Vladimir Lenin

Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist (1870–1924); leader of the Bolshevik faction from 1903, of the Russian Revolution from 1917, and head of the Soviet government until his death. Author of What Is To Be Done? (1902), Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908), Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), The State and Revolution (1917), and the late Philosophical Notebooks (written 1914–16, published 1929–30). For this wiki, Lenin is the protagonist of Ch 3 of *Adventures of the Dialectic*, where his 1908 philosophical text is diagnosed as the charter of the Marxist orthodoxy that displaces Lukács's "Western Marxism" and that Sartre's ultrabolshevism secretly inherits.

Key Points

  • *Materialism and Empiriocriticism* (1908): Lenin's polemical text against empiriocriticism (Mach, Avenarius, Bogdanov) reinstates a pre-Hegelian, pre-Kantian "gnostilological" theory of knowledge — the definition of truth as "the harmony of representation with the objects which are outside it" (AD 83). This becomes the charter of Russian Marxist orthodoxy.
  • Tactical vs. strategic reading: MP allows that Lenin may have treated Materialism and Empiriocriticism as a "simple and efficacious ideology" for a country that had not experienced Western capitalism's philosophical development (AD 85). The later Hegel-reading in the Philosophical Notebooks (1914–16) supports this: Lenin's naïve realism was for tactical reasons, not philosophical conviction. But "tactics without principles — anywhere, but especially in philosophy — are a confession of irrationality."
  • The Party as "a step in advance": Lenin's most serious theoretical formulation of the Party-proletariat relation. The theoretician is not the proletariat's master but "only a step ahead" of it; the Party must explain its line; what the proletariat cannot be convinced of is "not yet true" (AD 76). MP sees this as the good Leninism that is later lost.
  • The "gnostic" dialectic: Lenin's realism and the dialectic cannot coexist philosophically. Placing the dialectic in the object (in "second nature") exempts the subject from self-criticism and installs an apparatus above the dialectic. This is the philosophical structure of the Stalinist orthodoxy.
  • The early/late Lenin: MP treats Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908) and the Philosophical Notebooks (1914–16) as in philosophical tension. The later Lenin, reading Hegel, "would scarcely leave the succinct 'gnosticism' of Materialism and Empiriocriticism intact" (AD 85). MP's sympathies are with the later Lenin.

Details

The 1908 Text

Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism is a polemical response to a specific intra-Party crisis: the 1905 Revolution's failure had led a group of Russian Social Democrats (led by Bogdanov) to adopt Mach's empiriocritical epistemology, which Lenin read as dangerous idealism. Lenin's response was to reinstate a pre-Hegelian materialism: ideas are "images" of external things; truth is correspondence of image and thing; matter is the philosophical category for what exists outside consciousness.

MP's diagnosis in Ch 3: this is a reversion, not a development. "This was to annul all that has been said about knowledge since Epicurus, and Lenin's very problem — what he called the 'gnostilological question' of the relationship between being and thought — re-established the pre-Hegelian theory of knowledge" (AD 83). Lenin never asks "by what miracle knowledge carries on a relationship with a suprahistorical object, a relationship which is itself removed from history."

The key philosophical failing: Lenin does not "put knowledge back among the other ideologies." On the dialectical view MP prefers, knowledge is one historical ideology among others; its self-understanding requires that it reflect on its own historical conditions. Lenin's gnosticism exempts knowledge (and specifically Marxist knowledge) from this self-criticism.

Tactical Reading

MP allows the possibility that Lenin wrote Materialism and Empiriocriticism as tactical move rather than as settled philosophy. The evidence: Lenin's 1908 letter to Gorky proposing a "neutrality pact concerning 'empiriocriticism'"; Lenin's post-1916 turn to Hegel; Lenin's late call for "a systematic study of Hegel's dialectic from a materialistic point of view."

On this reading, Lenin's 1908 realism was a "shift in cultural politics rather than a rigorous philosophical formulation" (AD 85). It was meant to inoculate the Russian working class against philosophical idealism before the dialectical subtlety could be cultivated. But even as tactics, MP argues, it had to be coherent with strategy — and pre-Hegelian gnosticism cannot introduce the Marxist dialectic.

"Here, as everywhere, communism after Lenin has stabilized, congealed, transformed into institutions, and denatured what was, in Lenin's view, only a phase in a living development" (AD 85). Lenin's 1908 text, written for a moment, became the orthodox charter for generations. This is the central thesis of Ch 3.

The Party in Lenin

MP's reading of Lenin on the Party is more sympathetic than his reading of Lenin on knowledge. Lenin "postulated [the] agreement [of spontaneity and consciousness] in the common work of the Party" (AD 153). The Party's line must be explained to the proletariat, not imposed on it. "The theoretician... is in front of the proletariat, but, as Lenin said, only a step in front of it. In other words, the masses are never the simple means of a great politics which is worked out behind their backs" (AD 76).

This "a step in advance" formula is the good Leninism MP wants to preserve. It insists on two distances at once: the theoretician is ahead (not merely consulting the masses' opinions) but only a step ahead (not imposing a truth worked out in secret). The formula specifies the proper rhythm of the interworld between Party and class — neither pure vanguardism nor pure spontaneism.

