New edition of Lenins Materialism and Empirio-criticism available now from Wellr

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis of this article is that Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism remains a vital weapon in the theoretical arsenal of the Marxist movement, not merely as a historical document but as a living refutation of contemporary idealist fashions. The claim is that the philosophical struggle between dialectical materialism and subjective idealism is not a relic of early twentieth-century debates but a recurring axis of class struggle in the realm of theory. The article argues that the Machist currents Lenin demolished — which denied the objective existence of the material world independent of perception — have found their modern inheritors in postmodernist and obscurantist trends on university campuses today. The new edition, with Alan Woods' introduction, is presented as an intervention against this ideological retreat from materialism.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in the classical Marxist philosophical tradition, specifically the materialist epistemology developed by Marx and Engels and systematised by Lenin. The key concept deployed is the distinction between dialectical materialism and subjective idealism: the former holds that matter is primary and consciousness secondary, that the external world exists independently of human perception and is knowable through practice; the latter, in its various forms, reduces reality to sensations, perceptions, or language-games, ultimately collapsing into fideism or religious world outlook. The article situates Lenin's text within the broader struggle to defend the philosophical foundations of Marxism against revisionist currents that, in Lenin's analysis, inevitably lead to political opportunism. The theoretical tradition invoked is that of Engels' Anti-Dühring and Ludwig Feuerbach, extended by Lenin's insistence that philosophical questions have direct political consequences — that a party cannot be built on idealist foundations.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article connects Lenin's century-old polemic to the current conjuncture by identifying postmodernism and academic obscurantism as the direct inheritors of Machism. The conjuncture is defined by the ideological decay of late capitalism, where the retreat from materialist analysis manifests in relativism, the denial of objective truth, and the substitution of discourse for material reality. The article names university campuses as the terrain where this battle is being fought, and implicitly links the philosophical confusion to the political disorientation of the workers' movement — the inability to grasp capitalism as an objective system with laws of motion. The timing of the edition (2021) places it within a period of deepening capitalist crisis, where the need for clear materialist analysis is most acute, yet where idealist fashions proliferate precisely because they obscure the real contradictions of the system.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is a promotional piece for a book edition, so the argument proper continues in Alan Woods' introduction, In Defence of Materialism, published separately on marxist.com. The broader corpus of In Defence of Marxism contains numerous articles that extend the philosophical struggle into specific domains: critiques of postmodernism in cultural theory, analyses of the ideological function of relativism in the labour movement, and defences of scientific socialism against various forms of subjectivism. The argument also connects to the ongoing series on dialectical materialism published by the RCI, and to the theoretical education materials that use Lenin's text as a foundation for party-building. The question of how philosophical idealism translates into political opportunism — the central political implication of Lenin's book — is taken up in articles on reformism, centrism, and the degeneration of workers' parties.

Connections

This article should be read alongside Lenin's original text, of course, and alongside Engels' Anti-Dühring and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Within the IDOM corpus, it connects to Alan Woods' In Defence of Materialism and to the many articles critiquing postmodernism and relativism. The broader Marxist tradition would include Plekhanov's The Development of the Monist View of History and Lukács' History and Class Consciousness — though the latter's Hegelianism would require careful handling. For the contemporary dimension, Terry Eagleton's Ideology: An Introduction and Alex Callinicos' Against Postmodernism offer complementary critiques from within the Marxist tradition.

Key Quotes

1. "In this classic text, Lenin brilliantly explains the fundamental principles of the materialist philosophy of Marxism."

2. "He defends them against idealist attacks from the subjective idealism of Machism, a philosophical trend, which at Lenin's time was becoming very fashionable, even within the workers' movement."

3. "The aim was very simple: to bring out in the open the real difference between Marxist dialectical materialism and subjective idealism, which in the last instance always leads to some form of religious world outlook."

4. "In the new introduction... marxist.com editor Alan Woods provides an overview of Lenin's arguments, and mounts a defence of materialism against the obscurantist, postmodernist nonsense on university campuses today: the natural inheritor of the bankrupt ideas Lenin demolished a century ago."