Lenin as philosopher a critical examination of the philosophical basis of Leninism

177 Pages·2003·0.669 MB·English

by  Pannekoek, Anton;Richey, Lance Byron

Lenin As Philosopher
Marquette Studies in Philosophy
Andrew Tallon, editor
Harry Klocker, S.J. William of Ockham and the Divine Freedom
Margaret Monahan Hogan. Finality and Marriage
Gerald A. McCool, S.J. The Neo–Thomists
Max Scheler. Ressentiment
Knud Løgstrup. Metaphysics
Howard P. Kainz. Democracy and the Kingdom of God
Manfred Frings. Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a
Great Thinker
G. Heath King. Existence Thought Style: Perspectives of a Primary Relation,
portrayed through the work of Søren Kierkegaard
Augustine Shutte. Philosophy for Africa
Paul Ricoeur. Key to Husserl’s Ideas I
Karl Jaspers. Reason and Existenz
Gregory R. Beabout. Freedom and Its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and
Despair
Manfred S. Frings. The Mind of Max Scheler. The First Comprehensive
Guide Based on the Complete Works
Claude Pavur. Nietzsche Humanist
Pierre Rousselot. Intelligence: Sense of Being, Faculty of God
Immanuel Kant. Critique of Practical Reason
Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World
Karl–Otto Apel. Towards a Transformation of Philosophy
Michael Gelven. This Side of Evil
William Sweet, editor. The Bases of Ethics
Gene Fendt. Is Hamlet a Religious Drama? As Essay on a Question in
Kierkegaard
Pierre Rousselot. The Problem of Love in the Middle Ages. A Historical
Contribution
Jan Herman Brinks. Paradigms of Political Change: Luther, Frederick II,
and Bismarck. The GDR on Its Way to German Unity
Margaret Monahan Hogan. Marriage As a Relationship
Gabriel Marcel. Awakenings
Roger Burggraeve. The Wisdom of Love in the Service of Love
Jules Toner. Love and Friendship
Anton Pannekoek. Lenin As Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the
Philosophical Basis of Leninism
Gregor Malantschuk. Kierkegaard’s Concept of Existence
Lenin As Philosopher
A Critical Examination of the
Philosophical Basis of Leninism
Anton Pannekoek
Revised Edition
Edited, annotated, and with an Introduction by Lance Byron Richey
Marquette University Press 2003
Marquette Studies in Philosophy No. 31
Series Editor, Andrew Tallon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pannekoek, Anton, 1873-1960.
[Lenin als Philosoph. English]
Lenin as philosopher : a critical examination of the philosophical
basis of Leninism / by Anton Pannekoek ; edited, annotated, and with an
introduction by Lance Byron Richey.— Rev. ed.
p. cm. — (Marquette studies in philosophy ; no. 31)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87462-654-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 1870-1924. I. Richey, Lance Byron, 1966-
II. Title. III. Marquette studies in philosophy ; #31.
B4249.L384P2713 2003
335.43’092—dc21
2003007415
© Marquette University Press 2003. All rights reserved.
Series Editor’s Note. Brief history of the text. Original German edition, entitled
Lenin als Philosoph: Kritische Betrachtung der philosophischen Grundlagen des
Leninismus, published in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1938, under the pseudonym
John Harper by the Bibliothek der “Ratekorrespondenz” No. 1. Ausgabe der Gruppe
Internationaler Kommunisten. French translation 1947 in Internationalisme the
journal of the Gauche Communiste de France. English translation by the author,
Pannekoek, published in in New York by New Essays Press in 1948. See the editor’s
Note on the Text, page 62 (infra) for more details on the text. This is the first
scholarly edition in English; the editor corrected the English (Pannekoek was not
fluent in English) using the posthumous 1969 German edition and made other
editorial emendations.
