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- LENIN AND HIS CRITICS
| p. 103. Ernest Mandel correctly emphasises the realism inherent in this passage from The Grundisse. See his Late Capitalism, New Left Books, London, 1975, p. 14.
Orthodox philosophy distinguishes between the context of discovery and the context of justification. For those who know the distinction, it might be helpful to say that, in this passage, Marx is dealing with problems of discovery of a theory. Reflection theory, Since it offers a criterion for or definition of knowledge, isconcerned with problems whicharise in the context of theory justification. Godelier, Maurice, Rationality and Irrationality in Economies, New Left Books, London, 1972, p. 13!. Consider also some of the Althusserian jargon of Barry Hindess and Paul Q. Hirst, in Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1975. In the ‘Introduction’, they criticise empiricist methodology, on the grounds that ‘Empiricism represents knowledge as constructed out of ‘given’ elements . . . Unfortunately, for these positions, facts are never “given” to knowledge’ (p.2), We agree with this, because we have maintained that the discovery of facts, theoretical facts, is the task of a theory, and arriving at a well-confirmed, plausible theory is a labour which demands intellectual and practical activity. However, Hindess and Hirst then proceed to conclude, from this denial that facts are given, that they are produced: ‘They [these facts] are always the product of definite practices . . . Facts are never given: they are always produced. The facts of the sciences arc products of scientific practices' (pp.2-3). This is a confusion. Facts may not be given—they must be uncovered or discovered. The antithesis to being ‘given’ is being discovered. We hold that the discovery of facts is a product of scientific practice. It certainly does not follow that the facts, themselves are a|so produced, which, is a wholly idealist conception. The jargon of theoretical and scientific practices can be misleading if the analogy with productive activity is taken too literally. Manufacture produces objects which may not have antedated the manufacture; intellectual activity discovers that which is not usually created by the intellectual activity itself. Science itself is more like exploring than making, although if we consider science materialistically we can also see the close connections between science and productive needs. !7 Mandelbaum, Maurice, 'Societal Facts', British Journal of Sociology, VI, (1955) pp.305- 317. IS Marx, Karl, Introduction to the Grundrisse in A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, introduced by Maurice Dobb, p. 188. Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, The German ideology, Laurence Sc Wishart, London, 1965, p.42. This fact by itself makes Pannekoek's limitation of idealism to feudal conditions and materialism to the bourgeois struggle against feudal conditions seem rather silly. We shall examine this in some detail in the final pages of chapter VI. Some examples would be; the continuing interest in the English idealists, as for example by Richard Wollheim in his study of Bradley; the ‘neo-idealism’ of Peter Winch in the social sciences and of Thomas Kuhn in the natural sciences; Nicholas Rescher’s related books on coherence theories of truth, conceptual idealism, and the centrality of practice to truth. Dummett, Michael, Frege: Philosophy of Language There are various, alternative methods for structuring the argument. With some changes, I am following the argument of Colin Phillips, ‘Constructivism and Epistemology’ Philosophy 53, Jan. 1978, pp. 51-69. For an attack on scientific realism by a philosopher of science, see the symposium ‘The Underdetermination of Theory by Data’ between W, Newton-Smith and S. Lukes in Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Vol Lll (1978). Newton-Smith’s strategy is to argue that there are cases in which there are alternative theories that can be constructed in science, and that the choice between them is underdetermined by all possible evidence. Either the realist must hold that one or the other theory is true, but we can never know which, or abandon his realist belief that there is any matter of fact that makes one or the other true. Newton-Smith chooses scientific examples, because he does not. want to allow the possibility of the choice being made on philosophical but non-empirical grounds. His cases, though, turn on problems of temporal identity (‘the same time') and spatial continuity, so it is not clear to me that there are not philosophical considerations for selecting between what are otherwise empirically equivalent theories. Rorty, Richard, ‘Realism and Reference’, The Monist, July 1976, Volume 59, No. 3. p. 327, 23 Ibid, p. 330. “ Ibid, p. 334. 12 Fisk, Milton, ‘Idealism, Truth, and Practice’, The Monist, July 1976, Volume 59, No. 3, p. 373. - 2* Ibid., p. 374. 29 Ibid., p. 389. For a development of a causal theory of reference, see Hilary Putnam, ‘Explanation and Reference’, eds. Pearce and Maynard, Conceptual Change, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1973, pp. 199-221. ™ Ibid., p. 386. 31 Ibid., p. 387. LENIN AND HIS CRITICS . . . there is a materialist line and an idealist line in philosophy, and between them there are various shades of agnosticism. The vain attempts to find a ‘new' point oi view in philosophy betray the same poverty of mind that is revealed in similar efforts to create a ‘new' theory of value, a ‘new’ theory of rent, and so forth.1 We have agreed, in Chapters IV and V, that a reflection or correspondence theory of knowledge, ‘suitably formulated’, passed certain requirements which we claimed were essential for any acceptable theory of knowledge. In this chapter I propose to turn to a specific formulation of a reflection theory of knowledge, that of Lenin in his Materialism and Empirio- Criticism. It remains, thus far, an open question whether or. not his particular formulation of a reflection theory of knowledge passes those tests of adequacy, and it is to that question which this chapter is meant to address itself. It is only with Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism that I intend to deal in any detail. Many have claimed to detect an ‘implicit’ theory of knowledge in other of Lenin’s published, non-philosophical writings. I have heard it claimed, for instance, that the theory of knowledge ‘implicit’ in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism is ‘undialectical’. More importantly, perhaps, Lenin wrote another, explicitly philosophical work, unpublished in his lifetime, The Philosophical Notebooks. The Notebooks are not so much a ‘work’ of philosophy, as Lenin’s own extracts from, and marginal comments upon, a number of