Fundamentals of dialectical materialism. Basic principles of modern materialism What is dialectical materialism in philosophy definition

Knowledge is a sword that cuts through all illusion.

Mahabharata

Somehow I happened to see a wonderful scene in one satirical-humorous feature film. The hero was asked to give up his discovery, as well as his own convictions, and one of the reasons why this is easy to do was the argument - "Galileo refused." To which the hero replied with a brilliant phrase: "That's why I always liked Giordano Bruno more."

Today we all live in a high-tech age. In any case, we flatter our pride that this is so. After all, in fact, people do not have answers to the most elementary questions that science, which has been developing for so many years, should have answered: how was this world created and for what? Who am I? Why am I here? What is life? What is death? But these questions disturb every person. Perhaps this is due to the fact that modern science does not take into account those facts that do not fit into modern scientific theories?

Therefore, there is a need to understand the question: why do we, meaning our entire civilization, believe that we have gone far in our development, but in fact we have not figured out the basics?

“The same scientists still do not have a clear idea of, for example, what an electric current really is, what gravity or a black hole is. And, nevertheless, they operate with these concepts. But in order to globally understand and delve into the nature of these phenomena, it is necessary to have a fundamentally different worldview, qualitatively different from the material worldview.”

There is such a direction - dialectical materialism. If you try to succinctly convey its fundamental postulates, then approximately it turns out like this: dialectical materialism is a philosophical doctrine that affirms the primacy of matter and postulates three basic laws of its movement and development:

• the law of unity and struggle of opposites;
• the law of transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones;
• the law of negation of negation.

The central idea of ​​dialectical materialism is the interpenetration and mutual generation of opposites. This idea echoes the ancient Chinese philosophical concept of “yin and yang”. Chinese philosophers adhered to the position of diamat (dialectical materialism) and China took this philosophy as the foundation of communist ideology. The beginning of dialectical materialism as a doctrine is reflected in the works of K. Marx and F. Engels. Let's not go into the jungle of this doctrine, which was specially created to justify the class struggle. Moreover, in these wilds you can wander for a long time.

“There are three real threats to humanity: the materialism of scientists, the ignorance of priests, and the chaos of democracy.”

Why, for example, the idea of ​​ether, which, when studied in a practical sense, can change life on our entire planet, is considered taboo in official science?

After all, people knew about the ether from antiquity, starting from ancient Indian philosophers and ancient Greeks and ending with the 19th century. Many outstanding scientists spoke and wrote about the world ether. For example, Rene Descartes, Christian Huygens, James Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Heinrich Hertz, Hendrik Lorentz, Jules Henri Poincaré and, of course, Nikola Tesla.

It was he who made a number of serious discoveries that showed the inconsistency of the materialistic theories on which modern science relies. When financiers and industrialists realized that obtaining free energy would lead to the destruction of their empire of power, a purposeful destruction of the theory of aether began in science. All research on the air turned off. Many scientists who defended the theory of the ether were stopped funding their work, began to create various artificial obstacles, for example, closing laboratories, reducing scientific vacancies, creating difficulties in subsequent employment, etc. At the same time, a large-scale discrediting of the ether as one of the basic concepts of theoretical physics began in the world media. Scientists with a “world name” were artificially created, who called all research on the topic of the ether pseudoscience.

As a result, today, almost all modern science is based on materialistic positions of knowledge of the world, and this is not true.

The fear of scientists to go against the system is understandable - it is a threat to lose not only their jobs, but also fear for their lives. More recently, this has been fraught with the loss of personal freedom. There was such a joke: “Once a Zen Buddhist Fyodor began to deny the greatness of the philosophy of Marxism. However, when he was called “where necessary”, he denied his negation there, thereby making sure of the validity of the law of negation of negation.

As a result, scientists today spend many years proving their hypotheses, and then it turns out that they are not true. Or maybe this consciousness takes them into such a jungle that it is already difficult to get out of there? After all, science, in particular, quantum mechanics, has long come close to the question of the non-material beginning.

In addition, not all scientists affirm the supremacy of materialistic theories. For example, Arnold Fedorovich Smeyanovich, as well as Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva, who wrote in her work “The Magic of the Brain and the Labyrinths of Life”:

“It must be said that basing our biology on primitive materialism has led us to essentially work within a corridor bounded by invisible but very barbed wire. Even attempts to decipher the code for the provision of thinking, quite materialistic, as opponents now admit, at first met with the bayonets of "materialists", whose idea was that it was impossible to know the code of the ideal. But after all, we were looking for the code of the material base of the ideal, which is far from the same thing. And yet, what is ideal? What is thought? It turns out, from the point of view of materialists, - nothing. But she is!”

“Materialism is the willingness to recognize the authorship of a picture for brushes, paints, canvas, but not for the artist”- said the writer Viktor Krotov.

Descartes postulated the existence of two different substances - bodily and spiritual. The question of the interaction between soul and body, posed by Descartes, has become the cornerstone of Western philosophy.

Sir John Eccles (Nobel laureate) also criticized materialism. In his book The Human Secret, he wrote:

“The extraordinary success of the theory of evolution in recent times has protected it from scrutiny. But this theory is fundamentally untenable. It fails to explain why each of us is a unique, self-aware being.”

And in The Evolution of the Brain: The Making of Personality, Eccles said:

"I believe that the riddle of human life is being trampled by scientific reductionism, with its claims that "promising materialism" will sooner or later explain the entire spiritual world in terms of processes occurring in neurons. This idea should be considered as superstition. It must be recognized that we are also spiritual beings with souls and living in the spiritual world, as well as material beings with bodies and brains and existing in the physical world.

