Advance Under the Banner of Lenin’s Combat Materialism by Ai Siqi
Original article published on April 22, 1955, Page 3 of People’s Daily
I
On the occasion of commemorating the 85th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, we proudly feel that Lenin’s banner of combat materialism is guiding us forward. For the victory of our country’s socialist construction cause, we are engaged in a fierce struggle against the bourgeois idealist thought. This struggle requires us to earnestly learn from Lenin and deeply understand all of Lenin’s instructions concerning combat materialism.
Throughout his revolutionary career, Lenin consistently fought irreconcilably against bourgeois idealism. His early work “What Is ‘The People’s Friend’?” thoroughly exposed the reactionary nature of the populists, those “subjective philosophers” or “subjective sociologists.” In 1908, he wrote the epoch-making masterpiece “Materialism and Empirio-criticism,” which thoroughly refuted the most reactionary and decadent subjective idealist philosophy prevalent in imperialist countries—Machism. During World War I, Lenin devoted great effort to studying philosophy and wrote the famous “Philosophical Notebooks,” including the “Summary of Hegel’s ‘Logic’,” which set an example for us in critically studying classical idealist dialectical philosophy. The article “On Dialectics” in the “Philosophical Notebooks” revealed from the epistemological perspective the ideological roots of idealism and provided us with the most powerful theoretical weapon to criticize and overcome idealist thought. In 1922, Lenin sent a directive letter to the magazine “Under the Banner of Marxism,” calling on it to raise the banner of combat materialism to “resolutely expose and attack all the modern ‘degree-holding servants of monks’” (“On the Significance of Combat Materialism”). Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” is one of the most brilliant examples of combat materialism after Marx and Engels. It so profoundly and thoroughly exposed and smashed the nonsense of modern bourgeois idealist philosophy that the working class of any country can draw endless sources of strength from this work in ideological struggles against the bourgeoisie.
We should deeply understand Lenin’s instructions on the class significance of the struggle between materialism and idealism. Lenin pointed out that the philosophical struggle between materialism and idealism is a partisan struggle; it is the concentrated reflection in the realm of social thought of the struggle between mutually antagonistic classes in society. Modern idealism serves the interests of the reactionary bourgeoisie. If the bourgeois idealist thought is not resolutely combated, it will strive to expand its influence, corrupting the ranks of the working class and revolutionary people with anti-scientific fideistic ideas, leading various work and struggles toward subjective blindness, causing the working class’s scientific ideological weapon—Marxism-Leninism’s dialectical materialism and historical materialism—to lose its guiding role, thereby leading to the disintegration of revolutionary forces. Lenin’s following judgment on empirio-criticism applies to all bourgeois idealist philosophies:
“One cannot fail to see that the philosophical partisan struggle ultimately reflects the tendencies and ideological forms of the mutually antagonistic classes in modern society… The objective, class role of empirio-criticism can be entirely summed up as faithfully serving the fideists in their general struggle against materialism, especially historical materialism.”
Lenin’s determination to thoroughly smash empirio-criticism was due to the fact that bourgeois idealist philosophy at that time in Russia had already displayed this malicious role of serving reactionary rulers. When the Russian Tsarist government, taking advantage of the failure of the 1905–1907 revolution, intensified political and economic attacks on the working class and its revolutionary party, the bourgeois subjective idealist philosophy—Machism or empirio-criticism—actually infiltrated the Bolshevik ranks. Some unstable party members became Machists, cooperating with reactionaries in persecuting the revolution and began to “criticize” and “revise” Marxism. This attempt took the most cunning and dangerous form: they outwardly still claimed to be Marxists, but secretly sought to destroy the theoretical foundation of Marxism—dialectical materialism and historical materialism. If such an extremely dangerous attempt were not thoroughly exposed and smashed and allowed to expand its influence, the revolutionary party of the Russian working class would unknowingly undergo fundamental ideological degeneration, becoming an opportunist group loyal to the bourgeoisie, like the opportunistic social democratic parties in various countries. Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” defended the theoretical foundation of Marxism and overcame the harm of bourgeois idealist thought to the Russian party at that time.
This work of Lenin also has another significant meaning: it liberated science, especially modern natural science, from the crisis caused by bourgeois idealism. The new discoveries in physics at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries shook the old views on the structure of matter in natural science. Because natural scientists did not understand how to correctly summarize these achievements using the principles of dialectical materialism, some absurdly concluded that “matter has disappeared.” Thus, natural scientists, unable to understand the world with the correct worldview, became captives of bourgeois idealism in thought. Bourgeois idealism exploited this weakness of scientists, deceivingly taking the banner of “science” into their hands, disguising the anti-scientific subjective idealism of the 18th-century British bishop Berkeley as the “philosophy of 20th-century natural science” (Lenin: Preface to the first edition and Section 2 of Chapter 5 of “Materialism and Empirio-criticism”). Thus, when criticizing “empirio-criticism,” Lenin faced the task of refuting the distortion of scientific achievements by subjective idealism. He devoted great effort to this task. He “synthesized from the standpoint of materialism the most significant and concrete scientific achievements, especially in natural science, obtained from Engels’ death until the publication of Lenin’s ‘Materialism and Empirio-criticism’” (“Brief History of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” Chapter 4, Section 1), pointing out that these achievements only show that our understanding of the structure of matter has advanced a step further, not proving the idealist fallacy that “matter has disappeared.” These achievements prove the correctness of dialectical materialism and that our understanding of matter is endless; as science develops, we understand the essence of things more deeply step by step.
