Preface to the Second Edition¶
Core Argument¶
In this brief preface to the second edition of Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin establishes the text’s enduring purpose as a guide to the philosophical foundations of Marxism, specifically dialectical materialism, and to the philosophical implications of recent developments in natural science. He notes that the new edition contains only minor textual corrections, signalling that the core argument remains unchanged and, in his view, fully vindicated by the intervening years. The preface, however, is not merely a technical note; it is a pointed political intervention. Lenin directs the reader to an appended article by Comrade V. I. Nevsky, which he claims provides the necessary information on the latest works of A. A. Bogdanov, works Lenin himself had not yet examined. This reference is the preface’s substantive content.
Lenin’s polemic is directed squarely at Bogdanov and the intellectual currents he represents. Bogdanov, a former Bolshevik associate, had long promoted the idea of a distinct ‘proletarian culture’ (Proletcult), which Lenin here denounces as a vehicle for bourgeois and reactionary views disguised in Marxist language. The preface draws on the immediate historical context of the post-October Revolution period, when Bogdanov and his followers used the Proletcult organisations as a platform to propagate anti-Marxist ideas. Lenin accuses them of denying the value of the cultural inheritance of the past and of attempting, through abstract “laboratory methods” divorced from real social life, to create a culture for the proletariat that counterposed it to other working people, especially the peasantry. This sectarianism and separatism, Lenin argues, was a direct threat to the unity of the revolutionary movement and to the correct application of dialectical materialism.
The preface thus serves a dual function: it reaffirms the authority of the original text as a correct exposition of Marxist philosophy, and it issues a warning against a contemporary deviation that, under the banner of proletarian innovation, was in fact undermining the theoretical and political foundations of the revolution. Lenin’s tone is curt and authoritative, treating the dispute as settled in principle and the appended article as the final necessary refutation. The preface is a concise act of political and philosophical demarcation, asserting that the struggle over materialism is not an abstract academic matter but a live political question with direct consequences for the direction of the Soviet state and the international communist movement.