Member, American Association of University Presses
Contents
Editor’s Introduction:
Pannekoek, Lenin, and the Future of Marxist Philosophy 7
Note on the Text 62
Introduction 63
Marxism 67
Middle Class Materialism 79
Dietzgen 91
Mach 101
Avenarius 113
Lenin 121
The Criticism 121
Natural Science 127
Materialism 136
Plekhanov’s Views 143
The Russian Revolution 147
6 Anton Pannekoek Lenin As Philosopher
The Proletarian Revolution 155
Pannekoek’s Notes 163
Editor’s Notes 163
Name Index 173
Subject Index 176
Series Editor’s Note
Pannekoek had 3 notes, on p. 136 (note A), p. 139 (note B), and p. 151
(note C); these notes appear on page 163. All other notes are the Editor’s
(Richey).
Editor’s Introduction 7
Pannekoek, Lenin, and the Future of
Marxist Philosophy
Anton Pannekoek’s Lenin as Philosopher occupies a unique po–
sition within the literature on Lenin. Some eighty years after
Lenin’s death and nearly a century after the appearance of his
Materialism and Empirio–criticism, Pannekoek’s slim volume remains
one of the most substantive and focused discussions of Lenin’s mate-
rialist philosophy available.1 Moreover, it is unsurpassed (at least within
the English literature) for its detailed discussion of the late–nine-
teenth century background to Lenin’s thought, a period in the his-
tory of philosophy largely forgotten today even by most scholars. For
that reason alone, Pannekoek’s book merits reading and reflection,
and not just by students of the history of Marxism but by anyone
interested in the course of modern intellectual history.
Moreover, with the exception of Georg Lukacs, whose small book
on Lenin—really just a longish essay—is curiously unphilosophical
(or at least unmetaphysical), Lenin as Philosopher is the only serious
assessment of Lenin’s thought written by a major figure in revolu-
tionary politics.2 As a result, few other works offer such a creative
connection of his philosophy (of 1908, at least) to his subsequent
political activity—perhaps the most important question of all when
assessing his philosophy from a Marxist perspective.3 If, as Lenin him-
self demanded, Marxist theory is to be done not by scholars but by
revolutionaries, this is no small consideration in assessing its ulti-
mate value. The judgment of Karl Korsch—certainly a comparable
figure within Marxist politics and an even larger one within Marxist
theory—that Pannekoek, because of his unique combination of sci-
entific training and political activism, “undoubtedly . . . is better
8 Anton Pannekoek Lenin As Philosopher
qualified for this task than any other contemporary Marxist,” still
holds true.4
Most importantly, reading Lenin as Philosopher at the beginning of
the twenty–first century offers a new opportunity to reconsider the
history of Marxist philosophy—or, more accurately, the philosophy
of a once–dominant but now widely discredited strain of Marxism.
This is not to say that Pannekoek’s final judgments on Lenin should
be allowed to stand unchallenged, but rather that he offers an excel-
lent place from which to begin rethinking the significance of Lenin’s
thought for the Marxist tradition. Indeed, only by considering the
unique historical juncture between philosophy, science, and politics
which produced both Materialism and Empirio–criticism in 1908 and
Lenin as Philosopher some thirty years later, can Lenin’s originality—
and Pannekoek’s limitations—as a philosopher be fully appreciated.
Towards that goal, this essay is divided into two main sections: (1)
a review and interpretation of the philosophical background to Lenin’s
Materialism and Empirio–criticism, supplementing and reinterpret-
ing the account found in Pannekoek’s book, and (2) a analysis of the
philosophical efforts of Pannekoek and Lenin to escape the impasse
of late nineteenth century bourgeois philosophy and of the reasons
for Lenin’s success and Pannekoek’s failure in this project. While the
first section makes no pretense to great originality or insight, in the
second I do hope to suggest—a suggestion only, given the limita-
tions of this introduction—that Materialism and Empirio–criticism
has a significance for Marxist philosophy that has yet to be fully ap-
preciated. As will become clear, I believe that this work, despite its
many weaknesses, played an essential role in Lenin’s larger project of
overcoming the self–contradictions of nineteenth century bourgeois
philosophy. As such, it deserves much more serious consideration
and analysis than either Pannekoek or many of Lenin’s own disciples
have given it since its appearance.
