Horkheimer: Notes on Lenin and Method (1928/29).

This post is devoted to a reconstruction and translation of previously unpublished preliminary materials for Max Horkheimer’s posthumously published essay “On Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism” (1928/29), translated here:

As Alfred Schmidt describes the 11-page typescript1 in his prefatory remark (also available in translation via the link above) to the posthumous publication of the essay in the 11th volume of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (1987):

The folder in which the two drafts of the essay were found also contains an eleven-page typescript on Lenin’s text with handwritten additions by Horkheimer, in addition to a pair of quotations from Feuerbach’s later works on a separate sheet. Horkheimer seems to have used these materials—which are in certain places mere key-words—for a lecture course.2 While these other materials share a similar tenor of argumentation, they were only included in the essay—published here for the first time—very selectively, and were most likely composed shortly before it was written.

Note on the genesis of the book—viz., as the first printed volume of the Leninausgabe. The title and content of the book leave no room for doubt that it is indeed a work of philosophy, and in particular a work concerned with highly specialized and abstract branches of the discipline—primarily epistemology. The book was written to refute specific philosophical opinions that had gained ground among particular leaders in the party—namely, the epistemological philosophy of Mach and Avenarius. These leaders made it a matter of their propaganda that Marxian teachings had to be supplemented or undergirded by Empirio-criticism. According to their message, this philosophy was necessary for Marxism, necessary for Marxism to become capable of satisfying certain ideological, worldview-related needs better than it had been before. With this, they arranged themselves in opposition less towards specific passages authored by Marx himself than well-known philosophical positions from the works of Engels.

As all of you know, in his later years Marx devoted himself more to matters of pure economic theory, whereas Engels, in Anti-Dühring but also in shorter essays (above all in a work ‘On Historical Materialism’ that appeared in Die Neue Zeit),3 elaborated the other aspects of historical materialism. But you also know that these works of Engels’ cannot by any means be considered merely his private opinions, but that they were endorsed by Marx himself—and indeed, were in part co-formulated by him. Lenin is therefore doubtlessly in the right when he declares that wherever Marxist adherents of Empirio-criticism reject the philosophical theories of Engels, there is also an implied contradiction with the theories of Marxism in general. With particular scorn, he points out that the muddying of this opposition is exactly what characterizes his empirio-critical opponents. It is not the contradiction of the individual theses of Marx and Engels that is in-itself “un-Marxist,” but rather this muddying and concealing, and the impoverished and frivolous interpretation of Marxist theory that results from this, that must be combated without reserve. Whenever so-called orthodox Marxists attempted to correct individual theses, this always (as, e.g., with Mehring) happened in such a way that the opposition stepped clearly into the open. The real danger of the Russian Empirio-critics lies primarily in the fact that they presented the teachings of Mach under the banner of Marxism, and Marxism in the light of Mach’s theories, as if the two were one and the same. —Lenin’s objective is, therefore, twofold: first, to demonstrate the contradiction between Empirio-criticism and Marxist theory; second, to defend the latter, particularly where it contradicts Empirio-criticism and to refute and attack the latter in the process. First, I will present Lenin’s treatment of these two themes and thereby present the essential content of the book. Then, I will attempt to provide a critique of Lenin’s line of argumentation in order to finally, and in a purely programmatic way, outline the task which remains to be accomplished with respect to Lenin’s own object.

Lenin’s whole line of argumentation with respect to the first theme is constructed on the basis of the opposition between materialism and idealism. Lenin’s primary reference point is the passage in Engels’ Feuerbach: “Those who asserted the primacy of the mind over nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other… comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.”4 In Lenin, the opposition is formulated in rather less general terms—for him, materialism is the view “which regards nature, matter as originary” and idealism the view “which regards spirit, consciousness, sensation as originary.”5 Or, in another characteristic turn of expression for Lenin, “the idealist line” in philosophy proceeds “from sensations to the external world,” and “the materialist line” proceeds “from the external world to sensations.”6 “[W]hile for the materialists nature is primary and spirit secondary, for the idealists the reverse is the case.”7 In what respect is Mach an idealist then? —Exposition of Mach’s doctrine, by recourse to Lenin’s introduction, according to which Mach’s view is only a resurrected Berkeleyanism. Berkeley’s idealism, with its doctrine that things are nothing but subjective complexes of sensations.

