vol. II, p. 176).

Take Willy, the only one amongst the Machians decent enough to be ashamed of his kinship with the immanentists. In 1905 he declared: “The natural sciences, after all, are so presented in many respects, that we must regard them as authorities from which we must rid ourselves.”

But this is thoroughgoing obscurantism and confounded reaction. To maintain that the belief that atoms, molecules, and electrons are approximately true reflections of real objective movement of matter, is equivalent to the belief in an elephant upon which the world rests! It was to be expected that this obscurantist, dressed in the clownish garb of a fashionable positivism, would be gladly hailed by the followers of the immanentist school. There is not one adherent of that school who would not furiously attack the “metaphysics” of the natural sciences, and the “materialism” of the scientists precisely because of the recognition of the objective reality of matter—the objective reality of time, space, the uniformity of nature, etc., etc. Long before the new discoveries in physics which gave rise to “idealistic physics,” Leclair, leaning upon Mach, combated the “prevalent materialism which was the characteristic feature of modern natural science”; Schubert-Soldern fought against the “metaphysics of natural sciences”; Rehmke battled with naturo-historical “materialism,” the “metaphysics of the man-in-the-street, etc., etc.”

The followers of the immanentist school quite legitimately derived from the Machian notion of the “metaphysical character” of naturo-historical materialism, their direct and outspoken fideist conclusions. If scientific theory does not describe objective reality but consists only of metaphors, symbols, forms of human experience, etc., then it is beyond dispute that humanity with no less right can create for itself in another domain a “conception no less real than that” of God.

The philosophy of Mach, the scientist, is to science, what the kiss of Judas is to Christ. Mach betrays science into the hands of fideism by ultimately deserting to the camp of idealism. Mach’s renunciation of naturo-historical materialism is in every respect a reactionary phenomenon; we saw this quite clearly in discussing the struggle of the “idealist physicists” against the majority of naturalists who adhere to the viewpoint of the old philosophy. We shall see this still more clearly by comparing the famous naturalist Ernst Haeckel with the famous philosopher (among the reactionary Philistines)—Ernst Mach.

The storm which The Riddle of the Universe caused in all civilised countries showed quite clearly the partisan character of philosophy in modern society on the one side, and the present social significance of the struggle of materialism against idealism and agnosticism, on the other. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book were printed. It was immediately translated into all languages and appeared in special popular editions. All this showed quite clearly that it had found its way to the masses, that there were masses of readers whom Haeckel had at once won over to his side. The popular little book became a weapon in the class struggle. The professors of philosophy and theology of all countries of the world began to denounce and “annihilate” Haeckel. Lodge, the eminent English physicist, took it upon himself to defend God against Haeckel. Chwolson, the Russian physicist, made a special trip to Germany in order to publish an obscurantist booklet against Haeckel and to assure the respectable Philistines that not all scientists are adherents of naive realism. Countless theologians waged war on Haeckel. There was no abuse which was not showered upon him by the official professors of philosophy. It was a joy to see how the eyes of those mummies, arid with the dry dust of a dead scholasticism, began to gleam, and their cheeks became ruddy, perhaps for the first time in their lives, from the spiritual slaps which Haeckel gave them. The priests of pure science and devotees of even the most abstract theories, began to howl with fury, and in all this howling of philosophical cranks (among whom were the idealist, Paulsen, the immanentist, Rehmke, the Kantian, Adickes, and others whose names God only knows) one basic motive was loudly heard: Against the “metaphysics” of science; against “dogmatism”; against the “exaggeration of the validity and significance of science”; against “naturo-historical materialism.” He is a materialist; down with him, the materialist! He deceives the public in not calling himself a materialist! The fact that he did not call himself a materialist raised a special storm of fury in the breasts of the respectable professors. And quite characteristic of the whole tragi-comedy was the fact that Haeckel himself renounced materialism, and rejected the name. And what is more, far from rejecting religion as a whole, he invented his own brand in the manner of Bulgakov’s “atheistic faith” and Lunacharsky’s “religious atheism,” and defended the union of religion with science in principle. What had happened here? What “fatal misunderstanding” had caused this great stir?

