Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
Author’s Preface to the Second Edition
Section summary
In the 1920 preface Lenin says the text is essentially unchanged and hopes it will help readers study Marxist philosophy and the philosophical lessons of recent natural science. He appends V. I. Nevsky’s article on Bogdanov, whose “proletarian culture” he calls a cover for bourgeois and reactionary views.
The present edition, with the exception of some corrections, does not differ from the previous one. I hope that it will prove useful, notwithstanding the polemics against the Russian “Machians,” as an aid to the study of Marxian philosophy and dialectic materialism as well as to the understanding of the philosophic conclusions of the latest discoveries in natural science. As for Bogdanov’s latest works, which I have had no opportunity to examine, the appended article by V. I. Nevsky gives the necessary information. Comrade Nevsky, working, not only as a propagandist, but as a worker in a party school, had ample opportunity to convince himself that under the guise of “proletarian culture” Bogdanov is introducing bourgeois and reactionary views.