Ch 5's engagement with Sartre repeatedly invokes this formula against Sartrean pure action. Sartre's Party has swallowed the proletariat and become its definition; Lenin's Party holds the proletariat at a measured distance. "Lenin gave consciousness the obligation of informing itself about everything the proletariat spontaneously does or says and of explaining to the proletariat its own direction" (AD 153).

What MP Rejects in Lenin

MP's critique of Lenin focuses on three moves:

  1. Realist gnosticism in the theory of knowledge: the 1908 book's reversion to pre-Hegelian materialism.
  2. The naturalization of the dialectic: placing the dialectic in the object exempts Marxist theory from self-criticism. "Lenin's gnosticism, by joining the dialectic with materialistic metaphysics, preserves the dialectic but embalms it, outside ourselves, in an external reality" (AD 89).
  3. The Party as apparatus: Lenin's later formulation of Party discipline (after 1921, the prohibition of factions in the Tenth Party Congress) moves the Party away from "communication" and toward "apparatus." "This means concentrating the movement of history, as well as that of knowledge, in an apparatus" (AD 89).

What MP Preserves in Lenin

MP's reading is not wholly negative:

  1. The "a step in advance" formula — the proper distance between theory and practice.
  2. The late Hegel-reading in the Philosophical Notebooks — "one does not see how a pre-Hegelian gnosticism or even a pre-Kantian one could introduce the Marxist dialectic" (AD 85). Lenin himself seems to have recognized this.
  3. The critique of "spontaneism" — MP agrees that spontaneity alone cannot produce revolutionary consciousness.

The key Lenin MP wants to preserve is the Lenin who insisted on explaining the line to the proletariat; the Lenin MP rejects is the Lenin of realist gnosticism and Party-as-apparatus.

Lenin and Stalinism

MP's reading of Lenin carefully distinguishes Lenin from Stalinism. "After Lenin... communism has stabilized, congealed, transformed into institutions, and denatured what was, in Lenin's view, only a phase in a living development" (AD 85). Lenin's errors (the 1908 gnosticism, the prohibition of factions) were errors that opened the way to Stalinism but were not themselves Stalinism.

The Ch 3 diagnosis is that the errors cannot be cleanly separated from their consequences: "Tactics without principles — anywhere, but especially in philosophy — are a confession of irrationality." The 1908 book's tactical move became the orthodoxy's principled commitment. This is why Ch 3 is about Lenin's book, not about Lenin's politics — the book outlived Lenin's own use of it.

Connections

  • is the protagonist of Ch 3 of AD
  • is attacked by Lukács (1923) for reverting to pre-Hegelian realism; Lukács is then condemned by the Communist International for the attack
  • is the target of Karl Korsch's Marxismus und Philosophie (1930)
  • is the inheritor of Marx's "scientific socialism" phase — Ch 3 argues Lenin's realism is already in the older Marx
  • is the good influence on Trotsky's practical dialectic — Lenin's "step in advance" formula is the Leninism Trotsky keeps
  • is the hidden source of Sartre's ultrabolshevism — Sartre's pure subjectivism is the inversion of Lenin's pure objectivism; both arrive at the same Party monopoly (AD 122)
  • holds the Party together as an apparatus that concentrates dialectic in its center — MP's critique
  • formulates the Party-proletariat relation as "a step in advance" — MP's appreciation
  • reads Hegel late — MP's evidence that Lenin himself recognized the 1908 book's limits
  • distinguishes spontaneity from primitivism — MP agrees that pure spontaneity is not enough (AD 149)

Open Questions

  • Is MP's diagnosis of Materialism and Empiriocriticism fair to Lenin's actual philosophical position? Soviet and post-Soviet commentators have defended Lenin's realism as more sophisticated than MP allows; others have extended MP's critique.
  • How much weight should MP's tactical reading carry? If Lenin really wrote the 1908 book as a tactical move, does that excuse its philosophical limitations? MP's answer: no — tactics in philosophy must be coherent with strategy. But the question of authorial intent bears on interpretation.
  • The Philosophical Notebooks (1914–16) are barely engaged by MP. A fuller engagement with Lenin's late Hegel-reading might modify MP's diagnosis.
  • Does Lenin's "democratic centralism" as originally formulated (in What Is To Be Done?) escape MP's critique of the Party-as-apparatus? MP treats these as continuous; others have argued for a sharper distinction between the 1902 and post-1921 formulations.
  • The wiki does not have a concept page for "democratic centralism"; the engagement with Ch 3's treatment of Lenin is indirect. A future page might develop this.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic — the primary source. Ch 3 "Pravda" is the main engagement; secondary engagements throughout Ch 4 (on Trotsky's Leninism) and Ch 5 (on Sartre's inversion of Lenin). Key passages: the gnostilological critique at p. 83; the tactical reading at p. 85; "a step in advance" at p. 76; "Lenin's gnosticism... embalms [the dialectic]" at p. 89; the Gorky letter and the return to Hegel at p. 85.