On the grounds of the presentation of Berkeley [X]—deviations and innovations in the theories of Mach and Avenarius (Elementenlehre), deviations Lenin himself considers insignificant. (Explanation of the word “Empirio-criticism” in passing.)

Proof that the doctrine is in fact idealism, despite Mach’s rejection of this distinction.

Legitimate interpretation of Mach through exegesis in the spirit of the philosophy of [Hans] Cornelius, whom both Mach and Lenin recognize as consistently empirio-critical.

According to Mach, the body is equivalent to a relatively stable sum of tactile and visual sensations, linked to perceptions of space and time of the same kind, but also one that is by and large caught in a state of perpetual, if imperceptible, change. —Nowhere is there any causality, but only functions, i.e., relations of conditionality. —Even the “I” is only a complex, one whose components are the body and the memories and feelings bound up with it. —Natural laws are said to be constraints we impose on our own expectations, guided by our experience. Originally, our expectation is extremely indeterminate and general. With time, however, our notions of what to expect are, in light of observation, constrained and subject to constant refining. Out of infinitely many conceivable possibilities, a single possibility is ultimately selected, one that corresponds as precisely as possible to the facts. And yet it would be wrong to believe that “nature is forced to comply with these laws.”

For Cornelius, the question is complicated through the concept of the “individual law”—the ambiguity of this concept with respect to its objectivity makes it perhaps the best illustration of Lenin’s charge that Empirio-critics muddy the opposition between materialism and idealism. —Another illustration: Mach’s “little word ‘element.’” In a closer presentation of what, precisely, “element” is supposed to signify, we find that ‘elements’ may properly be called ‘sensations,’ but only when considered in conjunction with the ‘body-complex,’ while in other functional relationships they can also be considered constituents of physical objects. Even in the latter case, however, they can always at the same time be spoken of as ‘sensations,’ because “nothing can become the object of experience or science unless it can in some way enter consciousness [Bewusstseinseinheit].”8 In any event, in Mach’s case, this is not idealism in the sense that the “I” or personality is what is “primary”—as: “[A]n isolated ego exists no more than an isolated object: both are provisional fictions of the same kind.”9 Rather, it is idealism in the sense that lived conscious experience is the sole source and singular object of knowledge. This distinguishes Mach from the theological Berkeley; hence his affinity with Hume.

Here, transition to the second object—viz., to the question of who is “in the right.” To conclude the first, however: Mach and company are idealists, but in a sense of their own. Lenin failed to see the decisive opposition between Mach and Berkeley, the two kinds of idealism in question here. Were one to borrow from Lenin’s own idiom, this would likely be the place for a disparaging epithet. He should have suspected something from the vastly different historical functions of the two theories: Berkeley’s Court Church struggle against atheism, conscious reaction, teleology; it was his explicit aim to save spirits and souls.

Mach, on the other hand, embodies the petty-bourgeois hope in an earthly future—an ideal of progress, the significance of which is not our object of investigation here. It is characteristic of Lenin’s book, however, that these theories are examined entirely apart from this perspective. (Return to this later.) He did not recognize this distinction either in historical terms or in terms of content.

Now onto the second object: the objective point of contention. First, enumeration of the principal charges Lenin levels at Mach—or, as he expresses it, at ‘Machism.’

1. (Mentioned above) Mach plagiarizes Berkeley—but also Fichte! Quote: “The different methods of expression used by Berkeley in 1710, by Fichte in 1801, and by Avenarius in 1891-1894 do not in the least change the essence of the matter, viz., the fundamental philosophical line of subjective idealism.”10 What’s more, he plagiarizes Hume and, further still, all of the subjective idealists. (A peculiar turn of phrase, characterizing the adherents of a specific school of thought as plagiarizers of their predecessors.)11

2. All subjective idealism—and therefore Mach—must necessarily fall into solipsism. “Berkeley,” Lenin argues, “had already sufficiently shown that ‘out of sensations, i.e., psychical elements,’ nothing can be ‘built’ except solipsism.” —With this, however, solipsism is conflated with “illusionism”: “The doctrine that bodies are complexes of sensations, etc., is absolute illusionism, i.e., solipsism; for from this standpoint the world is nothing but my illusion.”12 [[X]13 For Mach, the “I” is a fiction!]

3. Mach contravenes natural science, which itself must necessarily make materialist presuppositions (geology, and—more generally—the conception of sensations as reflections of reality).

4. Mach secretly smuggles into his system the fact that sensations are bound to organic matter—that is, a materialist assertion.