George Berkeley, in his Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, stated that only the spirit actually exists. In Berkeley's concept, matter is just an illusion that exists exclusively in the mind of the subject.

Another question arises: why is modern science so far from the life of ordinary people? After all, the answers to the most fundamental and important questions for each person (which were mentioned at the beginning) have not yet been given. Everything that will be investigated will not satisfy the Personality, if a person does not know the basis, there is no understanding: “Who am I? How do I live? What is the purpose of all this? and then what?" - then he is just a cog in the system of material values. But this is the most elementary. And, today, modern science is not able to answer these questions. And how can we, then, consider ourselves civilized? Just because we know how to use a computer or drive a car? Or because we have laws? This video will dispel those illusions.

And after all, people feel that something is wrong in the world. Everyone at least once thought about the meaning of his life and wondered: “why?”. It’s as if a person is sitting with a bunch of puzzles, but they didn’t give him a picture of how to put them together. Today there are books and programs through which the world is seen differently. They give Knowledge, by accepting which you understand the essence. Like a breath of fresh air, they awaken and remind “why?”. And it is interesting, people who have read the book by A. Novykh “AllatRa” and watched the epoch-making program “Consciousness and Personality. From the obviously dead to the eternally Alive”, for the most part, they say that they did not learn something new, but as if they were remembering something that they had long forgotten about. This Knowledge has already changed the world and will change even more if people choose to do so.

Given the pace of life, the reduction of time, and so on, everyone has a unique opportunity to find out the answers to these questions in a short time and master the Knowledge. After all, science, Knowledge should belong to all people on Earth, regardless of social status, income level, social classification and other conventions. Every person can learn and study the Truth. For:

“Real science is a process of knowing the Truth, and not a means of achieving power.

When this information about a black hole and about the heaviest micro-objects in our material Universe is confirmed (and this can be done even with modern technology), these discoveries will not only answer many currently unresolved questions of science, ranging from the origin of the Universe to the transformations of particles in the microcosm . This will radically change the entire understanding of the structure of the world from micro to macro objects and the phenomena of their constituents. This will confirm the primacy of information (spiritual component). Everything is information. There is no matter as such, it is secondary. What is primary? Information. Understanding this will change a lot. This will create new directions in science. But, most importantly, people will answer the question of how a person actually works. After all, it is still silent about its Essence and the general, different from the physical body, energy structure. This understanding, in turn, will drastically change the worldview of many people from the material to the spiritual.”

A. New "AllatRa"

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM - WORLD VIEW OF THE MARXIST-LENIN PARTY

V. P. CHERTKOV

Marxism, as defined by Comrade Stalin, is "the science of the laws of development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of building a communist society."(I. V. Stalin, Marxism and questions of linguistics, Gospolitizdat, 1952, pp. 54-55)Guided by this great revolutionary science, the Communist Party clearly defined the paths of the working people's struggle to liberate the landowners and capitalists from the power, led the workers and peasants to victory over the exploiters, led the Soviet people onto the broad and bright path of communism, made the Soviet country powerful and invincible, turned it into a bulwark of world peace, a bulwark of democracy and socialism.

Dialectical materialism is the only scientific worldview and constitutes the theoretical foundation of communism.

In his work “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism”, I. V. Stalin gave the following definition of dialectical materialism:

“Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party. It is called dialectical materialism because its approach to natural phenomena, its method of studying natural phenomena, its method of knowing these phenomena is dialectical, and its interpretation of natural phenomena, its understanding of natural phenomena, its theory is materialistic. (JV Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 1952, p. 574).

The creation of dialectical materialism by Marx and Engels was their great scientific feat. Marx and Engels generalized and critically reworked the achievements of philosophical thought, generalized and creatively rethought the achievements of the natural and social sciences, as well as the entire experience of the struggle of the working masses against exploitation and oppression.

Using all the best that has been accumulated by mankind over the previous millennia, Marx and Engels made a revolutionary revolution in philosophy, created a qualitatively new philosophy.

The essence of the revolutionary upheaval brought about in philosophy by the founders of Marxism is that philosophy, for the first time in the history of mankind, has become a science that equips people with knowledge of the laws of the development of nature and society, serving as an instrument of struggle for the victory of communism. The philosophical systems of the past were distinguished by the fact that their creators, not being able to give a single coherent picture of the world, lumped together a wide variety of facts, conclusions, hypotheses and just fantasies, claimed to know the absolute truth in the final instance and thereby essentially limited the living process of cognition. human laws of nature and society.

The discovery of Marx and Engels meant the end of the old philosophy, which could not yet be called scientific, and the beginning of a new, scientific period in the history of philosophy. Marxist philosophy is not a science above other sciences. Dialectical materialism is an instrument of scientific research. It permeates all the sciences of nature and society, and is itself constantly enriched by new achievements in the sciences and in the practice of building socialism and communism.

Marxism marked a qualitatively new stage in the development of philosophical thought, and in the sense that only in the person of Marxism did philosophy become the banner of the masses.

JV Stalin points out that Marxism “is not just a philosophical doctrine. It is the teaching of the proletarian masses, their banner, it is revered and the proletarians of the world "bow down" before it. Consequently, Marx and Engels are not just the founders of any philosophical "school" - they are the living leaders of the living proletarian movement, which is growing and getting stronger every day" (JV Stalin, Soch., vol. 1, p. 350).

