You can read the original Russian version here.
For three years we have been on a magnificent lightning offensive. And for a year and a half after we retreated. Advancing and retreating, we unconsciously, sometimes with a premeditated intention, are left in some section of the front where we should, where we expect, as revolutionaries, to conduct a conversation on the occasion of entering into an alliance. This is the realm of abstract thinking.
In the last few months, the struggle on this front has become more active: the magazine machine guns have crackled, the heavy book artillery has boomed. A gratifying sign! For the commanding heights of theory, the armoured fortress of science must remain ours.
But in this stormy attack, in this assault on the holy of holies of the bourgeoisie and landowners, we ourselves, we revolutionaries, are discovering a great deal of confusion, and, unfortunately, sometimes on the most fundamental issues. And this after Communism has existed for three-quarters of a century! And this after four and a half years of proletarian dictatorship in one of the largest countries!
Examples? Here it is — an amazing, striking example — our fussing with some “philosophy of Marxism,” “the religion of Marxism,” “the religion of the proletariat”… Not so long ago, even these terms and concepts did not seem ugly and ridiculous to everyone. But those times are over, at least for the vanguard of the working-class. Progress? Not dizzying progress, but sluggish, slow, snail-like.
“The philosophy of Marxism.” No, at a certain stage it is much more harmful and dangerous than the “religion of the proletariat,” for if any Marxist gets mixed up with religion, any average worker with a healthy brain can set things right and propose a divorce to the unnatural union. But what is a worker to do when his mental fortress is being gassed by philosophy?!
Three Ways of Understanding the World
In the last period of human history, three main social classes fought among themselves: landowners, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Each of these classes understood perfectly well what a powerful weapon in the struggle this or that method, this or that content of abstract thinking, this or that general view of the world represented! In this cruel, fatal struggle, each class tried with varying success to replenish its arsenal of weapons and lead them with the so-called “spiritual weapon.”
The slave-owning landowners and surf-owners used the weapon of religion. The bourgeoisie fought with philosophy. The proletariat relies in its struggle exclusively on science.
Religion is the Stronghold of the Landlord Class
But what is religion? The range of fluctuations in the content of this concept is colossal — from the savage’s belief in the physical existence of the “soul” in a dream or after the death of the body, from the ancient peasant’s belief in the domovoy (household god) to the rationalistic “Deity” and “God of nature.”
But the essence of religion, typical religion, is ultimately this:
- Religion is faith, i.e. not knowledge, not science;
- Religion is faith in spirit, not in matter or the material world;
- Religion is faith in a personal spirit, not in a vague, abstract, philosophical one;
- Religion is faith in a personal spirit and in itself, but essentially, unchangeable;
- Religion is the belief in a personal, unchanging spirit, the creator, ruler, or destroyer of the rest of the world;
- Religion is a belief in a personal, unchanging creator spirit that creates, controls, or destroys the world at will, without observing any laws, even its own;
- Finally, religion is the belief in the personal, etc. spirit as the source of knowledge, the belief in “divine revelation.”
Here it is, the ontology, cosmology, epistemology, etc. of a savage, a lord, a landowner, a slave owner, a serf owner, a monarchist. Here it is, the spiritual imprint of a historical class that does not need science in production and exploitation and tortures or burns alive its representatives. At the same time, it is not proletarian science that frightens the savage landlord, but science in general, even if corrupted by philosophy, that is very dangerous for religion and the rule of the wild landowner.
Philosophy is the Support of the Bourgeoisie
Not only idealism, not only metaphysics, but philosophy in general, philosophy as such, serves as the support of the bourgeoisie. But what actually is philosophy?
