Lénine — Les incursions des empiriocriticistes allemands dans le domaine de...

we have already seen, are divided into two camps. Mr. V. Chernov and the collaborators of the Russkoye Bogatstvo [3] are downright and consistent opponents of dialectical materialism, both in philosophy and history. The other company of Machians, in whom we are more interested here, are would-be Marxists and try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels. True, these assurances are for the most part nothing but assurances; not a single Machian would-be Marxist has ever made the slightest attempt to present in any systematic way the real trends of the founders of empirio-criticism in the field of the social sciences. We shall dwell briefly on this question, turning first to the statements to be found in writings of the German empirio-criticists and then to those of their Russian disciples. ( Chapter Five: The Recent Revolution in Natural Science and Philosophical Idealism ) 1. The Excursions of the German Empirio-Criticists Into The Field of the Social Sciences In 1895, when R. Avenarius was still alive, there appeared in the philosophical journal edited by him an article by his disciple, F. Blei, entitled “Metaphysics in Political Economy.” [1] All the teachers of empirio-criticism wage war on the “metaphysics” not only of explicit and conscious philosophical materialism, but also of natural science, which instinctively adopts the standpoint of the materialist theory of knowledge. The disciple takes up arms against metaphysics in political economy.…