Because Lenin correctly summarized the latest scientific achievements and the experiences of the working class revolutionary struggle in the imperialist era, he further enriched and developed Marxism-Leninism philosophy—dialectical materialism.
II
Since China’s advanced people introduced Marxism-Leninism to China, there has been a fierce partisan struggle between Marxist dialectical materialism and bourgeois idealism. After the May Fourth Movement, China’s bourgeois revolutionary faction, such as Sun Yat-sen, although continuing to seek revolutionary paths and eventually finding a way to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party, another part of the bourgeoisie closely linked with imperialism and feudal forces took a resolutely reactionary path opposing the working class and revolutionary people. The “scholars” representing these bourgeois interests successively brought various ideological weapons against materialism and Marxism from philosophy professors in imperialist countries. Almost all the most decadent and reactionary philosophical schools of modern times flooded into China around the May Fourth Movement; subjective idealism seemed to hold a world exposition in China’s intellectual circles. This was naturally due to the special conditions of semi-colonial old China: each major imperialist not only had its agents politically and economically in old China but also found its agents in philosophical thought. Among them, the influence of American imperialism’s pragmatism philosophy, represented by Hu Shi, surprisingly took the first place. This corresponded to the trend of American imperialism gradually surpassing other imperialist powers after World War I. Hu Shi did not hide his consistent hostility to Marxism in philosophy and politics; he openly opposed pragmatism to dialectical materialism and opposed his reactionary reformist political views to the people’s revolutionary movement led by the Chinese Communist Party against imperialism and feudalism. Hu Shi’s activities confused many intellectuals and academics, attracting them away from the people and the revolutionary movement, thus serving the interests of imperialism and domestic reactionaries. The harmful influence of pragmatism has persisted into New China, seriously hindering many intellectuals and literary and art circles from turning to the people and accepting Marxism. For the victory of the socialist cause, we must launch a strong critical struggle against it.
Pragmatism disguises itself as the “latest” philosophical thought, but in reality, it is a branch of the same decadent subjective idealist philosophy as Machism. Lenin had already pointed out the reactionary kinship between pragmatism and Machism in “Materialism and Empirio-criticism.” Lenin said: “From the standpoint of materialism, the difference between Machism and pragmatism is as trivial and unimportant as that between empirio-criticism and empirio-monism.” Like Machism, pragmatism denies the objective reality of matter and tries to cover up the philosophical materialist line and the idealist line with “experience,” confusing the two as sacred. In essence, it uses idealist views to interpret experience, denying the objective content independent of human subjectivity contained in experience. Pragmatism also denies reason in the name of experience, i.e., denies theoretical knowledge reflecting the laws of development of things and denies the objective truth of scientific knowledge. It regards truth as purely subjective and relative, not recognizing objective truth or the dialectical relationship between relative and absolute truth. Pragmatism, like Machism, distorts modern scientific achievements, turning them into a superficial decoration of subjective idealism; the difference is that Machism borrowed the name of modern new physics, while pragmatism used the banner of evolutionism. Both cunningly undermine science under the guise of “science.”
Alongside pragmatism, bourgeois scholars also brought other Machist schools to China, such as the philosophy of British Russell—subjective idealism under the banner of mathematical logic science—which was once popular and second only to pragmatism in influence. Kantian philosophy, which differs slightly from Machism but also believes in agnosticism and subjective idealism, also found some market in China around the May Fourth Movement.
There were also more blatantly reactionary idealist thoughts openly advocating abandoning science, promoting “spiritual civilization,” calling for a return to ancient Eastern ways (Liang Shuming), advocating blind “free will,” praising Bergson-style “élan vital,” and even demanding a return to animal instinctive life (Zhang Junmai), etc. These bourgeois idealist schools with feudal and even fascist elements also appeared after the May Fourth Movement.
This is a brief picture of the various bourgeois idealist schools flooding into China’s ideological and cultural circles after the May Fourth Movement. It should be noted that the disseminators of these idealist schools often appear under the guise of “liberalism,” “apolitical,” “non-partisan,” and “purely academic.” However, no matter how eloquently people speak or how impartial they subjectively believe themselves to be, truly “non-partisan” and “apolitical” philosophical thought cannot exist. Naturally, the big landlords and big bourgeoisie in old China, tightly linked with imperialism and dominant, were so despicably narrow-minded and brutally decadent that even some reactionary idealists sometimes felt they could not fully rely on them and individually took political positions opposing them, and after national liberation, gradually abandoned idealist thought. But when these “scholars” enthusiastically spread their idealist thoughts, their “pure academic” opposition was more or less directly aimed at Marxism-Leninism—especially dialectical materialism philosophy—and thus in practice cooperated with the reactionary Kuomintang government’s “encirclement and suppression” of revolutionary people. Their various idealist philosophies uniformly confused people’s minds with anti-reason and anti-science fideistic fanaticism, thereby directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, guiding people’s thoughts toward the fascist philosophy of reactionary rulers—so-called “practical philosophy,” “vitalism,” etc. The most stubborn and main representatives of these bourgeois idealists, such as Hu Shi and Zhang Junmai, have already wholeheartedly joined Chiang Kai-shek’s bandits!
