On the significance of militant materialism

This week in our Lenin in a Year series, we republish a very important article by Lenin from 1922, ‘On the Significance of Militant Materialism’. This article was published in Issue 3 of the monthly journal Pod Znamenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism). We are also proud to publish a brand-new translation alongside it of a very interesting article by Trotsky, which Lenin directly refers to in this article.

In this gem of an article, Lenin makes a number of important points about the ideological and cultural struggle in the new Soviet Republic. Of special mention, however, is the very significant theoretical point Lenin makes about the role of science in bourgeois society, which we will discuss in this introduction.

Although it is short, we recommend our readers study and discuss it with careful attention. We have republished the article in full below our introduction.

Introduction

By In Defence of Marxism

The capitalist class cannot rule through repression alone. They rely on a conservative system of ideas, habits and customs. For this reason, Engels long ago explained that the proletariat must necessarily engage not only in a political and economic struggle but, equally importantly, a theoretical struggle. Lenin often referred to this fact.

The reactionary ideas that buttress the present society are not only transmitted from bourgeois politicians, the media, the clergy and school system, but are also refined in universities and academic institutions, under the guise of ‘objectivity’.

Quoting the philosopher Joseph Dietzgen, Lenin strips away the garb from bourgeois intellectuals. “In effect,” Lenin explains, “the professors of philosophy in modern society are in the majority of cases nothing but “graduated flunkeys of clericalism”. One has only to give a little thought to the governmental and also the general economic, social and every other kind of dependence of modern educated people on the ruling bourgeoisie to realise that Dietzgen’s scathing description was absolutely true.”

Today, universities, those ‘citadels of learning’, are in a state of crisis. Universities departments are bedevilled by funding crises, mental health crises, and witch hunts of pro-Palestine staff by management. The sciences are being eroded by crises of reproducibility, and in the age of weapons of mass destruction and climate change, pessimism about the possibility of applying science to the benefit of humanity pervades.

Philosophically, the sciences are permeated with the sceptical ideas of positivism, which cast doubt on the idea that science can tell us anything about Nature, limiting its goals to merely describing ‘experience’. In the so-called ‘social sciences’, this is mirrored in the plague of postmodern ideas, and the extreme denial that it is possible to know the objective world at all.

However, there are many scientists, as Lenin notes, who are fighting against the stream, who adamantly defend the pursuit of truth about nature and society in the spirit of militant materialism. With them, he advocates for communists to form a kind of philosophical alliance against all the reactionary idealist and semi-idealist trends that issue from the ruling class.

Science and materialism

Science, at root, is based on the assumption that there is a material world, it exists independently of my thoughts about it, and it can be known through investigation. That is to say, a materialist outlook is the starting point of serious scientific investigation.

At the time Lenin wrote this article, Einstein had revolutionised physics with his Special and General theories of Relativity / Image: The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life UC Berkeley, Flickr

But most scientists do not have a conscious philosophical outlook. Without one, they are no less likely than anyone to pick up on the scraps of reactionary philosophies that emanate from the ruling class, to the detriment of science.

As Lenin explains, under the “tinsel of modern science”, reactionary mystical ideas and religious prejudices are snuck into society and are held up as objective.

For example, at the time Lenin wrote this article, Einstein had revolutionised physics with his Special and General theories of Relativity. This was being latched onto by certain idealist scientists and philosophers, who claimed (falsely) that Relativity showed that all truth is ‘relative’ to the point of view of the subjective observer.

The brilliance of Einstein’s ‘thought experiments’ were also taken to show (again, quite falsely) that science had no need of any other laboratory than the human mind, which could deduce the laws of nature from pure thought. These idealist notions have a lamentable influence in some domains of mathematics and theoretical physics, and they all meet with the tacit approval of the ruling class.

The revolution in quantum mechanics, which overthrew the old notions of what matter is really like, was also twisted by some to ‘prove’ that the material world as such does not exist at all, independent of the conscious observer.

In Lenin’s time, the ruling class was actively promoting mystical and idealist ideas to cut across class lines. These same ideas, only wrapped up in the refined garb of apparent ‘scientific objectivity’ by philosophy professors, served to demoralise and confuse the intellectual youth. This is even truer today with the pernicious influence of postmodernism, and their subsidiaries such as identity politics, postcolonialism theory, queer theory, and so on, which provide a philosophical justification for dividing the working class along lines of ‘identity’.

Hegel

Above all, Lenin welcomed Pod Znamenem Marksizma for the role it could play in helping a new generation to study the dialectics of Hegel in a materialist manner.