The range of fluctuations in the content of this concept is unusually wide: from spiritualism, i.e. from the same realm as religion, and right up to… Marxism. But the essence of philosophy as such, typical philosophy, is as follows:
- Unlike religion, philosophy does not recognise the personal spirit and recognises, to one degree or another, the originality of matter;
- Unlike science, philosophy never recognises matter entirely, but, in agreement with religion, it does recognise spirit. This spirit is sometimes very similar to a personal master god (spiritualism), sometimes very similar to material nature (pantheism);
- But the hegemony of the spirit is unquestionable in philosophy. It is not called Jehovah, God, Allah, etc., but it is called the Eternal Reason, the World Will, the Absolute Idea, and so on;
- Philosophy has never recognised and cannot recognise both matter and its dialectical development in their entirety. And when, as a result of the development of productive forces, the development of technology and science, which strengthened the bourgeoisie as a class, philosophy was forced to come down to earth more and more, philosophy did not stand on it with both feet, but each time only with one, and not quite firmly: either it recognised matter almost entirely, but then philosophy rejected dialectics (metaphysical materialism), or it recognised dialectics almost entirely, but then philosophy cast aside “crude” matter (dialectical idealism);
- But in all systems of philosophy, either in the method or in the content of knowledge, or in both at once, hegemony belongs to one degree or another to metaphysics;
- Philosophy will not reject regularity, but it will never accept it entirely; on the contrary, philosophy gravitates more toward expediency — teleology;
- Philosophy does not deny matter as a source of knowledge, but it considers the same spirit, no matter what it is called, to be the true storehouse of wisdom;
- So, philosophy is half-faith, half-knowledge, half-revelation, half-science. Or rather, philosophy is more faith than knowledge; it is closer to religion than to science.
Religion is monistic in its own way. Science is certainly monistic. Philosophy is dualism, or worse, eclecticism.
It is understandable: philosophy is the spiritual imprint of the bourgeoisie, the quintessence of its class “spirit.” Philosophy is the sorrow and aspirations of the “soul” of the bourgeois class, the owners of capital, the supporters of a parliamentary monarchy or a monarchical republic.
The bourgeoisie cannot recognise religion for itself entirely, because for the very exploitation of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie needs science. But the bourgeoisie cannot fully recognise science, since without religion it will not be able to maintain exploitation. And the result is a chaotic, eclectic mixture of religion and science, with a greater or lesser, but undoubted bias from science to religion, as it benefits the “worldview” of the exploiting class. Such is the “substance” of philosophy with its two “attributes.”
Science is the Sword of the Proletariat
In the dense forest of savage illusions, barbaric fantasies and philosophical half-revelations, the working-class alone wages a struggle and makes its way with a sword, the blade of which is forged by the hammer of experience on the machine of nature. But what is science?
Science is the knowledge of the material world in its unity and in its lawful and dialectical development obtained by man through experience. Thus:
- Science is not faith, it is not a “spirit in the form of a dove” descending with revelation upon the soul of the “slave of God,” and it is also not a “steam chicken” of philosophy hatched by the Eternal Reason or the World Will or the Absolute Idea in that nest which is called the will, reason, feeling, or spirit of man. No, science is created and tested by man’s action upon nature, by interaction with it. Science is the legitimate, healthy child of man’s active union with the rest of the material world;
- Science is not a dogma discovered by God and frozen, nor is it a system completely finished in the philosopher’s office; science is a process, a continuous process of cognition, that is, a reflection in the living, active human brain of the rest of the material world;
- In learning about the world, man (now the proletariat, then in Communist society) does not find and will not seek a personal or impersonal spirit, a concrete or abstract god. In learning about the world, man finds only matter with its primary and derivative properties. The result of this learning is also called science;
- In comprehending the world, man finds in the infinity of its parts a strong connection and strict unity;
- In the apparent chaos of the world’s movements, man learns its harsh discipline – strict regularity; in the apparent regularity of monotonous movements, man comprehends their continuous development through contradictions, that is, science is dialectical – both because that part of being that cognises (man) develops dialectically, and because being that is cognised (the rest of the material world) develops dialectically.
Such is science in its multifaceted and harmonious grandeur and in its revolutionary beauty.
The landlord looks at science like an embittered castrate looks at a woman. The bourgeois looks at science as a prostitute who can be bought, used and spat upon. And only the proletariat sees in science a true friend and comrade.
The proletariat is not interested in oppression, on the contrary, it eliminates the division into classes forever, it liberates humanity. And if a class is not interested in exploitation, it has no need to lie, deceive and be hypocritical before the oppressed. On the contrary, the working-class is the only and last of the social classes whose only weapon of struggle and enjoyment can be unvarnished, uncorrupted science.
The “Philosophy of Marxism”
Both religion and philosophy are two ways of understanding the world in two main exploiting classes, different from each other in many ways, but related in one most important thing: both of these classes (landlords and bourgeoisie) are interested in oppression, and therefore in blinding, deceiving, and mystifying the enslaved.
The proletariat is a liberating class, a revolutionary class to the end, not interested in oppression, and therefore does not need either religion or philosophy. On the contrary, he fights against them and at a certain stage of development is forced to fight against philosophy more ardently and cruelly than against religion. However, despite being revolutionaries to the end, we, Marxists, materialist dialecticians, allow ourselves, completely rejecting religion, to harmlessly bow to philosophy, to flirt with it, and even to submit to its bourgeois elements.