philosophical works of various philosophers, and above all on Hegel’s Science of Logic. Materialism ana Empirio-Criticism was written by Lenin during February to October, 1908, in Geneva and then London, and was aimed at a group of Russian Marxists, most notably Bogdanov, Bazarov, and Lunacharsky, who were attempting to underpin Marxism with the positivism of Mach and Avenarius. Subsequent to this philosophical intervention in the struggle going on within Russian Social Democracy, Lenin undertook, for the first time, a careful study of Hegel’s philosophy, and it is the fruit of that study which forms the central core of The Philosophical Notebooks (Volume 38 of Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow), which were compiled by Lenin from 1914 to 1916. Many have argued that Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and the Philosophical Notebooks are inconsistent. There is no doubt that certain emphases and insights can be discovered in the latter which only existed to a lesser extent in the former. One of these emphases is undoubtedly the whole question of dialectic. Lenin’s later judgement that ‘it is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly understood Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understand Marx!’ was no doubt meant to include within its scope the Lenin of Materialism and Empirio- Criticism, Nor can one easily imagine the Lenin of that earlier work proposing, as he later did, that Marxists form a society to be called ‘the society of materialist friends of Hegelian dialectics’. But even if we admit to these changes and shifts that do undoubtedly occur in Lenin’s thought after his study of Hegel, the task of a serious and balanced appraisal of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism still remains. Consider, for example, the rather untempered views of N. Valentinov, in his Encounters with Lenin: This remark [from The Philosophical Notebooks] reveals that Lenin’s earlier views on materialism were breaking up under Hegel’s influence. This is confirmed by a phrase which would have been impossible on his lips earlier: 'Intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than is stupid materialism’. . . ... at that time [of The Notebooks] Lenin thought that materialism . . . was a very weak philosophical theory. Lenin had begun to understand quite well that the materialism he had propounded in his book with such fervour and confidence was also weak and vulnerable. In the years after the October Revolution he abandoned most of his previous views and certainties . . . and yet Lenin did not have the courage to say openly that he had thrown out, as useless, some very substantial parts of his philosophy of 190S.2 Where 1 willingly spoke of ‘changes’, ‘shifts’, new ‘emphases and insights’, Valentinov talks of Lenin’s earlier views ‘breaking up’, of those earlier views being ‘abandoned’ or ‘thrown out’. As my remarks at the beginning of Chapter V will have already indicated, no one has, I think, ever successfully substantiated these sorts of oft repeated claims of abandonment, rejection, etc. by Lenin of his earlier philosophical views of the period of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. There are new.emphases in the Notebooks, and it may even be, as Michel Lowy has recently argued,3 that the new-found stress on dialectics in The Notebooks marks a crucial change in Lenin’s revolutionary strategy, from a Menshevik ‘stages’ strategy for the Russian Revolution to a strategy of ‘permanent revolution'. But 1 will argue that whatever change there may be between Lenin’s philosophy of 1908 and 1914-1916, such changes do not amount to an abandonment, rejection, or throwing out of the earlier philosophy, as Valentinov claims. Dialectics may, for example, be stressed in The Notebooks, but the topic is not missing entirely from Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: in the theory of knowledge, as in every other sphere of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance . . .’(p. 127). In his discussion of‘relative’and‘absolute’truth, Lenin describes the way in which science grows, develops, proceeds. At any given moment we do not, he says, assume that we have the whole truth, or only the truth. At any moment in the ongoing scientific enterprise, out beliefs can fail to correspond. We can make mistakes, errors, and so on. which at least have the possibility of being corrected the next time around dialectical materialism ‘certainly does contain relativism, but is not reducible to relativism, that is, it recognises the relativity of all our knowledge, not in the sense of denying objectivetruth, but in the sense that the limits of approximation of our knowledge to this truth are historically conditioned’ (p. 176). Science may ‘aim at’ reality; it does not always hit It No one, I think, has ever had a finer intuitive feel for the dialectical development of science over time, the ways in which past errors have the opportunity to be replaced for present (or future) truths, and Lenin sees, as clearly as one can, how this appreciation of the dialectical history of science is wholly consistent with upholding, as a realist, the possibility of objective knowledge, true belief, about a reality essentially independent of thought or the human. None of the major themes of Materialism and Empiric*- Criticism is, as far as I can see, actually contradicted in The Notebooks. In particular I claim that both materialism and a reflection theory ol knowledge, however much developed and deepened, survive intact. As the quotation from The Notebooks cited at the beginning of Chapter V makes clear, Lenin carefully distinguishes between a dialectical and a non- dialectical theory of reflection. Both are theories of reflection. There is, then, no rejection of reflection theory in The Notebooks, but only an insistence that the sort of reflection theory adopted by materialists must contain a dialectical version of reflection. This I take to mean, essentially, that both science itself and the reality which it attempts to reflect should be seen in process, be seen to change and transform themselves over time, and should not be seen in some ‘frozen’, static form. ‘The reflection of nature in man’s thought must be understood not “lifelessly”, not “abstractly”, not devoid of movement, not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of movement , . .’; '. . , here [in Hegel’s philosophy] we have an immeasurably rich content as compared with “metaphysical” materialism, the fundamental misfortune of which is its inability to apply dialectics to Bildert'heorie, to the process and development of knowledge.’ All of this certainly does not seem to add up to a rejection or abandonment by Lenin of his earlier views. 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