Therefore, A. A. Zhdanov, criticizing in a philosophical discussion the incorrect understanding of the history of philosophy as a simple change from one philosophical school to another, noted that “with the advent of Marxism as the scientific worldview of the proletariat, the old period in the history of philosophy ends, when philosophy was the occupation of individuals, the property of philosophical schools, consisting of a small number of philosophers and their students, closed, divorced from life, from the people, alien to the people.

Marxism is not such a philosophical school. On the contrary, it is the overcoming of the old philosophy, when philosophy was the property of a select few - the aristocracy of the spirit, and the beginning of a completely new period in the history of philosophy, when it became a scientific weapon in the hands of the proletarian masses fighting for their liberation from capitalism. (A. A. Zhdanov, Speech at a discussion on the book by G. F. Aleksandrov “The History of Western European Philosophy”, Gospolitizdat, 1952, p. 12).

The ideas of Marxist philosophy, taking possession of the masses, themselves become a material force. Pre-Marxist philosophical teachings did not and could not have such power.

The fundamental difference between dialectical materialism and previous philosophical systems lies in the fact that it serves as a powerful instrument of practical influence on the world, an instrument of knowledge and change of the world.

Marx, at the beginning of his revolutionary activity, said that if in the old days philosophers saw their task only in explaining the world in one way or another, then a new, revolutionary philosophy should teach how to change it. Dialectical materialism, created by Marx and Engels and further developed by Lenin and Stalin, is a formidable theoretical weapon in the hands of the working class fighting against capitalism, for socialism and communism.

Under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people radically changed the face of old Russia.

Reflecting the majestic results of the path traversed by the party, the Charter adopted at the 19th Party Congress says: “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, having organized an alliance of the working class and the working peasantry, achieved, as a result of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the overthrow of the power of the capitalists and landowners, the organization of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the liquidation capitalism, the destruction of the exploitation of man by man and ensured the construction of a socialist society.

Today, the Charter states further, the main tasks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are to build a communist society through a gradual transition from socialism to communism, continuously raise the material and cultural level of society, educate members of society in the spirit of internationalism and establish fraternal ties with working people of all countries, to strengthen in every possible way the active defense of the Soviet Motherland against the aggressive actions of its enemies. (Charter of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gospolitizdat, 1952, pp. 3-4).

In the face of new tasks, the Party is elevating the role and significance of the Soviet socialist ideology even higher, setting itself the goal of using to the fullest extent the mobilizing, organizing and transforming power of the great ideas of Marxism-Leninism in the interests of communist construction, in the interests of strengthening peace throughout the world.

The 19th Party Congress set the task of intensifying ideological work, systematically raising and improving the scientific and political training of cadres, directing all means of ideological influence on the communist education of the Soviet people.

The ideas of Marxism-Leninism, the ideas of J. V. Stalin's brilliant work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR", J. V. Stalin's speech at the closing session of the 19th Party Congress, and the decisions of the 19th Party Congress serve as an inspiring guide for all progressive mankind.

Mastering this vast theoretical wealth is the duty of every conscious builder of communist society, of every participant in the world communist movement.

In a report at the 19th Party Congress, Comrade Malenkov said: “The teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin give our Party invincible strength, the ability to pave new paths in history, to clearly see the goal of our forward movement, to win and consolidate victories faster and more firmly.

Leninist-Stalinist ideas illuminate with the bright light of revolutionary theory the tasks and prospects of the struggle of the popular masses of all countries against imperialism, for peace, democracy and socialism. XIXParty Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Gospolitizdat, 1952, pp. 107-108).

* * *

A worldview is a system of views on the world as a whole, those basic principles with which people approach the reality around them and explain it, and by which they are guided in their practical activities.

Whatever great discoveries may have taken place in individual areas of nature, they have not yet given and cannot give a unified understanding of nature, an understanding of it as a whole. Can, for example, this or that discovery in the field of chemical phenomena, this or that chemical laws constitute a worldview, give an understanding of nature as a whole? Of course not, because, however important they may be, they are valid only for narrowly limited limits - for the field of chemical phenomena, and do not reveal the essence of many other phenomena.

The same must be said about all other sciences. None of the so-called concrete sciences can give a complete picture of the world, can not eliminate the need to develop a holistic worldview.

There have been many attempts in history to create a picture of the world as a whole by extending the laws of one of the specific sciences to all phenomena of nature and society. Thus, in the 18th century, philosophers extended the laws of mechanics not only to all natural phenomena, but also tried to interpret social phenomena with the help of them. The transfer of the laws of Darwinism to society became widespread in bourgeois philosophy and sociology in the second half of the 19th century, which served as the theoretical basis for the emergence of such a reactionary trend in sociology as social Darwinism.

Often the opposite also happened: there were attempts to extend social laws to natural phenomena, for example, the life of insects was likened to the activities of the state, it was argued that “animals also work”, etc.

Attempts to transfer the laws inherent in one phenomenon to another are anti-scientific and reactionary. Reactionary theories of this kind flourish especially in the era of imperialism, when the defenders of decaying capitalism deliberately distort science, striving at all costs to justify capitalism, to justify aggressive predatory wars.

To develop a comprehensive and holistic worldview, it is necessary to generalize the laws of nature and society, the discovery of general laws inherent in all phenomena, objects, processes of reality - such laws that could serve as guiding, initial principles when approaching a wide variety of phenomena of reality. The discovery of such laws, the development of a way to approach reality and its interpretation is the task of a special science - philosophy.

Speaking at a philosophical discussion in 1947, A. A. Zhdanov said: “The scientific history of philosophy, therefore, is the history of the origin, emergence and development of the scientific materialistic worldview and its laws” (A. A. Zhdanov, Speech at a discussion on the book by G. F. Aleksandrov “The History of Western European Philosophy”, Gospolitizdat, 1952, p. 7).