5. Mach muddies the opposition between materialism and idealism (mentioned above) through sleight of hand with the “little word ‘element.’”

6. Mach cannot reckon with the fact that the earth existed before human beings.14

7. All subjective idealism is the standard-bearer for fideism, since, if things are mere complexes of sensations, we cannot in any way deny the believer the reality of the objects of his faith. Unfortunately Lenin is not as clear here as he could have been, but he is nevertheless right when he says that the step from idealism to fideism is but a small one.

But—and this is the most important task we have to fulfill—to what extent is Lenin’s positive point of view, which he promulgates in the book and opposes to idealist philosophy as the materialist kind, immune to the same reproach? As you know, and as Lenin himself frequently mentions, materialists are often repaid with exactly the same accusations of professing a metaphysics or a naive faith which they themselves level against their opponents.

(Re: the introduction to Lenin’s standpoint, read: “Does Objective Truth Exist?”)15

First in Marx and Engels, then in Lenin. In the former, more complex (more details on this later). For Lenin, reality is directly “copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations.”16

To the question of what is being reflected, we find a very precise answer in Lenin: matter, space and time. —To the objection that no one can know what matter, or indeed space and time, really are, since the theories human beings have about them are constantly changing, we find Lenin dispatches it handily with his concepts of relative and absolute truth. (Once these concepts have been explained, follow immediately with the difficulty raised several pages later.)17

Critique of Reflection Theory, leading into a more comprehensive critique of Lenin’s theory.

Crux of the critique: the relation between subject and object, consciousness and its object, is handled in an utterly undialectical way and posited as a fixed relation that remains constant for all time. The relation is not conceptualized in the context of human praxis, despite the fact that human praxis is continually referred to in the course of discussion. Instead, absolute articles of faith are propounded for which there is no criterion. Experiments can only furnish criteria for individual aspects of reality, but not for the kind of metaphysical assertions in whose sphere Lenin’s entire line of argumentation unfolds. But here—and indeed at the most decisive point of all, which he neither recognizes nor criticizes as such—he falls victim to his opponents: he allows his opponents to lure him out onto their own terrain. He dogmatically posits his own assertions in opposition to theirs: viz., that there is an absolute matter, absolute space and time; that there are no entities outside of space and time; that consciousness reflects reality through continuous approximation, much like a camera—and many other trappings of the very kind of materialism Marx and Engels themselves mocked. In this, he finds himself in agreement with all metaphysicians, but above all with the new reactionary “realists.”

This is precisely where we find the most severe confusion—albeit less a confusion of Lenin’s than a confusion of the persons responsible for editing and publishing this volume as the first of Lenin’s collected works. In 1908, Lenin set out to combat a malignant philosophical current in the Russian Party, one that appeared to him a genuine threat to the development of Marxism in Russia. To that end—and in his characteristic manner of directing all of his impassioned energy into a single cause—he undertook a survey of the full range of relevant literature on the topic and wrote a particularly voluminous book. Unless I am much mistaken, the size of the book is, in part, due to the fact that, at the time, there was an assumption that the intrinsic significance of a work stood in direct proportion to its page count. There are other, far superior philosophical works by Lenin. First and foremost, I am thinking of an essay from January 1921 contra Trotsky and Bukharin, as well as the fragment “On the Question of Dialectics,”18 published in the second issue of the journal Unter dem Banner des Marxismus.19 In any event, with his book on Empirio-criticism, Lenin did indeed achieve his intended purpose. The adherents of Mach lost their influence in the Russian Party.

And yet, the book is presented as if it was urgently relevant for readers today, especially in the introduction by Deborin, wherein the author proclaims that in Germany and Austria even now, Kantian scholasticism and positivist idealism are… in full bloom! Far from it! Deborin is so manifestly and woefully ill-informed about the actual conditions here, it would seem that he lives on the far side of the moon. In Germany, “positivist idealism” has long since become a term of abuse, even aside from the impact of Lenin’s book. Any Doctor of Philosophy branded a ‘positivist idealist’ would no longer even qualify for a professorship at a small university. Indeed, it is doubtful whether someone who was called such a name could even obtain their doctorate. No—in this sense, the book is not current, only kicking in open doors. But this is precisely the problem. Because of the way it tackles these questions, the sole distinction between present-day academic philosophy and the book itself is that the latter is poorer, less methodologically differentiated, and more primitive than the former. Marx was not only a horse’s length ahead of the most complex philosophy of his time (Hegel!), wielding its apparatus as if it were his own instrument, but ahead of all the theories of his time. Lenin, on the other hand, confronts his opponents on their own terrain, positing dogma against dogma, faith against faith, and, in so doing, not only falls short of his opponents, but also falls far behind his own teachers: Feuerbach, Marx, and Engels.

