Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/377

Rh the lay and ecclesiastical aristocracy of the eighteenth century, and with the degeneration and decay of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Plehanov further contends that scepticism has nothing to do with theological ("extra-human") doctrines. The bourgeois ideologues are "instinctively" aware of the approaching destruction of their class, and this explains their feeling of profound discontent, which finds expression in scepticism, pessimism, etc. Proletarian ideologues, on the other hand, are animated with a vigorous feeling of the joy of life, and every one of them exclaims with Hutten: "It is bliss to be alive!" The proletarian knows nothing of scepticism.

Thus Plehanov rejects Hume as well as Kant, for Hume's philosophy is incompatible with Marxism. With Hume, the modern Humists, and especially Mach, must be discarded. Plehanov vigorously animadverts upon Bogdanov and other Marxists who accept the philosophy of Mach.

Lenin, too, though an opponent of Plehanov, defends Marxist materialism in a writing against empirio-criticism. Lenin considers that the ideas of Avenarius, Mach, and their Russian successors, are merely a reiteration of the masked solipsism of Fichte and Berkeley. The adoption of subjectivism involves the burial of the healthy human understanding with its belief in an objective world subordinated to the reign of law. But thereby religion, one of the main props of the bourgeoisie and of bourgeois dominion, is favoured. Consequently empirio-criticism is a reactionary philosophy.

Lenin's book is written in a racy style : Avenarius, Schuppe, and the others are smartly handled; but no further light is thrown upon the essential questions in dispute. Lenin makes no advance beyond Engels.

HE old dispute in Russian philosophy between objectivism and subjectivism is the nuclear point at issue between the Russian orthodox Marxists and the revisionists. Bernstein, who insists that socialism must be founded, not objectively but subjectively, upon the basis of a proper direction of the will and upon individual motivation, thereby gives an accurate epistemological formulation to his opposition to Marxism. The Marxism of Marx and Engels is decisively