Editor’s Introduction 9
The Philosophical Background of Materialism and
Empirio–criticism
While most students of the history of Marxism know at least the
main thrust of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio–criticism, and could
perhaps even describe in broad outline the philosophical views of
Ernst Mach which precipitated a small crisis within Marxism during
the first decade of the twentieth century, their knowledge usually
ends there. The philosophical milieu out of which the “Machist”
controversy arose, namely, the decay of positivism into competing
materialist and idealist systems during the last decades of the nine-
teenth century, has almost entirely disappeared from the historical
consciousness of all but a few specialists. This gap in the popular
memory is particularly distressing when we recall that positivism and
its by–products dominated European philosophy during both the
most productive years of Marx’s career and the critical period be-
tween the appearance of the first volume of Capital in 1867 and the
appearance of Materialism and Empirio–criticism in 1908. Unless one
agrees with his Soviet hagiographers that Leninism sprang from Marx’s
corpus, like Minerva from Zeus’ head, fully grown and intellectually
mature, this historical amnesia presents an almost insuperable ob-
stacle to the proper understanding of Lenin’s ideas.
One of the chief merits of Lenin as Philosopher is its ability to help
one to gain some familiarity with such now–forgotten figures as
Dietzgen, Haeckel, Avenarius, and Mach. At least as regards the par-
ticulars of their thought, Pannekoek’s book remains one of the quickest
and most painless paths to a basic understanding of their positions.
This fact alone covers a multitude of intellectual sins, since only one
who has suffered through the original texts of these men can fully
appreciate the service which Pannekoek’s summary provides to mod-
ern readers. Less satisfactory, though, is his understanding of the pe-
riod in toto, including his assessments of relative importance of these
philosophers and the crude dialectic which governs his historical nar-
rative. Despite his considerable scientific accomplishments, Pannekoek
possesses neither nuance or sophistication as an intellectual histo-
rian. As a result, his portrait of the philosophical background of
10 Anton Pannekoek Lenin As Philosopher
Materialism and Empirio–criticism, which he de facto divides into three
main schools (Materialism, Idealism, and Marxism), requires both
supplementation and occasional correction.
Towards that end, the following discussion—actually only a
sketch—of the course of late nineteenth century German philoso-
phy is offered. No pretense of exhaustiveness or even a special thor-
oughness is made: following the narratives of both Pannekoek and
Lenin, such influential figures of the period such as Weber, Frege,
and Nietzsche are noticeably absent. Even the discussion of the more
prominent figures in Lenin as Philosopher, such as Dietzgen and
Haeckel, is limited to the provision of a short summary of their posi-
tions, especially when Pannekoek has failed to provide this. Rather,
the primary purpose of this section is to recast the historical narrative
offered by Pannekoek, to emphasize the common origins, assump-
tions, and limitations of these thinkers, and to present the conflict
between materialism and idealism as the expression of a more funda-
mental philosophical kinship among philosophers of the period. Only
when they are understood thus can the Lenin’s originality and im-
portance as a philosopher be clearly seen.
(A) Positivism
Perhaps the most serious weakness of Pannekoek’s reconstruction of
the period is his failure to note the common source of both “middle–
class” materialism and Machism in the decay of positivism from the
1850s onwards. While almost every textbook history of the period
locates the source of both materialism and Machism in positivism,
and many even extend the name “positivist” to include them all,
Pannekoek treats them as philosophically (if not socially) discrete
movements. Moreover, his portrait of them is both ideologically
charged and crudely schematic, with materialism embodying the ini-
tial stage of bourgeois triumph over feudalism, and idealism consist-
ing of little more than a reactionary response to the rising power of
the proletariat. Whatever polemical purposes such a presentation of
their relations may serve, it does little to further the reader’s under-
standing of the background to Lenin’s thought. Worse still, by not
locating the origin of both movements in the positivism of the mid–