Dialectics refers to nothing more than the laws of motion, change and revolution, in nature, society and human thinking, which were first thoroughly elaborated by Hegel. However, despite his brilliance, Hegel was not a materialist, but an idealist philosopher. His profound insights into dialectics are buried within a mystical system.

Lenin welcomed Pod Znamenem Marksizma for the role it could play in helping a new generation to study the dialectics of Hegel in a materialist manner / Image: public domain

Marx and Engels were students of Hegel's philosophy, and had assimilated his dialectical method. After becoming adherents of materialism, Marx and Engels “turned Hegel on his head” – that is, they showed that, in fact, dialectical logic is nothing more than the most general laws of matter in motion.

Just as Lenin emphasised the importance of the struggle for revolutionary theory, and in particular the need for communists and militant materialists to study the dialectic of Hegel from a materialist perspective, so we in the Revolutionary Communist International have emphatically taken up this same struggle. We have published many books and articles explaining the philosophy of dialectical materialism and taking up the questions of modern science, and we encourage our readers to dive into this literature.

Trotsky

As an additional note, at the start of his article Lenin refers approvingly to a letter by Trotsky to the editors of Pod Znamenem Marksizma, which we have newly translated and republished. Lenin’s wholehearted recognition of Trotsky’s ability as a theoretician is something the Stalinists tried to cover up subsequently in their campaign against so-called ‘Trotskyism’.

One final point to highlight in this introduction is Lenin’s reference to the bureaucratic deformations of the workers state, a fact which the Stalinist bureaucracy would later be at pains to gloss over. He specifically mentions that the state institutions that had been set up for propagating atheist ideas amongst the masses have failed, and are “suffering from the general conditions of our truly Russian (even though Soviet) bureaucratic ways”.

The need for the struggle against the growing bureaucracy had already been recognised by Lenin, who had begun the fightback. This will be discussed in more detail in the next instalment of Lenin in a Year. But it is important to note that Lenin did not keep his criticism of the bureaucracy behind closed doors, but carried his opinion openly in this public magazine.

On the significance of militant materialism

By V.I. Lenin

Comrade Trotsky has already said everything necessary, and said it very well, about the general purposes of Pod Znamenem Marksizma in issue No. 1-2 of that journal. I should like to deal with certain questions that more closely define the content and programme of the work which its editors have set forth in the introductory statement in this issue.

This statement says that not all those gathered round the journal Pod Znamenem Marksizma are Communists but that they are all consistent materialists. I think that this alliance of Communists and non-Communists is absolutely essential and correctly defines the purposes of the journal. One of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes made by Communists (as generally by revolutionaries who have successfully accomplished the beginning of a great revolution) is the idea that a revolution can be made by revolutionaries alone. On the contrary, to be successful, all serious revolutionary work requires that the idea that revolutionaries are capable of playing the part only of the vanguard of the truly virile and advanced class must be understood and translated into action. A vanguard performs its task as vanguard only when it is able to avoid being isolated from the mass of the people it leads and is able really to lead the whole mass forward. Without an alliance with non-Communists in the most diverse spheres of activity there can be no question of any successful communist construction.

This also applies to the defence of materialism and Marxism, which has been undertaken Pod Znamenem Marksizma. Fortunately, the main trends of advanced social thinking in Russia have a solid materialist tradition. Apart from G. V. Plekhanov, it will be enough to mention Chernyshevsky, from whom the modern Narodniks (the Popular Socialists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc.) have frequently retreated in quest of fashionable reactionary philosophical doctrines, captivated by the tinsel of the so-called last word in European science, and unable to discern beneath this tinsel some variety of servility to the bourgeoisie, to bourgeois prejudice and bourgeois reaction.

At any rate, in Russia we still have — and shall undoubtedly have for a fairly long time to come — materialists from the non-communist camp, and it is our absolute duty to enlist all adherents of consistent and militant materialism in the joint work of combating philosophical reaction and the philosophical prejudices of so-called educated society. Dietzgen senior — not to be confused with his writer son, who was as pretentious as he was unsuccessful — correctly, aptly and clearly expressed the fundamental Marxist view of the philosophical trends which prevail in bourgeois countries and enjoy the regard of their scientists and publicists, when he said that in effect the professors of philosophy in modern society are in the majority of cases nothing but “graduated flunkeys of clericalism”.