This history of the birth and development of the scientific worldview does not represent some kind of autonomous process of the development of pure ideas that give rise to each other. In fact, certain discoveries in the field of philosophy always represent a conscious or unconscious generalization of factual knowledge about nature, a conscious or unconscious reflection of certain needs for the further development of social life.

Engels points out that “philosophers were not pushed forward by the force of pure thinking alone, as they imagined. Against. In fact, they were pushed forward mainly by the powerful, more and more rapid and more and more rapid development of natural science and industry. (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Gopolitizdat, 1952, p. 18).

The process of development of philosophical thought was influenced not only by production, not only by the development of productive forces, but also by the production, social relations of people. Philosophical ideas, being a superstructure over the real basis of this or that society, very often reflected the changes taking place in the sphere of production, and the achievements of the natural sciences in a perverted, put on its head form.

This perversion was due to the nature of social relations in class, antagonistic social formations, the class position of the authors of philosophical systems and teachings. The class struggle, the struggle between progressive and reactionary social forces, was reflected in philosophy in the form of a struggle between opposing ideological trends. Thus, due to the fact that society was split into hostile classes and moved forward by their mutual struggle, the history of philosophical thought appeared as the history of the struggle of ideas, reflecting the history of the struggle of classes.

Materialism arose and developed in a fierce struggle with idealism, with various idealistic currents. The entire history of philosophy is the history of the struggle between the main camps, parties in philosophy, reflecting the struggle of the social classes and the parties representing their interests.

“The latest philosophy,” said Lenin, “is just as partisan as it was two thousand years ago.” (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 14, ed. 4, p. 343).

Thus, the history of philosophy is the history of the struggle between two opposite camps - materialism and idealism. Materialists strove for a correct explanation of reality, based on the objective laws of reality, nature. On the contrary, the idealists tried to explain the world, nature, proceeding not from nature itself, but with the help of fictitious ideal, ultimately divine forces.

The idealistic worldview is just as unscientific and reactionary as the religion with which idealism shares common roots. Idealism considers the world as the embodiment of the "absolute idea", "world mind", "consciousness". From the point of view of idealism, the phenomena and objects of nature surrounding us - the whole world as a whole - do not exist on their own, but are allegedly the product of otherworldly forces that stand above nature.

Idealists, especially those of the German philosopher Hegel, talk a lot about the unity of the world, about the fact that they seem to have managed to develop a single, integral understanding of reality. But these are just words. In fact, the idealists are unable to find a real unity of all the phenomena of the world and speak of a fictitious, completely fantastic unity.

Any idealism, whether it portrays the world as created by otherworldly, supernatural forces, or takes human consciousness as a primary given, inevitably leads to religion, to priesthood. It is therefore not accidental that the idealist Hegel himself spoke of the "world mind" as the idea of ​​the "world-holder", i.e. God, and that with religion.This is the reactionary essence of the idealistic worldview, hostile to science.

Idealistic, of course, are the religious views themselves, which also claim to be a worldview. The religious worldview, which distorts the real picture of the world, is reactionary through and through. Both religion and idealism serve the bourgeoisie as an instrument for the spiritual enslavement of the working people.

Religion claims that all the diverse phenomena of nature and society are one, for all of them are allegedly “created by God” and owe all their further existence to God. But this "unity" is not real, but invented by theologians, fantastic. As science and everyday practical activity of people show, objects and phenomena of reality arise and exist due to natural, material causes. Arguing that the world was created by a higher power, the religious worldview does not see a really existing connection between various natural phenomena that determine each other, give rise to each other.

A unified view of nature must be sought not in the artificial imposition of laws inherent in one phenomenon on completely different phenomena and not in a fictional, fantastic, divine and other supernatural "unity", but in the real unity of the things themselves, the phenomena of living and inanimate nature. The unity of the world lies in its materiality. Therefore, the only scientific worldview is the materialistic worldview in its modern, highest form - dialectical materialism. Marx's teaching, Lenin wrote, "is full and harmonious, giving people an integral world outlook, irreconcilable with any superstition, with any reaction, with any defense of bourgeois oppression" (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 19, ed. 4, p. 3).

But before it became possible to create a dialectical-materialist worldview, science had to go through a long and winding path of development, to create the necessary prerequisites for such a great discovery.

Comrade Stalin points out that "dialectical materialism is a product of the development of the sciences, including philosophy, over the previous period" (JV Stalin, Marxism and questions of linguistics, p. 34).

On the basis of the development of social life and, above all, the success of the process of production of material goods, more and more new acquisitions of the natural sciences, acquisitions in the field of the dialectical and materialistic understanding of nature and attempts at their philosophical generalization took place.

All the successes of the natural sciences and philosophy were ultimately caused by the needs of production, the needs of social practice. It was the development of social production during the period of the slave-owning system that brought to life, at first, a still undeveloped and undifferentiated science, which also included philosophical ideas.

The first attempts to develop a scientific worldview took place already in ancient times - in ancient China, India, and then in ancient Greece. Ancient Greek philosophers, materialists and dialecticians, considered the world as not created by any of the gods and existing independently of the consciousness of people. The most prominent of them, Heraclitus, taught that the world is one, that everything in nature is in a state of change and development.

Ancient thinkers imagined nature so generally that they did not see the deep differences that exist between its individual phenomena. Their idea of ​​nature was still naive. But the idea that nature exists by itself and is eternally changing was extremely fruitful and progressive, it was not in vain and left a deep mark on the history of science.