True, even Karl Marx recognised philosophy. He wrote:
As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. (K. H. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843)
But when was that? It was the same year [1843, before Marx had developed his theory of historical materialism – Ed.] that Marx wrote:
Our whole object can only be — as is also the case in Feuerbach’s criticism of religion — to give religious and philosophical questions the form corresponding to man who has become conscious of himself. (K. H. Marx, Ruthless Criticism, 1843)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had such terms and concepts only at the beginning of the construction of the building. These forests were then burned without a trace. [Even in the writing quoted above, Marx writes: “Now philosophy has become mundane, and the most striking proof of this is that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the torment of the struggle, not only externally but also internally.” – Ed.]
But now, why should we talk about some kind of “philosophy of Marxism” or “philosophy of the proletariat”?! 1844 and 1920-22 — this is a big difference, especially from the point of view of dialectics. But we speak, and even trumpet about this very “philosophy.”
Often this is an unfortunate misunderstanding, almost harmless to science, more of a slip of the tongue, a typo, than an error.
Often this is already a harmful intoxication with a false term, which can lead to a distortion of scientific content.
And sometimes a false term entails false concepts or covers up anti-scientific deviations in the Communist worldview and dialectical method.
Examples of the 1st case:
Georgi Plekhanov very often uses the non-Marxist term “philosophy of Marxism,” or “the philosophical side of Marxism.” Thus, Lenin also writes in the introduction to ‘Materialism and Empirio-Criticism’ on September 2nd, 1920:
I hope that… [this work] will prove useful as an aid to an acquaintance with the philosophy of Marxism, dialectical materialism, as well as with the philosophical conclusions from the recent discoveries in natural science. (V. I. Lenin, Materialism & Empirio-Criticism, 1920)
Only in Lenin this term is found less often than in Plekhanov.
Examples of the 2nd case:
There has been plenty of intoxication with the false term in Marxist literature right up until recently. The new magazine, ‘Under the Banner of Marxism’ is guilty of this quite a bit, thus starting with the address ‘From the Editors’ (No. 1-2):
You need to go through the hardening school of Marx’s philosophy to become steadfast, confident, indestructible Communists. (Editorial Board, Under the Banner of Marxism No. 1-2, 1922)
For some authors, this rapture goes beyond all bounds. A. Frenkel, in a one-page article with the title ‘We Must Sharpen the Revolutionary Weapon’, only dulls it himself, calling the Communist worldview “philosophy” 9 times…
Examples of the 3rd case:
If Abram Deborin calls his book ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism,’ then Boris Gorev calls his brochure ‘Materialism: Philosophy of the Proletariat’. But further on, behind the false moniker of ‘B. I. Gorev,’ false, anti-scientific content creeps in:
Since the middle of the 19th century, [philosophy] has increasingly become, from an independent field of thought, a generalisation and unification of all sciences, all human knowledge, this means that it tries, as it were to sum up all human experience, [?!] to find in all sciences something common, [?!] some single guiding idea, [?]some general principle. [?]
This is already quite unclear, but it gets even worse:
But at the same time, modern philosophy is not limited to simply summing up the results of science. [?] It tries to go further than science [!!] along the designated path, trying to guess those secrets of the world and life that science has not yet fully explained, whilst penetrating which it already has enough data. (B. I. Gorev, Materialism: Philosophy of the Proletariat, 1920)
…And so on. This is truly a Marxist “philosophy” and not a science. After all, this is the essence of all philosophy: without rejecting science, relying on it, to go beyond science, offering not just hypotheses, but a revelation very similar to religion.
Deborin on page 226 of his ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy [!?] of Dialectical Materialism’ goes even further than Gorev:
Thus, dialectical materialism contains within itself as ‘subordinate moments’ phenomenalism, transcendental idealism and metaphysical idealism… Dialectical materialism, in a word, reconciles [!] and unites [?] in the highest philosophical [why not scientific?] synthesis of all currents [!?]of philosophical thought [and those close to religion too?] and represents the result of the development of all new philosophy. (A. M. Deborin, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism, 1916)
“Contains,” reconciles,” “unites…” “all currents!”
But do materialist dialectics really exclude nothing and fight against nothing?!