The answer is that the philosophical naiveté of Haeckel, his lack of definite partisan motives, his desire to take cognizance of the prevailing Philistine prejudice against materialism, and his personal conciliatory tone and statements on religion, all this helped make the general spirit of his book still more prominent, and showed the impossibility of uprooting naturo-historical materialism, and its ultimate irreconcilability with the whole official philosophy and theology. Personally Haeckel did not wish to sever relations with the philistines, but the views he expounded with such an unshakable naive conviction, could in no way be reconciled with any shade of the prevailing idealism. All these shades of idealism from the crude reactionary doctrines of a von Hartmann, to those of Petzoldt, who deems himself the most progressive and outstanding of the positivists and those of the empirio-criticist, Mach—all of them agree that naturo-historical materialism is “metaphysics,” that the recognition of objective reality, in accordance with the theories and conclusions of science, is the most “naive realism,” etc. And it is both cheeks of the “sacred” teachings of the whole official philosophy and theology that each page of Haeckel slaps. This scientist, who expresses the firmest (albeit uncrystallised) opinions, moods and tendencies of the preponderant majority of naturalists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, at one stroke, easily and simply revealed what the official philosophy tried to conceal. He showed that there is a base which becomes wider and firmer and beneath whose weight all efforts of the thousand and one little schools of idealism, positivism, realism, empirio-criticism and other confusionism are smashed. This base is naturo-historical materialism. The conviction of the “naive realists’ (rather of all of humanity) that our sensations are images of the objectively real external world, is a conviction growing more and more established among the mass of scientists.

Lost is the cause of the founders of new philosophic puppet schools, and of new epistemological “isms”; lost forever and beyond hope of recovery. They may flounder with their “original” puppet systems; they may try to engage the attention of a few admirers by an interesting controversy as to who was the first to exclaim, “Eh,”—the empirio-critical Bobchinsky or the empirio-monistic Dobchinsky. They may even create an extensive “specialised” literature in the manner of the followers of the “immanentist school.” But the evolutionary advance of science, regardless of vacillations and hesitations, regardless of the unconscious nature of the scientists’ materialism, notwithstanding yesterday’s fad of “physiological idealism” or to-day’s fad of “physical idealism,” completely brushes aside all puppet systems and contrivances, and makes way again and again for the “metaphysics” of naturo-historical materialism.

As an instance of the above, here is an illustration from Haeckel’s Lebenswunder in which the author compares the monistic and dualistic theories of knowledge. We adduce the most interesting points of the comparison:

We see from this typical quotation that Haeckel does not enter into an analysis of strictly philosophical problems as such and cannot contrast the materialistic and idealistic theories of knowledge. He ridicules all idealistic philosophies, especially all contrivances of “special” schools from the point of view of science, without admitting the possibility of any other theory of knowledge besides that of naturo-historical materialism. He ridicules the philosophers from the standpoint of a materialist, without being aware that he himself holds the viewpoint of a materialist!

The impotent wrath of the philosophers against this powerful materialism can easily be explained. We have quoted the opinion of the “true Russian,” Lopatin. And here is the opinion of Mr. Rudolph Willy, the most progressive of the “empirio-criticists,” who is irreconcilably opposed to idealism (!). He refers to Haeckel’s views as “a chaotic jumble of certain naturo-historical laws, as for example, the law of conservation of energy, together with a series of scholastic traditions concerning the substance and the thing-in-itself. . . .”

What disturbed this most respectable “modern positivist”? Well, how could one help being disturbed when one appreciates that all the great doctrines of Avenarius (Willy’s teacher)—that the brain is not an organ of thought, that sensations are not images of the external world, that matter (“substance”) or “the thing-in-itself” is not an objective reality, etc.—are, from Haeckel’s standpoint, nothing but idealist babble? Haeckel did not say it in these words because he did not engage in strict philosophy, and made no study of “empirio-criticism” as such. But Willy could not help realising that a hundred thousand readers of Haeckel meant a hundred thousand expectorations into the face of Mach’s and Avenarius’ philosophy. Willy wipes his face beforehand in the manner of Lopatin, since essentially the proof which Lopatin and Willy present against every kind of materialism in general, and naturo-historical materialism in particular, is exactly the same. In the eyes of Marxists, the difference between Lopatin and Willy, Petzoldt, Mach, et al., is no greater than the difference between the Protestant and Catholic theologians.

The “war” against Haeckel proved that our interpretation of the entire movement corresponds to objective reality, that is, it reflects the class nature of modern society and the class character of its ideological tendencies.