At this point, I will attempt to offer some justification for this. As stated, for the conclusion, I wish at the very least to indicate the direction in which a problem like combating an idealist doctrine such as Machism must be tackled. By way of a preface, I say that what I understand by this ‘direction’ is nothing other than the Marxist method. Lenin posits his own philosophical conviction against that of his opponent. In a manner just as unmediated as the philosopher of today might first assert that a personal God and an absolute Truth exists, only to then shortly thereafter assert that no such absolute God and no such absolute Truth exists, in order to accuse their opponents of being contradictory or misguided, Lenin begins by asserting that absolute Matter exists, and that there is also an absolute Truth—the sum-total of all the relative truths which compose it. Machism, however, a doctrine according to which everything is said to be a composite of the world-elements of sensation, is said to be a pitiful Professorenphilosophie, dismissed as an “eclectic pauper’s broth.”20 There is no need to beat around the bush: this accomplishes remarkably little and in this way no real progress on the path of knowledge can be made, not even if assertions of this kind are spread across the pages of such a voluminous book, not even if the attacks are directed specifically at the whole gamut of Russian, French, English, and German Machists of greater and lesser renown.

“Dialectical logic,” a Marxist wrote, “demands that we should go further. Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and ‘mediacies.’ That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in “self-movement” (as Hegel sometimes puts it). [...] Thirdly, a full ‘definition’ of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical logic holds that ‘truth is always concrete, never abstract’ [...].”21 The Marxist I have just quoted is Lenin himself, from the above-mentioned essay on the trade union question contra Trotsky and Bukharin. Lenin applied nothing of this method to Machism. He neither investigated its connections and mediations with social reality, and therefore failed to safeguard himself against mistakes and rigidity, nor traced the development—the “self-movement”—of German philosophy, a development the editor, Deborin, has no inkling of whatsoever. The demand that the whole of human experience and practice be included in the definition of the object—this does not even come up. Lenin handles Empirio-criticism and subjective idealism as a whole in complete isolation as philosophical theory. He makes no attempt to comprehend it under the criterion of actual praxis. He takes it up, in fact, as “abstract truth,” opposing it with an “abstract truth” of his own—even though, in the words of Hegel, Plekhanov, and Lenin himself, “truth is always concrete.”22

However this already points to what would have needed to be done according to the Marxist method of approach. Theories—metaphysical notions, articles of faith, worldviews in general—are, in its words, “directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of human beings, the language of real life.” “Human beings are the producers” of these theories, but “real, active human beings, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. [...] The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. [...] Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.” And for the method of approach corresponding to the reality of life, the starting-point “is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.”23 Thus, it would have been necessary to show how Mach’s petty-bourgeois philosophy could emerge from the social reality of turn-of-the-century Germany, to account for the circumstances under which it was bound to resonate in certain Russian circles, to determine what social situation such a philosophy represents, and so on. Perhaps Lenin—and here I can only hazard a suggestion, since studies of this kind are, sadly, still entirely lacking—might then have found that this epistemological philosophy—which locates the criterion for all knowing in the sensations of the individual subject, identifies the world with the consciousness of the bourgeois who believes only in what he can feel—necessarily corresponds to a more self-confident petty-bourgeoisie, one that believed in significant opportunities for advancement in society, with an unbroken belief in the possibility of progress for the individual members of its class that would later become impossible under the stable domination of trusts [Trustherrschaft]. Perhaps Lenin might also have been able to show that Mach’s philosophy was in a certain respect already posthumous, even in its own time, and that there were good reasons for the fact it was discussed more intensely in Russia than in Germany. But, as I have said, to date there have been hardly any studies of this kind undertaken.

[End of typescript.]

“To be not against religion, but beyond it! Knowledge is more than faith. However little we know, what determinate Little we do is still more than the nebulous Much that faith boasts over knowledge.”24

“The task of philosophy is not to refute faith, nor to prove it, but only to grasp it, to clarify it. Of course, this knowledge is not possible unless one does away with the bugbears into which faith has been turned.”25