Soviet Philosophy: The Ambiguous Inheritance of Materialism

Abstract

By its own account the fundamental identifying trait of Soviet Marxist-Leninist philosophy has been and is its dialectical-materialist standpoint. Engels’, and more particularly Plekhanov’s insistence that all philosophies belong to one or the other of two great camps, materialism or idealism, which together exhaust the most important tendencies of philosophical thought has been adopted as the first premise of all philosophical commentary.1 Within the camp of the materialists, two major groups are distinguished, the ‘vulgar’ or‘mechanistic’ materialists and the ‘dialectical’ materialists. The differences between these two varieties of materialism were thought to be so great that ‘dialectical’ or ‘intelligent’ idealism was to be preferred in Lenin’s eyes to ‘metaphysical’ or’ stupid’ materialism.2 Thus, in the view of most Soviet philosophers, the identity of Marxist-Leninist philosophy depends entirely upon success in maintaining the distinction between ‘dialectical materialism’ and all other species of materialism, as well as all varieties of idealism. This commitment, and the assertion that dialectical materialism constitutes the only true interpretation of Marx’s and Engels’ philosophical writings, are perhaps the two most fundamental dogmas of Soviet philosophy.