A bold attempt to draw a unified picture of the world was made by the French materialist philosophers of the 18th century - Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach and others.

Being the ideologists of the bourgeoisie at that period of its development, when it was a progressive class that moved forward the development of the productive forces of society, the French materialists defended advanced philosophical ideas: they resolutely opposed the religious world outlook and tried to explain all natural phenomena on a scientific basis. However, the level of development of the sciences of that time did not yet make it possible to discover the true interdependence of natural phenomena, did not make it possible to trace complex dialectical transitions from one phenomenon to another, the process of transformation of one phenomenon into another. Therefore, the French materialist philosophers of the 18th century, while remaining metaphysicians on the whole, expressed only a few conjectures about development. In addition, French thinkers, betraying their own intentions to show the world as a whole, when considering social phenomena, switched to positions of idealism, since they were not able to reveal the material foundations of society. It is clear that the worldview that French materialism gave was not and could not be consistent, strictly scientific and integral.

The further development of the natural sciences and social practice gave a new impetus to the development of philosophical thought.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, as Engels points out, “geology, embryology, the physiology of plants and animals, and organic chemistry were already sufficiently developed, and ... on the basis of these new sciences, brilliant conjectures were already emerging everywhere, anticipating later theory of development ... " (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1952, p. 21).

Thus, the development of natural science, which reflected the successes in the development of production, invariably and with increasing perseverance put forward the question of a dialectical understanding of nature.

In the first third of the 19th century, Hegel tried to connect all the phenomena of the world with the idea of ​​the commonality of their development. But this attempt was not successful. The idealistic philosophy of Hegel was a reaction to French materialism. As the ideologist of the German bourgeoisie, who were afraid of the movement from below, Hegel was a conservative thinker. And although Hegel was familiar with the most important achievements of the sciences of his time and drew the very idea of ​​universal development from objective reality, he, due to the reactionary nature of his political views, presented all this in a distorted form.

Hegel declared that the unity of the world does not consist in its materiality, but in the fact that everything is a product of the spirit. He declared all natural phenomena to be stages in the development of the “absolute idea” he invented. Thus, according to his system, the world has a beginning and an end, its development “begins” from the moment when the “world spirit” supposedly began the process of its “self-knowledge”, and “ends” when the same “world spirit” in the person of philosophy itself Hegel completes his "self-knowledge".

Because of this, Hegel's idealistic dialectics was not, and could not be, a scientific method of cognition. Hegel's dialectic was directed to the past, not to the future. Hegel denied the development of nature, and sought to put an end to the development of society, wishing to perpetuate the Prussian-Junker estate-monarchist state in Germany.

However, the idea of ​​development, although limited by the metaphysical system and understood by Hegel perversely, idealistically, was the "rational grain" of his philosophy, which was used by philosophy in its further movement forward.

Another German philosopher, Feuerbach, who played a prominent role in the history of philosophical thought as the man who restored materialism to its rights, along with Hegelian idealism rejected the dialectical view of the world. In addition, while explaining the phenomena of nature materialistically, Feuerbach, like all materialists of the pre-Marxian period, still interpreted the phenomena and laws of society idealistically.

Closer than all the thinkers of the past came to the scientific, dialectical-materialist worldview Russian philosophers - Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. These thinkers were revolutionary democrats who called on the masses to fight the serf system. At the same time, they sharply criticized capitalism with its false democracy and equality. All of them considered philosophy as a tool in the fight against social and national inequality.

It is precisely their revolutionary democratism that explains the fact that they subjected Hegelian idealism and its fear of everything advanced, revolutionary, to severe criticism. As materialists and dialecticians, they more fully imagined the movement of nature itself "from stone to man", emphasized the decisive role of the masses in social progress, and expressed a number of brilliant thoughts about the internal causes of the development of society.

Having come closer than others to a scientific worldview, Russian philosophers, however, like all other materialists before Marx, failed to materialistically interpret the phenomena of society - they were thus unable to develop a complete and integral scientific worldview.

A truly scientific worldview, embracing all the phenomena of nature and society, was created only by the founders of communism - Marx and Engels. This worldview is dialectical materialism, which could be created only at a certain level of development of natural science and the social sciences, and above all with a certain maturity of the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

The success of the natural sciences was one of the most important prerequisites for the creation of dialectical materialism.

The first half of the 19th century was marked by major discoveries in the field of natural science. Among these discoveries it is necessary first of all to note the discovery of the law of conservation and transformation of energy.

The proposition about the unity of nature, about the indestructibility of matter and motion, was substantiated as early as the 18th century by the founder of Russian science, M.V. Lomonosov, who then formulated the law of conservation of matter and motion. In 1748, in a letter to Euler, Lomonosov wrote that “all the changes that take place in nature occur in such a way that how much is added to something, the same amount is taken away from the other. So, how much matter is added to one body, the same amount will be taken away from another, how many hours I use for sleep, the same amount I take away from vigilance, etc. This law of nature is so universal that it extends to the rules of motion: the body that excites impetus to the movement of another, as much loses its movement as it gives this movement away from itself to another body. (M. V. Lomonosov, Selected Philosophical Works, Gospolitizdat, 1950, p. 160).

Deepening Lomonosov's provisions on the conservation of matter and motion, the Russian scientist G. G. Hess established in 1840 the basic law connecting thermal phenomena with chemical ones, which was the first formulation of the law of conservation and transformation of energy in relation to these specific processes. In the early 1940s, R. Meyer, Joule, the Russian scientist E. Kh. Lenz, and others formulated the general law of the conservation and transformation of energy, which affirms the natural scientific understanding of the unity of various forms of the motion of matter.