The situation in the Russian intellectual circles when Lenin criticized Machism also exists in China, namely bourgeois idealist thought disguised as Marxism infiltrating the revolutionary ideological ranks to “revise” and “criticize” Marxism. The recent struggle criticizing Hu Feng’s literary thought has clearly shown that Hu Feng’s literary thought not only attempts to “revise” and “criticize” Marxist literary theory under the disguise of “Marxism” but also generally undermines Marxism and dialectical materialism and spreads various most decadent and reactionary bourgeois idealist mixtures under the banner of “Marxist literary theory” or “realism.” The essence of Hu Feng’s literary program is to hinder the victory of our country’s socialist transformation and socialist construction through literary activities.
III
As Lenin pointed out regarding the principle of partisanship in philosophy, the ongoing struggle against bourgeois idealism in our country is the reflection in philosophical thought of the class struggle during our socialist construction process. Foreign imperialism and all resolute reactionaries in the classes that have been or will be eliminated are trying every means to sabotage our socialist cause. One of their most important methods is to influence and corrupt the people with bourgeois ideology, corrupt revolutionary cadres and our party. The spread of idealist thought is a form of class struggle in ideology. Therefore, the current struggle to criticize Hu Shi’s pragmatism and Hu Feng’s literary thought must be highly valued.
If anyone regards the struggle against bourgeois idealism and the defense of dialectical materialism as merely an internal matter of the philosophical circle or merely an academic and literary matter unrelated to practical work, that is a serious mistake. Subjectivist errors have occurred in our work, and subjectivism is a form of idealism in practical work. The spread of bourgeois idealist thought will inevitably promote the growth of subjective blindness. Lenin pointed out that the danger of idealism lies in its serving the bourgeoisie with “fideism.” The essence of fideism is subjective blindness. If we allow the bourgeoisie to use idealist thought to cause subjective blindness in our work, it will seriously hinder and sabotage our revolutionary and socialist construction cause, enabling the bourgeoisie to achieve its goal of resisting socialist transformation.
Do not think that the current struggle against bourgeois idealism only concerns Hu Shi’s pragmatism and Hu Feng’s literary thought, as if the problem only involves their fields of activity such as history, philosophy, textual research, literature, and art. We should note that since the May Fourth Movement, the areas where bourgeois idealism has spread are even broader, such as natural science and industrial and agricultural technology. Because many scientists were educated in bourgeois schools, the subjective idealist worldview certainly has influence in these areas. The problem is that this influence is often unconscious. Therefore, some scientists, although considering themselves purely scientific workers unrelated to any philosophy, often use Machist-like terms when teaching theoretical scientific issues. Some industrial and agricultural technicians often decide everything based on their subjective dogmatic formulas or preferences, regardless of whether it fits objective reality, mistakenly believing they are doing “true” and “scientific” work. The recently exposed erroneous tendencies in architecture and medicine are manifestations of bourgeois idealism. Why do scientists and technicians who pride themselves on worshiping science and cadres responsible for leadership in these fields fall under the influence of anti-scientific idealism? Why do they fall into such unconscious contradictions? It is because they do not understand that philosophical issues are not only for philosophers to consider. Anyone in any work, when using thought and studying problems, inevitably connects with some philosophical viewpoint (materialist or idealist). Genuine scientific thinking must be based on the philosophical viewpoint of dialectical materialism. Without consciously mastering the dialectical materialist method of thought in work, one is bound to become a captive of bourgeois idealism in one matter or another. Lenin said the following about this issue, which is worth every person engaged in natural science and industrial and agricultural technology to seriously study and understand:
*** “…It should be known that any natural science, any materialism, if it cannot provide strong philosophical arguments, cannot withstand the attacks of bourgeois ideas nor prevent the restoration of the bourgeois worldview. To support this struggle and to carry it through to complete victory, natural scientists must become modern materialists, conscious believers in the materialism represented by Marx, that is, dialectical materialists.” (Lenin: “On the Significance of Combat Materialism”)***
Therefore, we must recognize that the partisan struggle between materialism and idealism is closely related to all academic departments and all practical work. From this struggle, we must learn to clearly distinguish between materialism and idealism, consciously master the scientific weapon of dialectical materialism in work, and resist the influence of bourgeois idealism, avoiding the growth of subjective blindness. In this way, under Lenin’s banner of combat materialism, our work in all fields will improve day by day, and our socialist cause will proceed more smoothly.