Here is another little example. Kleinpeter, the Machian, translated from English into German, a work by Karl Snyder quite well known in America, entitled Das Weltbild der Modernen Naturwissenschaft (Leipzig, 1905). This work clearly and popularly expounds a whole series of recent discoveries in physics and other branches of science. But it happened that the Machian, Kleinpeter, supplemented the book with a preface in which he remarked that Snyder’s epistemology was not “satisfactory” (p. v). Why so? Merely because Snyder has no doubt that the world picture is a picture of how matter moves and of how “matter thinks” (p. 228). In The World Machine (London, 1907), Snyder says the following (in an implied dedication to the memory of Democritus of Abdera, who lived about 460-360 B. c.): “Democritus has often been styled the grandsire of materialism. It is a school of philosophy that is a little out of fashion nowadays; yet it is worthy of note that practically all of the modern advance in our ideas of this world has been grounded upon his conceptions. Practically speaking, materialistic assumptions are simply unescapable in physical investigations [p. 140].

“,.. If he likes, he may dream with good Bishop Berkeley that it is all a dream. Yet comforting as may be the legerdemain of an idealised idealism, there are still few among us who, whatever they may think regarding the problem of the external world, doubt that they themselves exist; and it needs no long pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisps of the Ich and non-Ich to assure oneself that in an unguarded moment we assume that we ourselves have a personality and a being, we let in the whole procession of appearances which come of the six gates of the senses. The nebular hypothesis, the light-bearing ether, the atomic theory, and all their like, may be but convenient ‘working hypotheses,’ but it is well to remember that, in the absence of negative proof, they stand on more or less the same footing as the hypothesis that a being you call ‘you,’ Oh, Indulgent Reader, scans these lines” (pp. 31-32).

Imagine the bitter fate of a Machian when his favourite, complex and cunning constructions which reduce the categories of science to mere working hypotheses, are regarded by the naturalists on both sides of the ocean as a thoroughgoing absurdity! Is it to be wondered at that Rudolph Willy, in 1905, combats Democritus as if he were an enemy still alive, thus confirming the partisan nature of philosophy and giving himself away as concerns his real position in this partisan struggle? He writes: “Of course, Democritus does not understand that atoms and the void are only fictitious concepts serving merely as instrumental aids (blosse Handlangerdienste) and are accepted for reasons of expediency only so long as they can be made use of. Democritus was not sufficiently enlightened to understand it; but neither are our modern naturalists, with few exceptions, enlightened. The belief of Democritus is the belief of our scientists” (p. 57).

There is reason, indeed, for despair! The “empirio-criticists” proved in a “novel way” that space and time are “working hypotheses” and yet the naturalists deride this “Berkeleianism,” and follow Haeckel. We are not idealists at all, the empirio-criticists cry; this is calumny; we are only endeavouring (together with the idealists) to refute the epistemological tendency of Democritus; we have been trying to do it for more than 2,000 years, but all in vain! There remains nothing else for our leader Ernst Mach to do than to dedicate his last work, the result of his life and his philosophy—Erkenntnis und Irrtum—to Wilhelm Schuppe and to remark whiningly in the text that the majority of scientists are materialists and that “we also” sympathise with Haeckel . . . and his “free-thought” (p. 14).

Here he completely revealed himself as an ideologist of reactionary philistinism who follows the obscurantist Schuppe and yet still “sympathises” with the freethinking Haeckel. Such are all the humanitarian Philistines in Europe with their freethinking sympathies and their ideological slavery (both political and economic) to the Schuppes. Non-partisanship in philosophy is only a contemptible cloak of servility to idealism and fideism.

Compare, in conclusion, Franz Mehring’s opinion of Haeckel. Mehring not only wanted to be but actually was a Marxist. When The Riddle of the Universe appeared, towards the end of 1899, Mehring immediately showed that the “work by Haeckel, with its weak and strong points, is very valuable in order to clarify certain confused views in our party as to what historical materialism is, on the one hand, and what historical materialism is, on the other.” The trouble with Haeckel is that he had no conception at all of what historical materialism is, thus giving rise to a great deal of confusion as regards both politics and “monistic” religion, etc., etc. “Haeckel is a materialist and a monist, not an historical but a naturo-historical materialist” (ibid.).

“Let Haeckel’s book be read by those who wish to convince themselves of the inability of naturo-historical materialism to tackle social problems, who wish to get an idea of the extent to which it is necessary to expand and modify naturo-historical materialism before it can develop into historical materialism, before it can serve as a really invincible weapon in the great struggle for the liberation of mankind.

“But not only is it advisable to read Haeckel’s book for this purpose. His exceptionally weak side is inseparably connected with his exceptionally strong side, i. e., with his direct and luminous exposition (constituting the major part of his book both in scope and significance) of the development of the natural sciences in the nineteenth century, or, in other words, with his exposition of the triumphant march of naturo-historical materialism (ibid., p. 419).