Our Russian intellectuals, who, like their brethren in all other countries, are fond of thinking themselves advanced, are very much averse to shifting the question to the level of the opinion expressed in Dietzgen’s words. But they are averse to it because they cannot look the truth in the face. One has only to give a little thought to the governmental and also the general economic, social and every other kind of dependence of modern educated people on the ruling bourgeoisie to realise that Dietzgen’s scathing description was absolutely true. One has only to recall the vast majority of the fashionable philosophical trends that arise so frequently in European countries, beginning for example with those connected with the discovery of radium and ending with those which are now seeking to clutch at the skirts of Einstein , to gain an idea of the connection between the class interests and the class position of the bourgeoisie and its support of all forms of religion on the one hand, and the ideological content of the fashionable philosophical trends on the other.

It will be seen from the above that a journal that sets out to be a militant materialist organ must be primarily a militant organ, in the sense of unflinchingly exposing and indicting all modern “graduated flunkeys of clericalism”, irrespective of whether they act as representatives of official science or as free lances calling themselves “democratic Left or ideologically socialist” publicists.

In the second place, such a journal must be a militant atheist organ. We have departments, or at least state institutions, which are in charge of this work. But the work is being carried on with extreme apathy and very unsatisfactorily, and is apparently suffering from the general conditions of our truly Russian (even though Soviet) bureaucratic ways. It is therefore highly essential that in addition to the work of these state institutions, and in order to improve and infuse life into that work, a journal which sets out to propagandise militant materialism must carry on untiring atheist propaganda and an untiring atheist fight. The literature on the subject in all languages should be carefully followed and everything at all valuable in this sphere should be translated, or at least reviewed.

Engels long ago advised the contemporary leaders of the proletariat to translate the militant atheist literature of the late eighteenth century for mass distribution among the people. We have not done this up to the present, to our shame be it said (this is one of the numerous proofs that it is much easier to seize power in a revolutionary epoch than to know how to use this power properly). Our apathy, inactivity and incompetence are sometimes excused on all sorts of “lofty” grounds, as, for example, that the old atheist literature of the eighteenth century is antiquated, unscientific, naive, etc. There is nothing worse than such pseudo-scientific sophistry, which serves as a screen either for pedantry or for a complete misunderstanding of Marxism. There is, of course, much that is unscientific and naive in the atheist writings of the eighteenth-century revolutionaries. But nobody prevents the publishers of these writings from abridging them and providing them with brief postscripts pointing out the progress made by mankind in the scientific criticism of religions since the end of the eighteenth century, mentioning the latest writings on the subject, and so forth. It would be the biggest and most grievous mistake a Marxist could make to think that the millions of the people (especially the peasants and artisans), who have been condemned by all modern society to darkness, ignorance and superstitions — can extricate themselves from this darkness only along the straight line of a purely Marxist education. These masses should be supplied with the most varied atheist propaganda material, they should be made familiar with facts from the most diverse spheres of life, they should be approached in every possible way, so as to interest them, rouse them from their religious torpor, stir them front the most varied angles and by the most varied methods, and so forth.

The keen, vivacious and talented writings of the old eighteenth-century atheists wittily and openly attacked the prevailing clericalism and will very often prove a thousand times more suitable for arousing people from their religious torpor than the dull and dry paraphrases of Marxism, almost completely unillustrated by skillfully selected facts, which predominate in our literature and which (it is no use hiding the fact) frequently distort Marxism. We have translations of all the major works of Marx and Engels. There are absolutely no grounds for fearing that the old atheism and old materialism will remain un-supplemented by the corrections introduced by Marx and Engels. The most important thing — and it is this that is most frequently overlooked by those of our Communists who are supposedly Marxists, but who in fact mutilate Marxism — is to know how to awaken in the still undeveloped masses an intelligent attitude towards religious questions and an intelligent criticism of religions.

On the other hand, take a glance at modern scientific critics of religion. These educated bourgeois writers almost invariably “supplement” their own refutations of religious superstitions with arguments which immediately expose them as ideological slaves of the bourgeoisie, as “graduated flunkeys of clericalism”.

Two examples. Professor R. Y. Wipper published in 1918 a little book entitled Vozniknovenie Khristianstva (The Origin of Christianity — Pharos Publishing House, Moscow). In his account of the principal results of modern science, the author not only refrains from combating the superstitions and deception which are the weapons of the church as a political organisation, not only evades these questions, but makes the simply ridiculous and most reactionary claim that he is above both “extremes “ — the idealist and the materialist. This is toadying to the ruling bourgeoisie, which all over the world devotes to the support of religion hundreds of millions of rubles from. the profits squeezed out of the working people.

