Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
Conclusion
Section summary
Lenin sums up the book under four heads: empirio-criticism repeats old idealist errors; it moved from Kant back to Hume and Berkeley and allied with the immanentists; it is tied to a passing “idealistic physics”; and behind it lies a partisan struggle in which non-partisanship serves fideism.
First and foremost, it is necessary to compare the theoretical foundations of this philosophy with those of dialectical materialism. Such a comparison, to which the first three chapters were devoted shows that along the whole line of epistemology there is a thoroughgoing reactionary tendency which covers up the old errors of idealism and agnosticism with a new brand of trickery and new stock of phrases and sophistical contrivances. Only a total ignorance of what materialism in general is, and of the meaning of the dialectical method of Marx and Engels, can account for any one’s speaking of the “fusion” of empirio-criticism and Marxism.
Secondly, it is essential to determine the status of empirio-criticism, a very small school of professional philosophers, towards the other modern philosophic schools. Having started with Kant, both Mach and Avenarius proceeded not towards materialism but back again in the opposite direction towards Hume and Berkeley. Thinking that he had “purified experience” in general, Avenarius in fact had only purified agnosticism of Kantianism. The whole school of Mach and Avenarius tends more and more definitely toward idealism in close union with one of the most reactionary of idealistic schools,—the philosophy of immanence.
Thirdly, we must take into consideration the indubitable connection between Machism and a certain school of thought which has developed in one field of recent science. On the side of materialism there is the large majority of scientists in general, as well as in that special field, namely, of physics. The minority of modern physicists, however, under the influence of the crisis in the old theories (due to the great discoveries of recent years) and under the influence of the crisis in the new physics (which clearly revealed the relativity of our knowledge) because of their ignorance of dialectics fell from relativism into idealism. Idealistic physics, which is in vogue now, is just as reactionary and transitory as the fashionable idealistic physiology of the recent past.
Fourthly, beyond the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism it is impossible not to discern clearly the partisan struggle in philosophy, a struggle which ultimately expresses the tendencies and ideology of classes hostile to one another in modern society. Recent philosophy is as partisan as it was two thousand years ago. The contending parties are in the main materialism and idealism, although their nature may be concealed under a pseudo-erudite phraseological charlatanry or beneath the guise of a stupid non-partisanship. Idealism is merely a cunning and refined form of fideism which, being fully armoured, has great organisations under its control and invariably continues to influence the masses, taking advantage of the least vacillation in philosophical thought. The objective, class rôle of empirio-criticism can be wholly reduced to its servility to the fideists in their struggle against materialism in general and against historical materialism in particular.