The Russian scientist P. F. Goryaninov in 1827-1834, and then the Czech scientist Purkinje in 1837, laid the foundations of the cellular theory of the structure of living organisms. In 1838-1839, the German scientists Schleiden and Schwann developed the cell theory further, thus substantiating the unity of all phenomena of organic nature.

In 1859, Darwin came up with the theory of the development of the organic world, and in 1869, the great Russian scientist D. I. Mendeleev created a periodic system of chemical elements.

Engels considers the middle of the 19th century to be such a period in the development of natural science, “when the dialectical nature of the processes of nature began to be irresistibly imposed on thought and when, consequently, only dialectics could help natural science get out of theoretical difficulties” (F. Engels, Dialectic of Nature, 1952, p. 160).

Engels also wrote: “Dialectics liberated from mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has left the area where motionless categories were sufficient ...” (ibid., p. 160). In a word, natural science urgently demanded a transition from metaphysics to dialectics, from idealism to materialism, which takes nature in its dialectical development.

However, to create an integral scientific worldview, the discoveries of natural science alone were not enough. This required a certain maturity of social relations, necessary for people to see and understand the internal springs of the development of society.

In contrast to all social formations that preceded capitalism, the productive forces under capitalism develop extremely rapidly, and for the first time it becomes possible to notice the fact that it is production that forms the basis of social development, that the changes taking place in production entail changes in all other areas of social life. At the same time, capitalism simplifies and exposes class contradictions. The bourgeois era, Marx and Engels point out in the Communist Manifesto, has replaced exploitation, cloaked in religious and political illusions, with "open, shameless, direct, callous exploitation." This circumstance made it possible to theoretically establish the fact that “social classes fighting each other are at every given moment the product of the relations of production and exchange, in a word, the economic relations of their era ...” (F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1952, p. 26).

The decisive condition for the creation of dialectical materialism was the emergence of a new class - the proletariat and its appearance on the arena of history as an independent political force.

The largest revolutionary actions of the proletariat during this period were the Lyon uprisings of 1831 and 1834 in France, the mass movement of workers in England, which received the name of the Chartist movement and reached its highest point in 1838-1842, the uprising of the Silesian weavers in 1844 in Germany. These historical events, Engels points out, "caused a decisive turn in the understanding of history." Thus, without the appearance of a revolutionary working class on the historical arena, it was impossible to scientifically understand the history of society, and without this understanding it was impossible to develop a scientific worldview.

The working class in capitalist society is the only class which, by virtue of its social position, is interested in the creation of a scientific world outlook, a scientific philosophy. The working class is called upon by history to overthrow capitalism, put an end to all forms of economic, political and spiritual slavery forever, establish its own dictatorship and use it as a lever for building a classless, communist society. The working class is therefore vitally interested in creating a philosophy that would give a correct picture of the world and the opportunity not only to know the history of nature and society and the laws of their development at the present time, but also to foresee the course of events in the future, to master the laws of nature and society, to make them serve the interests of all mankind. This explains the fact that the enormous achievements of the sciences of the first half of the 19th century served precisely the ideologists of the proletariat as material for the development of a scientific worldview. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie, by virtue of their social position, did not and could not draw proper conclusions from the scientific discoveries of this period.

The proletariat sees and finds the only way to deliver itself from capitalist slavery only in a complete, radical change in the foundations of the capitalist system, in the further movement of society towards a new, higher social system. That is why the doctrine of dialectics about development and change, about the victory of the new over the old, is organically perceived by the proletariat as confirmation and illumination of its class aspirations. The revolutionary proletariat, its vanguard - the communist parties - do not see and cannot see any other means of fighting for their goals than the class struggle against the reactionary forces, against the exploiters. For the working class, materialist dialectics appears as a science that illuminates the revolutionary struggle of the masses: in the doctrine of dialectics that development is the result of contradictions, the struggle of opposites, the proletariat finds its natural theoretical weapon in the struggle against capitalism, for socialism.

“Just as philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat,” wrote Marx, “so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy...” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. 1, 1938, p. 398).

Thus, having critically reworked everything advanced and progressive that had already been achieved in the history of human thought, Marx and Engels created an integral scientific worldview, placing it at the service of the interests of the proletariat.

Dialectical materialism, being the only scientific worldview, serves and can serve only the advanced, consistently revolutionary class of modern society - the proletariat, its Marxist party.

This is the essence of class, partisanship of dialectical materialism. The class nature, the partisanship of dialectical materialism lies precisely in the fact that the bearer of this science in our time is the working class, its Marxist party.

The laws of dialectics are just as objective and precise as the laws of chemistry, physics and other sciences are objective and precise. However, if the laws of chemistry, physics and other sciences can be equally used by all classes, can equally serve all classes, then the laws of dialectics can be used not by all classes, but only by the revolutionary class - the proletariat, its party. Dialectical materialism, by its very nature, is the outlook of the proletariat as the only consistently revolutionary class.

In his work Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Comrade Stalin points out that, unlike the laws of natural science, the use of economic laws in a class society has a class background.

This fully applies to the laws of Marxism as a science and to the laws of the scientific worldview.

The partisan nature of dialectical materialism lies in the fact that it is a method of cognition and revolutionary transformation of society on the basis of socialism and communism. By virtue of the objective laws of social development, primarily by virtue of the law of the obligatory correspondence of production relations to the nature of the productive forces, capitalism is being replaced by socialism. However, at present, of all the classes of modern society, only one working class consciously uses these laws, which is rebuilding society on the basis of socialism and communism.

