Abstract
Abstract Questions on the theory of cognition formed one of the focal points in the dispute between orthodox Russian Marxists and Aleksandr Bogdanov and his followers. Bogdanov was an adherent of Mach’s theory, which abandoned Kant’s concept of “things-in-themselves” (Ding an sich) outside the cognizing subject. According to Mach and Bogdanov, there is no need to duplicate human experience in appearances given in the senses and things behind these appearances. The orthodox Marxists, Lenin as well as Plekhanov, insisted that Kant’s concept of things-in-themselves should be retained, but in a modified form: the things-in-themselves do not form a limit to our knowledge, as Kant (allegedly) thought, but turn into “things-for-us” in the everyday processes of material and scientific production. Both solutions, the Machian and the orthodox Marxist, have their problems. In the Soviet era, Lenin was depicted as the winner of the dispute. But a closer examination of Bogdanov’s arguments shows that he actually found some weak points in Lenin’s conception. However, this does not mean that Lenin’s critique of Bogdanov as a subjectivist in his theory of cognition was groundless.
Highlights
Пусть не Аксельрод, не Дан В нашем опыте дан
Just before the breakthrough of Marxism in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the “subjective sociology” of Pëtr Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovskiy had been much en vogue in the radical wing of the Russian intelligentsia. Mikhailovskiy and his supporters insisted upon the decisive role of personal initiative in the historical process, and from this point of view they opposed what they interpreted as the “determinism” and “fatalism” of Marxism
According to Bogdanov, Lenin is operating in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism at the same time with three different concepts of the thing-in-itself
Summary
In his critique of Bogdanov, presented in the notorious philosophical pamphlet Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), Lenin relies to a great extent on Plekhanov’s arguments against the subjectivist interpretations of Marxism by the Neo-Kantians and Bogdanov. According to Bogdanov, Lenin is operating in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism at the same time with three different concepts of the thing-in-itself. These three concepts “correspond to the three philosophical schools, whose ideas have been spread among the Russian Marxists”(Bogdanov 1910: 163). The third version of Lenin’s concept of the thing-in-itself is not very clearly formulated in Bogdanov’s critique, but even here he is able to make an intriguing comment He notes that despite Lenin seeming at times to embrace Plekhanov’s interpretation of the thing-in-itself, there remains “a big difference between Plekhanov and Lenin, of which one is not allowed to lose sight. His own philosophy (if he even wanted to call it a “philosophy”) was not conceptually commensurate with such a task
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