The well-known German scientist, Arthur Drews, while refuting religious superstitions and fables in his book, Die Christusmythe (The Christ Myth), and while showing that Christ never existed, at the end of the book declares in favour of religion, albeit a renovated, purified and more subtle religion, one that would be capable of withstanding “the daily growing naturalist torrent” (fourth German edition, 1910, p. 238). Here we have an out-spoken and deliberate reactionary, who is openly helping the exploiters to replace the old, decayed religious superstitions by new, more odious and vile superstitions.

This does not mean that Drews should not be translated. It means that while in a certain measure effecting an alliance with the progressive section of the bourgeoisie, Communists and all consistent materialists should unflinchingly expose that section when it is guilty of reaction. It means that to shun an alliance with the representatives of the bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century, i.e., the period when it was revolutionary, would be to betray Marxism and materialism; for an “alliance” with the Drewses, in one form or another and in one degree or another., is essential for our struggle against the predominating religious obscurantists.

Pod Znamenem Marksizma, which sets out to be an organ of militant materialism, should devote much of its space to atheist propaganda, to reviews of the literature on the subject and to correcting the immense shortcomings of our governmental work in this field. It is particularly important to utilise books and pamphlets which contain many concrete facts and comparisons showing how the class interests and class organisations of the modern bourgeoisie are connected with the organisations of religious institutions and religious propaganda.

All material relating to the United States of America, where the official state connection between religion and capital is less manifest, is extremely important. But, on the other hand, it becomes all the clearer to us that so-called modern democracy (which the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, partly also the anarchists, etc., so unreasonably worship) is nothing but the freedom to preach whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie, to preach, namely, the most reactionary ideas, religion, obscurantism, defence of the exploiters, etc.

One would like to hope that a journal which sets out to be a militant materialist organ will provide our reading public with reviews of atheist literature, showing for which circle of readers any particular writing might be suitable and in what respect, and mentioning what literature has been published in our country (only decent translations should be given notice, and they are not so many), and what is still to be published.

In addition to the alliance with consistent materialists who do not belong to the Communist Party, of no less and perhaps oven of more importance for the work which militant materialism should perform is an alliance with those modern natural scientists who incline towards materialism and are not afraid to defend and preach it as against the modish philosophical wanderings into idealism and scepticism which are prevalent in so-called educated society.

The article by A. Timiryazev on Einstein’s theory of relativity published in Pod Znamenem Marksizma No. 1-2 permits us to hope that the journal will succeed in effecting this second alliance too. Greater attention should be paid to it. It should be remembered that the sharp upheaval which modern natural science is undergoing very often gives rise to reactionary philosophical schools and minor schools, trends and minor trends. Unless, therefore, the problems raised by the recent revolution in natural science are followed, and unless natural scientists are enlisted in the work of a philosophical journal, militant materialism can be neither militant nor materialism. Timiryazev was obliged to observe in the first issue of the journal that the theory of Einstein, who, according to Timiryazev, is himself not making any active attack on the foundations of materialism, has already been seized upon by a vast number of bourgeois intellectuals of all countries; it should be noted that this applies not only to Einstein, but to a number, if not to the majority, of the great reformers of natural science since the end of the nineteenth century.

For our attitude towards this phenomenon to be a politically conscious one, it must be realised that no natural science and no materialism can hold its own in the struggle against the onslaught of bourgeois ideas and the restoration of the bourgeois world outlook unless it stands on solid philosophical ground. In order to hold his own in this struggle and carry it to a victorious finish, the natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist. In order to attain this aim, the contributors to Pod Znamenem Marksizma must arrange for the systematic study of Hegelian dialectics from a materialist standpoint, i.e., the dialectics which Marx applied practically in his Capital and in his historical and political works, and applied so successfully that now every day of the awakening to life and struggle of new classes in the East (Japan, India, and China) — i.e., the hundreds of millions of human beings who form the greater part of the world population and whose historical passivity and historical torpor have hitherto conditioned the stagnation and decay of many advanced European countries — every day of the awakening to life of new peoples and new classes serves as a fresh confirmation of Marxism.

Of course, this study, this interpretation, this propaganda of Hegelian dialectics is extremely difficult, and the first experiments in this direction will undoubtedly be accompanied by errors. But only he who never does anything never makes mistakes. Taking as our basis Marx’s method of applying materialistically conceived Hegelian dialectics, we can and should elaborate this dialectics from all aspects, print in the journal excerpts from Hegel’s principal works, interpret them materialistically and comment on them with the help of examples of the way Marx applied dialectics, as well as of examples of dialectics in the sphere of economic and political relations, which recent history, especially modern imperialist war and revolution, provides in unusual abundance. In my opinion, the editors and contributors of Pod Znamenem Marksizma should be a kind of “Society of Materialist Friends of Hegelian Dialectics”. Modern natural scientists (if they know how to seek, and if we learn to help them) will find in the Hegelian dialectics, materialistically interpreted, a series of answers to the philosophical problems which are being raised by the revolution in natural science and which make the intellectual admirers of bourgeois fashion “stumble” into reaction.

