Chapter 6 : Lenin (3)
 Materialism Our direct concern here is not with Mach but with Lenin. Mach occupies considerable space here because Lenin's criticism of Mach discloses his own philosophical views. From the side of Marxism there is enough to criticise in Mach; but Lenin takes up the matter from the wrong end. As we have seen he appeals to the old forms of physical theory, diffused into popular opinion, so as to oppose them against the modern critique of their own foundations. We found, moreover, that he identifies the real objective world with physical matter, as middle class materialism did formerly. He tries to demonstrate it by the following arguments: "If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category designating the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them." (144) Fine; with the first sentence we all can agree. When then, however, we would restrict the character of reality to physical matter, we contradict the first given definition. Electricity too is objective reality; is it physical matter? Our sensations show us light; it is reality but not matter, and the concepts introduced by the physicists to explain its phenomena, first the world ether, then the photons, can not easily be denoted as a kind of matter. Is not energy quite as real as is physical matter? More directly than the material things, it is their energy that shows itself in all experience and produces our sensations, For that reason Ostwald, half a century ago, proclaimed energy the only real substance of the world; and he called this "the end of scientific materialism," And finally, what is given to us in our sensations, when fellow-men speak to us, is not only sound coming from lips and throat, not only energy of air vibrations, but besides, more essentially, their thoughts, their ideas. Man's ideas quite as certainly belong to objective reality as the tangible objects; things spiritual constitute the real world just as things called material in physics. If in our science, needed to direct our activity, we wish to render the entire world of experience, the concept of physical matter does not suffice; we need more and other concepts; energy, mind, consciousness. If according to the above definition matter is taken as the name for the philosophical concept denoting objective reality, it embraces far more than physical matter. Then we come to the view repeatedly expressed in former chapters, where the material world was spoken of as the name for the entire observed reality. This is the meaning of the word material, matter in Historical Materialism, the designation of all that is really existing in the world, "including mind and fancies," as Dietzgen said. It is not, therefore, that the modern theories of the structure of matter provoke criticism of his ideas, as Lenin indicates above on the same page, but the fact that he identifies physical matter at all with the real world. The meaning of the word matter in Historical Materialism, as pointed out here, is of course entirely foreign to Lenin; contrary to his first definition he will restrict it to physical matter. Hence his attack on Dietzgen's "confusion": "Thinking is a function of the brain, says Dietzgen. `My desk as a picture in my mind is identical with my idea of it But my desk outside of my brain is a separate object and distinct from my idea.' These perfectly clear materialistic propositions are, however, supplemented by Dietzgen thus: `Nevertheless, the non-sensible idea is also sensible, material, i.e., real....' This is obviously false. That both thought and matter are `real,' i.e., exist, is true. But to say that thought is material is to make a false step, a step towards confusing materialism and idealism. As a matter of fact this is only an inexact expression of Dietzgen." (290) Here Lenin repudiates his own definition of matter as the philosophical expression of objective reality. Or is perhaps objective reality something different from really existing? What he tries to express but cannot without "inexactness of expression" -- is this: that thought may really exist, but the true genuine reality is only found in physical matter. Middle-class materialism, identifying objective reality with physical matter, had to make every other reality, such as all things spiritual, an attribute or property of this matter. We cannot wonder, therefore, that we find with Lenin similar ideas. To Pearson's sentence: "It is illogical to assert that all matter has consciousness" he remarks: "It is illogical to assert that all matter is conscious but it is logical to assert that all matter possesses a property which is essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection." (98) And still more distinctly he avers against Mach: "As regards materialism, . . . we have already seen in the case of Diderot [3] what the real views of the materialists are. These views do not consist in deriving sensation from the movement of matter or in reducing sensation to the movement of matter, but in recognising sensation as one of the properties of matter in motion. On this question Engels shared the standpoint of Diderot." (40) Where Engels may have said so, is not indicated. We may doubt whether Lenin's conviction that Engels on this point agreed with him and Diderot, rests on precise statements. In his "Anti-Dühring" Engels expressed himself in another way: "Life is the form of existence of albuminous substances"; i.e. life is not a property of all matter but appears only in such complicated molecular structures as albumen. So it is not probable that he should have considered sensitiveness, which we know as a property of living matter only, a property of all matter, Such generalisations of properties observed only in special cases, to matter in general, belong to the undialectic middle-class frame of mind. The remark may be inserted here that Plechanov exhibits ideas analogous to Lenin's. In his "Grundprobleme des Marxismus" he criticises the botanist France on the subject of the "spirituality of matter," the "doctrine that matter in general and organic matter especially always has a certain sensitivity." Plechanov then expresses his own view in the words: "France considers this contradictory to materialism. In reality it is the transfer of Feuerbach's materialistic doctrine. We may assert with certainty that Marx and Engels would have given attention to this trend of thought with the greatest interest." This is a cautious assertion testifying that Marx and Engels in their writings never showed any interest in this trend of thought. France as a limited-minded naturalist knows only the antithesis of views in middle-class thinking; he assumes that materialists believe in matter only, hence the doctrine that in all matter there is something spiritual is, to him, no materialism at all. Plechanov, on the other hand, considers it a small modification of materialism that makes it more resistant. Lenin was quite well aware of the concordance of his views with middle-class materialism of the 19th century. For him "materialism" is the common basis of Marxism and middle-class materialism. After having expounded that Engels in his booklet on Feuerbach charged these materialists with three things -- that they remained with the materialist doctrine of the 18th century, that their materialism was mechanical, and that in the realm of social science, they held fast to idealism and did not understand Historical Materialism -- he proceeds: "Exclusively for these three things and exclusively within these limits, does Engels refute both the materialism of the eighteenth century and the doctrines of Buchner and Co.! On all other, more elementary, questions of materialism (questions distorted by the Machians) there is and can be no difference between Marx and Engels on the one hand and all these old materialists on the other," (286) That this is an illusion of Lenin's has been demonstrated in the preceding pages these three things carry along as their consequences an utter difference in the fundamental epistemological ideas. And in the same way, Lenin continues, Engels was in accordance with Dühring in his materialism: "For Engels . . . Dühring was not a sufficiently steadfast, clear and consistent materialist." (288) Compare this with the way Engels finished Dühring off in words of scornful contempt. Lenin's concordance with middle-class materialism and his ensuing discordance with Historical Materialism is manifest in many consequences. The former waged its main war against religion; and the chief reproach Lenin raises against Mach and his followers is that they sustain fideism. We met with it in several quotations already; in hundreds of places all through the book we find fideism as the opposite of materialism. Marx and Engels did not know of fideism; they drew the line between materialism and idealism. In the name fideism emphasis is laid upon religion. Lenin explains whence he took the word. "In France, those who put faith above reason are called fideists (from the Latin fides, faith)." (306) This oppositeness of religion to reason is a reminiscence from pre-marxian times, from the emancipation of the middle-class, appealing to "reason" in order to attack religious faith as the chief enemy in the social struggle; "free thinking" was opposed to "obscurantism." Lenin, in continually pointing to fideism as the consequence of the contested doctrines indicates that also to him in the world of ideas religion is the chief enemy. Thus he scolds Mach for saying that the problem of determinism cannot be settled empirically: in research, Mach says every scientist must be determinist but in practical affairs he remains indeterminist. "Is this not obscurantism . . . when determinism is confined to the field of `investigation,' while in the field of morality, social activity, and all fields other than `investigation' the question is left to a `subjective estimate.' (223) . . . "And so things have been amicably divided: theory for the professors, practice for the theologians ! " (224) Thus every subject is seen from the point of view of religion. Manifestly it was unknown to Lenin that the deeply religious Calvinism was a rigidly deterministic doctrine, whereas the materialist middle class of the 19th century put their faith into free will, hence proclaimed indeterminism. At this point a real Marxian thinker would not have missed the opportunity of explaining to the Russian Machists that it was Historical Materialism that opened the way for determinism in the field of society; we have shown above that the theoretical conviction that rules and laws hold in a realm -- this means determinism -- can find a foundation only when we succeed in establishing practically such laws and connections. Further, that Mach because he belonged to the middle class and was bound to its fundamental line of thought, by necessity was indeterminist in his social views; and that in this way his ideas were backward and incompatible with Marxism. But nothing of the sort is found in Lenin; that ideas are determined by class is not mentioned; the theoretical differences hang in the air. Of course theoretical ideas must be criticised by theoretical arguments. When, however, the social consequences are emphasised with such vehemence, the social origins of the contested ideas should not have been left out of consideration. This most essential character of Marxism does not seem to exist for Lenin. So we are not astonished that among former authors it is especially Ernst Haeckel who is esteemed and praised by Lenin. In a final chapter inscribed "Ernst Haeckel and Ernst Mach" he compares and opposes them. "Mach . . . betrays science into the hands of fideism by virtually deserting to the camp of philosophical idealism" (422). But "every page" in Haeckel's work "is a slap in the face of the `sacred' teachings of all official philosophy and theology." Haeckel "instantly, easily and simply revealed . . . that there is a foundation. This foundation is natural-scientific materialism." (423). In his praise it does not disturb him that the writings of Haeckel combine, as generally recognised, popular science with a most superficial philosophy -- Lenin himself speaks of his "philosophical naïvité" and says "that he does not enter into an investigation of philosophical fundamentals." What is essential to him is that Haeckel was a dauntless fighter against prominent religious doctrines. "The storm provoked by Ernst Haeckel's `The Riddle of the Universe in every civilised country strikingly brought out, on the one hand, the partisan character of philosophy in modern society and, on the other, the true social significance of the struggle of materialism against idealism and agnosticism. The fact that the book was sold in hundreds of thousands of copies, that it was immediately translated into all languages and that it appeared in special cheap editions, clearly demonstrates that the book `has found its way to the masses', that there are numbers of readers whom Ernst Haeckel at once won over to his side. This popular little book became a weapon in the class struggle. The professors of philosophy and theology in every country of the world set about denouncing and annihilating Haeckel in every possible way." (423) What class-fight was this? Which class was here represented by Haeckel against which other class? Lenin is silent on this point. Should his words be taken to imply that Haeckel, unwittingly, acted as a spokesman of the working class against the bourgeoisie? Then it must be remarked that Haeckel was a vehement opponent to socialism, and that in his defence of Darwinism he tried to recommend it to the ruling class by pointing out that it was an aristocratic theory, the doctrine of the selection of the best, most fit to refute "the utter nonsense of socialist levelling". What Lenin calls a tempest raised by the "Weltraetsel" was in reality only a breeze within the middle class, the last episode of its conversion from materialism to idealistic world conception. Haeckel's "Weltraetsel" was the last flare up, in a weakened form, of middle-class materialism, and the idealist, mystic, and religious tendencies were so strong already among the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals that from all sides they could pounce upon Haeckel's book and show up its deficiencies. What was the importance of the book for the mass of its readers among the working class we have indicated above. When Lenin speaks here of a class fight he demonstrates how little he knew of the class fight in countries of developed capitalism, and saw it only as a fight for and against religion. [3] Diderot, one of the Encyclopaedists of the 18th century, had written "that the faculty of sensation is a general property of matter, or a product of its organisation" (Lenin p. 29). The wider scope admitted in the latter expression was dropped by Lenin. |