Author’s Preface to the First Edition

A host of writers, who desire to be Marxists, have launched a veritable onslaught against the philosophy of Marxism. In less than half a year four books, devoted chiefly and almost exclusively to attacks on dialectic materialism, have made their appearance. To those belong first and foremost Outlines of (it would have been more proper to say “against”) Marxian Philosophy, St. Petersburg, 1908 (in Russian), a collective work by Bazarov, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Berman, Helfond, Yushkevich and Suvorov; Yushkevich’s book, Materialism and Critical Realism (in Russian); Berman’s Dialectics from the Standpoint of the Modern Theory of Knowledge (in Russian); Valentinov’s The Philosophical Foundation of Marxism (in Russian). It is hardly possible that all these people should be innocent of the fact that scores of times Marx and Engels termed their philosophy dialectic materialism. Yet all these people, who, despite the sharp differences between their political views, are united in their common hostility toward dialectic materialism, pretend that they are Marxists in philosophy! Engels’ dialectics is “mysticism,” says Berman. Engels’ views became “antiquated,” remarks Bazarov in passing as if it were a self-evident fact. Materialism is proved to have been refuted by our brave warriors who proudly cite in support the “modern theory of knowledge,” the “most recent philosophy” (or “most recent positivism”), the “philosophy of modern natural science” or even the “philosophy of natural science of the twentieth century.” Leaning upon all these supposedly most recent doctrines, our annihilators of dialectic materialism go so far as to speak openly in favour of fideism (in the case of Lunacharsky it is most outspoken, but in this he does not stand alone by any means!). Yet they lose all courage and esteem for their own convictions when it comes to an explicit statement regarding their relations toward Marx and Engels. In fact—we have a total renunciation of dialectic materialism, of Marxism; in words—we have infinite evasions, attempts to beat about the bush, to shield their retreat, to make some materialist their target instead of the philosophy of materialism, a determined refusal to analyse directly the numerous materialist declarations of Marx and Engels. This is really “mutiny on one’s knees” as it was justly characterised by one Marxist. This is typical philosophic revisionism, for only the revisionists gained notoriety by their deviations from the fundamental views of Marxism, and by their fear or inability to “settle accounts” with those abandoned views explicitly, determinedly and clearly. On the other hand, when orthodox Marxists took issue with some antiquated views of Marx (for instance, Mehring on some historical questions), it was done with such preciseness and thoroughness that no one ever found any ambiguities in it.

As for the rest, there is in the Outlines (op. cit.) one phrase (Lunacharsky’s) resembling the truth: “Perhaps we [that is obviously all the collaborators of the Outlines] stray, but we are seekers” (p. 161). That the first half of this sentence contains an absolute, and the second, a relative truth, I shall endeavour to show in detail in the present book. At the moment I shall only note that if our philosophers would not have spoken in the name of Marxism, but in the name of a few “seeking” Marxists, they would have manifested more esteem toward themselves and toward Marxism.

As far as I am concerned, I, too, am a “seeker” in philosophy. The task which I have set for myself in this book is simply to find out what is the trouble with those who under the guise of Marxism are offering something baffling, confusing and reactionary. September, 1908.