Unless it sets itself such a task and systematically fulfills it, materialism cannot be militant materialism. It will be not so much the fighter as the fought, to use an expression of Shchedrin’s. Without this, eminent natural scientists will as often as hitherto he helpless in making their philosophical deductions and generalisations. For natural science is progressing so fast and is undergoing such a profound revolutionary upheaval in all spheres that it cannot possibly dispense with philosophical deductions.

In conclusion, I will cite an example which has nothing to do with philosophy, but does at any rate concern social questions, to which Pod Znamenem Marksizma also desires, to devote attention.

It is an example of the way in which modern pseudo-science actually serves as a vehicle for the grossest and most infamous reactionary views.

I was recently sent a copy of Ekonomist No. 1 (1922), published by the Eleventh Department of the Russian Technical Society. The young Communist who sent me this journal (he probably had no time to read it) rashly expressed considerable agreement with it. In reality the journal is — I do not know to what extent deliberately — an organ of the modern feudalists, disguised of course under a cloak of science, democracy and so forth.

A certain Mr. P. A. Sorokin publishes in this journal an extensive, so-called “sociological”, inquiry on “The Influence of the War”. This learned article abounds in learned references to the “sociological” works of the author and his numerous teachers and colleagues abroad. Here is an example of his learning.

On page 83, I read:

“For every 10,000 marriages in Petrograd there are now 92.2 divorces — a fantastic figure. Of every 100 annulled marriages, 51.1 had lasted less than one year, 11 per cent less than one month, 22 per cent less than two months, 41 per cent less than three to six months and only 26 per cent over six months. These figures show that modern legal marriage is a form which conceals what is in effect extra-marital sexual intercourse, enabling lovers of ‘strawberries’ to satisfy their appetites in a ‘legal’ way” (Ekonomist No. 1, p. 83)

Both this gentleman and the Russian Technical Society, which publishes this journal and gives space to this kind of talk, no doubt regard themselves as adherents of democracy and would consider it a great insult to be called what they are in fact, namely, feudalists, reactionaries, “graduated. flunkeys of clericalism”.

Even the slightest acquaintance with the legislation of bourgeois countries on marriage, divorce and illegitimate children, and with the actual state of affairs in this field, is enough to show anyone interested in the subject that modern bourgeois democracy, even in all the most democratic bourgeois republics, exhibits a truly feudal attitude in this respect towards women and towards children born out of wedlock.

This, of course, does not prevent the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, a part of the anarchists and all the corresponding parties in the West from shouting about democracy and how it is being violated by the Bolsheviks. But as a matter of fact the Bolshevik revolution is the only consistently democratic revolution in respect to such questions as marriage, divorce and the position of children born out of wedlock. And this is a question which most directly affects the interests of more than half the population of any country. Although a large number of bourgeois revolutions preceded it and called themselves democratic, the Bolshevik revolution was the first and only revolution to wage a resolute struggle in this respect both against reaction and feudalism and against the usual hypocrisy of the ruling and propertied classes.

If 92 divorces for every 10,000 marriages seem to Mr. Sorekin a fantastic figure, one can only suppose that either the author lived and was brought up in a monastery so entirely walled off from life that hardly anyone will believe such a monastery ever existed, or that he is distorting the truth in the interest of reaction and the bourgeoisie. Anybody in the least acquainted with social conditions in bourgeois countries knows that the real number of actual divorces (of course, not sanctioned by church and law) is everywhere immeasurably greater. The only difference between Russia and other countries in this respect is that our laws do not sanctify hypocrisy and the debasement of the woman and her child, but openly and in the name of the government declare systematic war on all hypocrisy and all debasement.

The Marxist journal will have to wage war also on these modern “educated” feudalists. Not a few of them, very likely, are in receipt of government money and are employed by our government to educate our youth, although they are no more fitted for this than notorious perverts are fitted for the post of superintendents of educational establishments for the young.

The working class of Russia proved able to win power; but it has not yet learned to utilise it, for otherwise it would have long ago very politely dispatched such teachers and members of learned societies to countries with a bourgeois “democracy” That is the proper place for such feudalists.

But it will learn, given the will to learn.

March 12, 1922