Here is another example. There is a book: ‘Introduction and Commentary to the Communist Manifesto’. No more, no less. And here the author, Charles Andler, says in his “conclusion”:
Thus, right up to its final formula, the Manifesto remains faithful to historical materialism, which formulates proletarian philosophy… [!] This philosophy teaches us that truth lies only in the synthesis of theory and practice. It has a threefold meaning: 1) a metaphysical meaning… [!?!] (C. P. T. Andler, Introduction & Commentary to the Communist Manifesto, 1920)
And this is in the commentary to the ‘Communist Manifesto’…
If you call yourself a mushroom, [meaning a Communist, – Ed.] that is, a philosopher, get into… metaphysics… closer to religion. Such is the dialectic of life…
Listen to Your Enemies
Listen. This is useful. Our enemies understand better than we do what philosophy is. After all, philosophy is for the bourgeoisie.
There is in the world the “Encyclopædic Dictionary” of Brockhaus and Efron, the joint brainchild of the young but already decrepit Russian bourgeoisie. There, under the word “Philosophy” are 2 articles – by Ernest Radlov and Nikolai Debolsky. Radlov begins very slowly:
Philosophy is the free investigation of the fundamental problems of being, human knowledge, activity and beauty…
But then the author immediately exposes his bourgeois goddess:
Philosophy has a very complex task and solves it in various ways, trying to combine into one rational whole the data obtained by science and religious ideas. (E. L. Radlov, Brockhaus & Efron Encyclopædic Dictionary Vol. 70, 1903)
Another author, Debolsky, also begins maestoso: “By philosophy, I mean science…” but then he explains:
Philosophy as a science is possible only under the condition that the concepts of philosophy and science coincide, [excellent!] i.e. that in the concept of science there is nothing that goes beyond the scope of philosophy.
Inside out. And this is no accident, because the author goes on to finally expose philosophy:
There is no reason for fundamental hostility between philosophy and positive religion — in particular, Christianity. But at the same time philosophy retains the right to present the religious positions included in its system in its own precise and modern language, without being embarrassed by the terms of religious dogma, and also not to consider that which is clearly unscientific as the word of Divine wisdom. (N. G. Debolsky, Brockhaus & Efron Encyclopædic Dictionary Vol. 70, 1903)
Surprisingly accurate.
And, apparently, the same or a similar company is now frank in the St. Petersburg philosophical journal ‘Mysl’ No. 1 of 1922:
Every more or less thoughtful, profound philosophical system leads us to the idea of absolute being or God. (E. L. Radlov & N. O. Lossky, Mysl No. 1, 1922)
At the same time, the reviewer of the already Marxist journal notes:
Since [the Wolfils — the authors of ‘Mysl’] do not consider consistent materialism based on science to be philosophy, [well, of course!] Karsavin’s remark applies to idealistic systems.
And further:
By introducing God into their philosophical theories as a “necessarily present” god, the Wolfils remove themselves from the ranks of “scientific workers.” (M. Chernov, Review of First Volume of Mysl, 1922)
But why do Marxists not “remove themselves from the ranks” of philosophy, just as they removed themselves “from the ranks” of religion — that is the question and that is what is surprising!
The enemies are right: philosophy is not our business. For philosophy is for bourgeois brains a mixture of half-faith, half-knowledge. Philosophy is an unnatural union, it is a wedding around the bourgeois counter of castrated religion and blinded science. Therefore, philosophy is as stable as a scale in a warehouse, because it is fundamentally dualistic, eclectic and essentially systematically unsystematic.
And is science alone not enough for us? Are we really going to continue to operate with concepts and terms that are rotten through and through, and thereby push either ourselves or others onto a false, anti-Communist path?
Marx and Engels Against Philosophy
What is unclear to many Marxists now was quite firmly developed and established by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This question was especially developed by Engels.
1) Philosophy is the fruit of the bourgeoisie:
Just as the whole Renaissance period, from the middle of the 15th century, was an essential product of the towns and, therefore, of the burghers, so also was the subsequently newly-awakened philosophy. Its content was in essence only the philosophical expression of the thoughts corresponding to the development of the small and middle burghers into a big bourgeoisie.