This is because the working class has a vested interest in using these laws. The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, is vitally interested in hindering the use and knowledge of the laws of social development, hindering the spread of the scientific worldview. Therefore, the essence of the principle of Marxist party membership is that it is impossible in modern society to have a truly scientific worldview without sharing the worldview of the proletariat, its Marxist party.

V. I. Lenin teaches that “materialism includes, so to speak, partisanship, obliging, in any assessment of an event, to directly and openly take the point of view of a certain social group” (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 1, ed. 4, pp. 380-381) to the point of view of the working class.

In philosophy, partisanship consists in not dangling between the trends of idealism and materialism, metaphysics and dialectics, but directly and openly taking the point of view of a particular trend. The revolutionary proletariat, the Marxist party stand openly and directly in the position of dialectical materialism and resolutely defend and develop it.

“The genius of Marx and Engels,” Lenin wrote, “consists precisely in the fact that over a very long period, almost half a century, they developed materialism, advanced one main trend in philosophy, did not stagnate on the repetition of already resolved epistemological questions, but carried out consistently, they showed how the same materialism should be carried out in the field of the social sciences, mercilessly sweeping aside as rubbish, nonsense, pompous pretentious nonsense, countless attempts to "discover" a "new" line in philosophy, invent a "new" direction, etc. » (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 14, ed. 4, p. 321).

Marxist philosophy is irreconcilably hostile to contemplation, bourgeois objectivism, and apoliticality. The party nature of Marxist philosophy requires a resolute, passionate struggle against all enemies of materialism, no matter what flag they use to hide behind.

In our time, the partisanship of Marxist philosophy obliges us to wage a daily struggle against all sorts of new fashionable trends and directions, which are especially widely bred in the USA and England and sow extreme idealism, metaphysics, "obscurantism, expose the servile nature of the activities of bourgeois philosophers, distorting science to please the imperialists, justifying social and national oppression and predatory wars.

A distinctive feature of the partisanship of dialectical materialism also lies in the fact that it coincides with scientific objectivity, for the class interests of the proletariat do not diverge from the general line of development of history, but, on the contrary, are organically consistent with it.

If the entire development of capitalist society, contrary to the interests and will of its ruling classes, prepares the conditions for socialism, makes the victory of socialism inevitable, then it is precisely with this objective process of the development of society that the activity of the proletariat, its struggle for socialism, is consistent. The socialist revolution, the realization of which is the historic mission of the proletariat, abolishes exploitation forever, opens the broad road to communism, and thereby meets the fundamental interests of all working people.

“... The class interests of the proletariat,” Comrade Stalin points out in his work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,” “merge with the interests of the overwhelming majority of society, for the revolution of the proletariat does not mean the abolition of this or that form of exploitation, but the abolition of all exploitation, while the revolution other classes, destroying only this or that form of exploitation, were limited by the framework of their narrow class interests, which are in conflict with the interests of the majority of society" (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, Gospolitizdat, 1952, p. 50).

That is why the class point of view of the proletariat, its partisanship, which correctly expresses not only the interests of the proletariat, but also the needs of the development of all human society, is in complete agreement with objective truth. The principle of Marxist party membership requires a resolute struggle for objective truth in science, which not only does not contradict the interests of the proletariat, the Marxist party, but is also a condition for a successful struggle against what has become obsolete in science and social life.

In a word, the partisanship of Marxist philosophy is alien to class limitations and subjectivism, which are organically inherent in the partisanship of the bourgeoisie. And this is understandable. Even at a time when the bourgeoisie was a progressive class, its interests, as an exploiting class, limited the horizons of its ideologists, led them into conflict with reality, into subjectivism. In the epoch of imperialism, which is the last epoch in the life of capitalism, the epoch of its historical downfall, the class interests of the bourgeoisie run counter to the further movement of mankind forward and are irreconcilably hostile to everything advanced and progressive in the life of peoples. That is why the class point of view of the bourgeoisie in philosophy and science is hostile to objective truth, distorts and denies it. It is in the interests of the bourgeois partisanship that all kinds of lackeys of imperialism - bourgeois scientists, philosophers, journalists - distort the truth and lie, proving the eternity of capitalism. In this hostility of bourgeois ideologists to objective, scientific truth, only the doom of capitalism, its inevitable death, is manifested.

* * *

Dialectical materialism, as an integral and scientific worldview, is characterized by the unity of the dialectical method and materialist theory. Created by Marx and Engels and enriched and further developed by Lenin and Stalin, the dialectical method is one of the greatest achievements of science. VI Lenin and JV Stalin teach that dialectics is the soul of Marxism. The working class, its vanguard - the Marxist Party - consciously uses the laws of dialectics, sees it as a weapon in the struggle for further social progress.

The method of cognition is not a manual, artificially created and external in relation to objective reality, it is certain objective laws of reality, discovered by people in the things themselves, phenomena and serving as a means of their knowledge.

On the opposite side are the idealists. For example, representatives of one of the schools of modern bourgeois philosophy in the USA, who call themselves instrumentalists, like many other idealists and reactionaries, interpret the method and theory of knowledge in a subjectivist way. From the point of view of these enemies of science, there are no objective laws of nature and society. The method of cognition, according to them, is artificially constructed by people, it is a “convenient” tool with which a person allegedly forms phenomena and creates his own order in nature.

In reality, however, the method of cognition cannot be artificially created. The method, as it was said, is the very laws of the development of nature, open, correctly understood and consciously applied by people in the process of cognition.

Dialectical-materialistic consideration of the phenomena of nature and society means considering them as they are in themselves, objectively.

