IMG46

Ernst Mach

nov's independent coursc took place in the spring of 1908, that is, a few months after Lenin had begun collccting materiał for a book against “Machiśm.’^M5

In mid-March Lenin again put ofT his trip to Capri: "There is no inoncy, no timc, and I cannot lcavc the [party] paper.” . . . The philosophers, notably Bogdanov, Bazarov, and Lunacharsky, were living with or ncar Gorky on Capri. In April Bnally Lenin went to Capri—u lunę. . . . Oncc Lenin said: ^,4Explain in two or thrcc phrases what your ‘position’ gives to the working dass and why Machism is morę rcvoIutionary than Mancism." Bogdanov began, but before he got far Lenin interrupted: “Drop it.” ⁴⁶

In Capri, Gorky reports, Lenin, confronting A. A. Bogdanov, said, "If you writc a novcl on the subject of how the sharks of capitalism robbed the workers of the carth and wasted the oil, iron, lumber, and coal—that would he a useful book, Signor Machist." ⁴⁷

By 1908 Bogdanov had altercd his philosophy once again, this timc spccifically to slip the charge of “Machism,” so he saw no rcason to confcss doctrinal error, but Lenin had no intention of letting his prcy go. The war was now on in carnest. From Lenins point of vic\v the issuc was simplc. The Bolshevik fraction had to dccidc: Mancism or Machism ? There was no tliird alternative, and Bogdanov represented “Machism" whether he likcd the designation or not.

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Lenin carried out research in Gcneva, Zurich, and London and com-plctcd his philosophy book, Materiahsrn and Emfnriu-Crilicistn, in September 1908. It was published in May 1909. (Lenin used the terms

Machism and Empirio-C.riticism ’ interchangcablw The for mer he normally preferred for polemical and the lattcr for morę formal oc-casions.) ⁴⁸

Lenin acceptcd what he belicvcd were the truć philosophical opinions of Marx and Engels. Ali rcality was materiał but movcd and changed according to ctcrnally valid laws. Most of these laws camc from science but somc of them were sclcctcd from the philosopher Hegel. The most important Hegelian carry ovcr was the notion that all rcality containcd “intcrnal contradictions” which were rcsolvcd through a "dialcctical proccss" in bisiory. Evcrything in naturc was determined, and there was an incvitablc coursc in history.

Lenin supported a "copy" theory of cpistcmology which must be

Politics. Runu, and Vhdmur l^tnin

clcarly undcrstood to comprehcnd why hc so strongly opposcd "Mach-ism." According to the Communist leader, physical objeets had both the primary and secondary characteristics that phenomenalism and naive realism agreed they had, but instead of bcing dirccdy presented to consciousness thosc objeets, whilc exactly copying expcricnceab!c characteristics, cxisted entirely outside all possiblc expericnce, and were mcrcly represented by conscious expcricncc. Galilcan or common sense realism agreed with the "copy" theory on its representationalist approach to "cxtcrnar physical rcality, but denied Lenins clarm that both primary and secondary qualilies cxistcd in physical objeets. Grnnr-ing physical status to secondary qualitics meant diat mcchanical ex-planation would not sullicc to understand the bchavior of physical rcality. Marxists answered this objcction by appealing to “dialcctical" interpretation. The common sense rebuttal would be that the Marxi$t stand on secondary qualities has simply crcated unneccssary problcms.

Many peoplc have considcred Marxist cpistemology to be a form of “naive realism,' but this is not correct. Naivc realism is presentationalist whilc "dialectical matcrialism" is representationalist. The confusion arises from the fact that most people, including Marxists, do not fully grasp the distinction bctwccn the two fundamental forms of epistemol-ogy. Nor docs the problem end there. One must also distinguish be* tween presentationalist matcrialism and representationalist materiahsrn, bctwccn matter monism and mind-mattet dualism, and in Marxist tcrminology bctwccn dialectical matcrialism and mcchanistic or “meta-physical" matcrialism.

Lenin was not a profound philosopher, but he did comc to understand the basie differcncc ht-tween presentationalist and represencation alist philosophy, and that "Machism" supported the former and “Marx-ism" the latter. Many "Marxists," who failed to understand the differcncc, supported presentationalist matcrialism, which was only ver-bally different from Mach’s point of vicw. Lenin’s tusk was to point out that genuine “dialectical matcrialism" was representationalist and that all Machists and prcsentational materialists were merely ‘idcalists" in the cightcenth-century sense, wherc "idcas" indudcd both sensations and thoughts. Unfortunately, Lenin could not rely merely on "reason’' to persuade his opponents. Iwen today there are many “professional philosophcrs" who still seem unablc to understand the fundamental naturę of the distinuion bctwccn presentationalism and representa tionalism, hcncc, hc could hardly expect less philosophicalb sophisti