2) The end of philosophy:
Further, Engels calls Hegelian philosophy “the close of the whole movement since Kant.” Finally, Engels expresses himself even more definitely:
As soon as we have once realised… that the task of philosophy thus stated means nothing but the task that a single philosopher should accomplish that which can only be accomplished by the entire human race in its progressive development — as soon as we realise that, there is an end to all philosophy in the hitherto accepted sense of the word. One leaves alone “absolute truth,” which is unattainable along this path or by any single individual; instead, one pursues attainable relative truths along the path of the positive sciences, and the summation of their results by means of dialectical thinking. At any rate, with Hegel philosophy comes to an end; on the one hand, because in his system he summed up its whole development in the most splendid fashion; and on the other hand, because, even though unconsciously, he showed us the way out of the labyrinth of systems to real positive knowledge of the world.
3) Rays of sunset:
Strauss, Bauer, Stirner, Feuerbach — these were the offshoots of Hegelian philosophy, in so far as they did not abandon the field of philosophy… Feuerbach alone was of significance as a philosopher. But not only did philosophy — claimed to soar above all special sciences and to be the science of sciences connecting them — remain to him an impassable barrier, an inviolable holy thing, but as a philosopher, too, he stopped half-incapable of disposing of Hegel through criticism; he simply threw him aside as useless, while he himself, compared with the encyclopædic wealth of the Hegelian system, achieved nothing positive beyond a turgid religion of love and a meagre, impotent morality. (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1886)
4) Philosophy is superfluous, philosophy is disposed of:
Modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer needs any philosophy standing above the other sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous.
To the “philosopher of reality,” Herr Dühring, Engels objects:
If we deduce world schematism not from our minds, but only through our minds from the real world, if we deduce principles of being from what is, we need no philosophy for this purpose, but positive knowledge of the world and of what happens in it; and what this yields is also not philosophy, but positive science. (F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877)
Engels expresses himself no decisively less in ‘Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy’:
Today natural philosophy is finally disposed of. Every attempt at resurrecting it would be not only superfluous but a step backwards. But what is true of nature, which is hereby recognised also as a historical process of development, is likewise true of the history of society in all its branches and of the totality of all sciences which occupy themselves with things human (and divine). (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1886)
5) Is there anything left of philosophy?:
That which still survives, independently, of all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its laws — formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of nature and history. (F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877)
For philosophy, which has been expelled from nature and history, there remains only the realm of pure thought, so far as it is left: the theory of the laws of the thought process itself, logic and dialectics. (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1886)
So, from all philosophy, “so far as it is left,” only science remains, that is, to put it simply, absolutely nothing remains: philosophy in the minds of the proletariat is finally supplanted by science.
6) What is the name of the proletarian understanding of the world?:
It is called “positive knowledge of the world” or “positive science” or “the dialectical method and the Communist world outlook” (see the preface by Engels to the second edition of ‘Anti-Dühring’) or “materialist dialectics” or, finally, simply “dialectics.” Engels again defines the latter as a science:
Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought. (F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877)
In a word, the proletariat has and must have science, only science, but no philosophy. And Marx substantiates this simple truth from a slightly different angle:
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. (K. H. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845)
Science on the Bridge: Philosophy Overboard
Why do we still get confused on three points (religion, philosophy, science), as for example in ‘Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology’ by Nikolai Bukharin:
This Communism its own philosophy, a philosophy of action and battle, of scientific knowledge and revolutionary practice. (N. I. Bukharin, Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology, 1921)
…or as in the journal ‘Under the Banner of Marxism’, when we again agree on some kind of “philosophy of modern natural science” (No. 3) and even on “philosophy of history” (No. 1, 5)?!
Philosophy, literally, is love for false wisdom, love of phony insight. In essence, it is a bourgeois, anti-proletarian worldview and a secret passage to religion. How is it that we, Marxists, still display such a predilection for being ‘wise’? Some explain it by deviations from Marxism, others by confusion of concepts, and still others by insufficient clarity in terminology.
There is also one common reason: the unfinished state of our scientific-Marxist ship, because we had no time, there was not enough time. Indeed, look: are we accustomed to understanding science with the whole being of our brains? No, by science we usually imagine one of the sciences or separate parts, branches of science, and not something unified, whole, self-sufficient. That is why we gravitate toward the ugly concept of “science of sciences,” and even call this monster “philosophy.”
And so it is necessary to hasten to understand, firstly, that science is one and united, although with many roots, branches and fruits, and secondly, that science is incompatible not only with religion, but also with philosophy and is hostile to both of them, as the worldviews of the exploiting classes.
While equipping and completing our scientific ship, let us first of all take care to throw philosophy overboard from the capitalist bridge, following religion, without a trace. And we will not write it down reverently either on the red plaque, or in the synodicon, or in remembrance, but only on the pages of past history.