Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

450V. I. LENINI wrote to St. Petersburg the other day to have these notebookshunted out and forwarded to me. 156Now the Studies in the Philosophy of Marxism have appeared.I have read all the articles except Suvorov’s (I am readingit now), and every article made me furiously indignant.No, no, this is not Marxism! Our empirio-critics, empirio-monists,and empirio-symbolists are floundering in a bog.To try to persuade the reader that “belief” in the reality ofthe external world is “mysticism” (Bazarov); to confuse inthe most disgraceful manner materialism with Kantianism(Bazarov and Bogdanov); to preach a variety of agnosticism(empirio-criticism) and idealism (empirio-monism); to teachFROM MARXTO MAOthe workers “religious atheism” and “worship” of the higherhuman potentialities (Lunacharsky); to declare Engels’s⋆teaching on dialectics to be mysticism (Berman); to drawfrom the stinking well of some French “positivists” orother, of agnostics or metaphysicians, the devil take them,with their “symbolic theory of cognition” (Yushkevich)!No, really, it’s too much. To be sure, we ordinary Marxistsare not well up in philosophy, but why insult us by servingthis stuff up to us as the philosophy of Marxism! I wouldrather let myself be drawn and quartered than consent tocollaborate in an organ or body that preaches such things.I felt a renewed NOT interest in FOR my “Notes of an OrdinaryMarxist on Philosophy” and I began to write them,COMMERCIAL157 butto Al. Al., in the process of reading the Studies, I gave myimpressions bluntly and sharply, of course.But what has your article got to do with it, you will ask?It has this to do DISTRIBUTIONwith it: just at a time when these differencesof opinion among the Bolsheviks threaten to become particularlyacute, you are obviously beginning to expound theviews of one trend in your article for Proletary. I do not know,of course, what you would have made of it, taken as a whole.Besides, I believe that an artist can glean much that is usefulto him from philosophy of all kinds. Finally, I absolutelyagree with the view that in matters that concern theart of writing you are the best judge, and that in derivingthis kind of views both from your artistic experience andfrom philosophy, even if idealistic philosophy, you can arriveat conclusions that will be of tremendous benefit to theworkers’ party. All that is true; nevertheless Proletary