Conclusion

Wellred

Core Argument

In this concluding chapter of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin distils his entire critique into four definitive standpoints from which a Marxist must judge the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius. The first and most fundamental standpoint is theoretical: a systematic comparison of empirio-criticism with dialectical materialism. Across the preceding chapters, Lenin argues, this comparison has demonstrated that empirio-criticism is thoroughly reactionary, employing novel terminology and sophistry merely to disguise the perennial errors of idealism and agnosticism. Any talk of “combining” this school with Marxism, he insists, can only stem from profound ignorance of both philosophical materialism and the dialectical method of Marx and Engels.

The second standpoint situates empirio-criticism within the broader landscape of contemporary philosophy. Both Mach and Avenarius began from Kant, but their trajectory led them away from materialism and towards Hume and Berkeley. Avenarius, in purporting to “purify experience,” was in reality only purging agnosticism of its Kantian residues. Lenin observes that the entire school is moving ever more decisively towards idealism, marching in lockstep with the immanentists, whom he denounces as one of the most reactionary idealist currents.

Thirdly, Lenin addresses the connection between Machism and a specific crisis within modern physics. While the vast majority of natural scientists remain materialist, a minority of “new physicists” have been thrown into confusion by the great discoveries that shattered older theories. This crisis, revealing the relativity of knowledge, has led them—through ignorance of dialectics—to slide from relativism into idealism. Lenin dismisses this “physical idealism” as a reactionary and transient infatuation, no more durable than the physiological idealism of the recent past.

Finally, Lenin insists that beneath the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism lies a struggle of parties in philosophy, which in the last analysis reflects the antagonistic class ideologies of modern society. Philosophy is as partisan today as it was two thousand years ago; the contending camps are materialism and idealism, the latter being merely a refined form of fideism. Fideism, fully armed and commanding vast organisations, exploits every philosophical vacillation to influence the masses. The objective class role of empirio-criticism, Lenin concludes, is to render faithful service to the fideists in their struggle against materialism in general and historical materialism in particular.