A Philosophy of Certainty: Dialectical Materialism

Abstract

Lenin first began to take an interest in philosophy in the years following the failure of the revolution of 1905. This period saw the culmination of a process of critical self-examination that the Russian intelligentsia undertook, prompted partly by developments in contemporary European thought and partly by a resurgence of native religious philosophy led by such prominent thinkers as Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Frank, Struve and Gershenzon. The publication in 1903 of an influential collection entitled Problems of Idealism stands at the beginning of this phase, which culminated in 1909 with the publication of the celebrated Vekhi or ‘Landmarks’ collection. This latter collection was, from its first essay to its last, a denunciation of the barrenness of the whole socialist tradition in both the theory and the practice of the Russian intelligentsia. The militant materialism of Chernyshevsky and Plekhanov had, the contributors maintained, imposed upon Russian populists and Marxists alike an obligatory endorsement of science as the liberator of mankind and the objective criterion of truth. No amount of science, no weight of empirical experience could, however, yield the smallest moral precept — ‘scientific’ socialism of this sort was, they argued, ethically bankrupt. The other great rallying cry of the Russian intelligentsia — service to the popular masses (or the proletariat) was, similarly, an abnegation of the intelligentsia’s role of educating and improving the people.