second part
Lenin`s struggle against Empirio-Criticism and opportunists
The 20th century begins with struggle against opportunism in philosophy. Early in 1908 serious disagreements arose among the Bolsheviks on philosophical questions. Lenin had been opposing the philosophical views of A. Bogdanov since 1906 and even earlier, and he took up an uncompromising position towards those Bolsheviks, A. Bogdanov, A. Lunacharsky, V. Bazarov, who preached idealistic views in their symposium, ‘Essays on the Philosophy idealism and of revisionism in philosophy’ was one of the reflections of that decadence which began to manifest itself in political “society” and in political parties as a result of the defeat of the revolution of 1906. Lenin, who always attached considerable importance to the purity of Marxist ideology, carried on a sharp struggle against the empirio-critics, in defense of dialectical materialism, in defense of the philosophical principles of Marxism. In 1908 Lenin finished an important philosophical book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Notes Concerning a Reactionary Philosophy, the book second to comrade Engels Anti-Durring, became a tool in further struggle against opportunism particularly against Liquidationism.
The philosophy of empirio-criticism was propounded in 1890-1910, the time when finance capital was in the process of being established world over, it was the period when capitalism was developing into imperialism. The reactionary nature of finance capital got established in the political scenario leading to workers unrest and massive protests in Moscow and elsewhere, after which there was huge repression on the revolutionary movement, party and people. This caused many petty bourgeoisie intellectual to dessert the party. In philosophy this desertion was identified as that of the reactionary empirio-criticism. At that time comrade Lenin opened two front one was the political front in which we know that during 1908 to 1917 comrade Lenin wrote several articles exposing the liquidators and opportunist who wanted to make the party an open and legal amorphous unit. While the another front, of remarkable necessity was in philosophy where he had to defeat the empirio-critical school. The logic of empirio-critical school was the substance of opportunism. Having understood this comrade Lenin almost annihilated it in his book. We present below a the comparison between opportunism and emirio-criticism, this will help us understand the philosophical drive within the political question raised by the then opportunist, many of this will find analogy with the present day opportunist against whom our party is struggling.
Empirio-Criticism
Opportunism
On experience
Subjective idealist :- sensation of an individual is primary
Subjective idealism:- due to which they give importance to once own experience in the movement and denies the importance of theory as guiding light. They place the individuals role and feelings at the center of politics.
On objective truth
There is no objective truth. Truth is organizing form of human experience
Truth is always relative hence has to be conditional. There can not be an absolute truth.
Non partisan
Tries to project oneself as neutral. That is neither idealist nor materialist, while in essence being subjective idealist.
Never declares ones political line with clarity. Always keep on bending to end and the another like a spineless reptile. Two stool theory
On cause and effect
There is no cause and order within the nature it is all our subjective experience that gets reflected in our language.
There are many factors responsible for an effect hence it would be wrong to find cause in one factor.
The opportunist and the emirio-criticist both deny the presence of absolute truth. For it is in in their class interest to keep the truth vague and undefined so that they may follow the dictum that suits them the most, this is the basic trait of opportunism, they sit own two stools, this relativity is explained in the emirio-criticism. Comrade Lenin explains how a communist should approach this question. He says “In a word, every ideology is historically conditioned, but it is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: Yes, it is sufficiently "indefinite" to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently "definite" to enable us to dissociate our-selves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant.” The deniability of absolute truth remains the trait of opportunists to the present time. When every question or issue is framed in relativity opportunism finds the best way to evade and embrace selectively. Being ug or open is relative concept for them, forming a disciplined party is again a relative concept. With relativity there comes excuse for not doing what was expected of besides when something is relative no one can charge you of being deviated from the line. Such dear was the concept of denial of absolute truth for the opportunist. It was as if the emirio-critical school provided the opportunist with an oxygen cylinder at times of pandemic like attack from Bolsheviks.
Another disturbing trait of Empirio-criticism as an philosophy is that it makes individual both the subject and the object of analysis, this sort of hyper individualism leads to subjective and non scientific emotions and speculations in practice. The petty bourgeoisie who got frighted by the failed proletariat upsurge could not muster courage to follow the ideology that calls for patience and courage finally finds solace in an philosophy that denies the need to be partisan, that encourages one to be evasive. It promotes individualism by claiming that individual emotion is more important constituent of truth than
logic. Through logic one associated with proletariat for liberation but when if someone gives more importance to emotion then one finds methods to be confined at ones own need and necessities. This ia bourgeoisie morality of emirio-critical school. Empirio-critical thoughts created and strengthened opportunism within the communist movement. But the earth shaking October Revolution in Russia shattered all the hopes of the empirio-criticism and established Leninism. After the revolution in Russia, China too followed the path laid down by Marxism-Leninism and under the leadership of comrade Mao, revolution was successful in China in 1949 and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as new and advanced form of Marxism-Leninism also got established. Thus half of the world turned red. This was a shattering blow to the imperialist powers. To reconstruct themselves they need re-adjustment at two front one was on the political economy while the other on the ideological front. The political economy adjustment was in form of Regan Thatcher plan that came to be known as Neo-liberal policy. At the ideological level post modernism became a new tool, this too was neo; neo-emirio-criticism. This they did with the strategy of blocking the communist influence in universities by promoting the non-communist left which in fact were the empirio-criticist of the present time, they were basically post modern scholars fashioned in and around Marxism. Sometimes calling themselves new left or radical left or Neo-Marxist.
Seeing the huge influence of Marxism-Leninism in European campuses, US imperialist power assigned CIA the task to ensure that communist propaganda does not reach the European universities and in order to achieve this a special team of CIA was formed with experts from different academia and different countries. They planned a strategy, the idea of which was to unite all the non communist left intellectuals who would replace the communist intellectuals. These non communist left intellectuals were funded by the CIA and were assigned responsibilities to write and spread abusive articles and thesis on Communism and Marxism particularly on the ongoing practices in USSR and China. The thesis which animated all this mobilization of the Non-Communist Left was one which Chip Bohlen, Isaiah Berlin, Nicolas Nabokov, Averell Harriman and George Kennan ardently supported. This team was assigned the task to fight against totalitarianism. The team was supposed to be secret and its members were assigned individual as well as collective tasks.
At the political economy front Imperialist power again got stuck in crisis. The finance capital got more and consolidated in few hands. Banks got more powerful while the consumer barely had money to pay back the loan. As the crisis grew within the economy, political unrest and peoples movement sprang up throughout the world, 1960s became the decade of revolution throughout the world. The world socialist revolution seemed nearer at that time. But the series of betrayal by the revisionist leaderships in Russia by Khrushchev after comrade Stalin and in China by Deng after comrade Mao, world proletariat got stuck in deep grief. The petty bourgeoisie too lost its hope. At such times when the world proletariat power did not have any state power, the imperialist bourgeoisie promoted the so called non communist left ideologies which basically were the neo-empirio-criticism, this ideology came to be known as post modernism. The petty bourgeoisie which was grief laden got romantically attracted to the ruling class ideology of post modernism. Post-modernism appears everywhere from art, literature, architecture to sex and food everything around us have its imprint. Such strong was the propaganda machine of the imperialist powers against Communism. The team of the anti-communist left intellectual along with their boss CIA performed extremely well and got results by establishing the concrete hold of post modernism in the campus spaces.
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