Marx wrote that “the dialectical method he created is not only fundamentally different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he transforms even under the name of an idea into an independent subject, is the demiurge [creator, builder] of the real, which is only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing but the material, transplanted into the human head and transformed in it. (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1951, p. 19).

To Hegel, dialectics seemed to be the science of the laws of the absolute spirit, of the idealistically understood laws of consciousness. For Marx, it is primarily the science of the objective laws of nature and society.

The history of philosophy and the sciences in general knows many unsuccessful attempts to create a universal method of cognition. Some bourgeois philosophers tried to declare the laws of mathematics as a method of investigating all natural phenomena. And to this day, many bourgeois scientists adhere to this point of view. However, the failure of such attempts is obvious: none of the special areas of knowledge, no matter how important and thoroughly developed, can in principle claim the role of a general method. All the more untenable and reactionary are all kinds of subjectivist methods of research: the “subjective method in sociology”, subjectivism in psychology and physiology, in chemistry, physics, etc., methods that are especially fashionable among modern representatives of reactionary bourgeois science.

Only Marxism-Leninism discovered the only scientific, universal method of understanding nature and society. This method is the universal laws that are implemented in all objects and phenomena without exception. It is these laws that Marxism-Leninism regards as the universal method of cognition.

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels points out that “dialectics is regarded as the science of the most general laws of any movement. This means that its laws must be valid both for the movement in nature and human history, and for the movement of thought. (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1952, p. 214). Elsewhere, Engels writes: “Thus, the history of nature and human society is where the laws of dialectics abstract from. They are nothing but the most general laws of these two phases of historical development, as well as of thought itself. (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1952, p. 38).

Science claims that all phenomena of animate and inanimate nature exist in a certain interdependence, and not in isolation from each other. But it follows from this that it is necessary to study the phenomena of animate and inanimate nature not in isolation from each other, but in their real interconnection.

Science claims that in all phenomena of animate and inanimate nature there are processes of change, renewal, development. Development is the law of all objects and phenomena of animate and inanimate nature. Therefore, this law is universal, universal, occurring everywhere and everywhere. One has only to discover this universal law in the things and phenomena themselves and understand it correctly, which Marx and Engels did for the first time in science, in order to make it possible to use this objective law of nature as a method and consciously be guided by it in the study of all phenomena of nature, society and thinking. .

The same must be said about such a law of dialectics as the law of the struggle of opposites. Marxism comprehensively proved that the internal source of development of all phenomena of living and inanimate nature is the struggle of opposites. This law of dialectics is also general and universal. That is why the knowledge of this law makes it possible in the study of new phenomena not yet known to us to follow the right path: to look for the source of their development not in otherworldly external forces, but in the internal inconsistency of the phenomena themselves.

It turns out, therefore, that thanks to the knowledge of once discovered and correctly understood general laws - the laws of dialectics - the study of specific laws is greatly facilitated, people confidently seek and find them. This is the guiding, methodological significance of the dialectical method, its role as a powerful and true tool of knowledge.

In materialist dialectics, the Marxist party finds not only a method for explaining the phenomena of social life, but also guiding principles for finding ways and means to change it.

The dialectical method is the method of revolutionary action. Guided by the Marxist dialectical method, the party of the proletariat bases its policy, its strategy and tactics on a sober scientific analysis of the economic development of society, taking into account concrete historical conditions, proceeds from the correlation of class forces and the real tasks facing the working class in a given situation.

The principles of materialist dialectics give a scientific idea of ​​the regularities in the development of nature and society, arm the working class and all working people with the correct method of understanding and revolutionary change in the world.

Materialist dialectics theoretically substantiates the need for a struggle for a revolutionary change in an exploiting society.

If the transition from gradual, slow quantitative changes to rapid qualitative changes is the law of development, says Comrade Stalin, then it is clear that the revolutionary upheavals carried out by the oppressed classes are a completely natural and inevitable phenomenon. Not a gradual, slow change in the conditions of life of capitalist society through reforms, but a qualitative change in the capitalist system through revolution and the creation of new foundations for social life - this is the practical conclusion that follows from the principles of materialist dialectics.

This conclusion exposes the right-wing Social Democrats, who preach reactionary views, according to which capitalism is supposedly gradually, without jumps and upheavals, developing into socialism. The sworn enemies of the working people, the right-wing socialists, servile to American imperialism, go out of their way to prove the "inconsistency" of Marxist dialectics.

However, life takes its toll. The economic crises periodically experienced by the capitalist states, the wars and revolutions which are maturing more and more fully in different countries and have already exploded capitalism in a number of European and Asian countries, speak of the inevitable truth of Marxist dialectics and the inevitable complete defeat of its enemies.

Marxist dialectics deeply substantiates the historical inevitability of the explosion of the old social order in a society divided into hostile classes. Revealing the general laws of development of all natural and social phenomena, Marxist dialectics shows the regularity of social revolutions carried out by the oppressed classes and, thus, deals a serious blow to all sorts of perverts of science who defend the obsolete capitalist order.

Marxism considers the development of nature and society as a process of their self-development, because nature and society change according to their inherent laws. The root causes of any development lie in the inconsistency of all phenomena of nature and society: all of them are characterized by the struggle of the new with the old, of the emerging with the obsolete.

From the point of view of Marxist dialectics, the contradictions existing in the material world are infinitely diverse. This extremely important position was emphasized by V. I. Lenin. In his letter to Maxim Gorky, he wrote: "... life goes forward with contradictions, and living contradictions are many times richer, more versatile, more meaningful than it first seems to the mind of a person." (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 34, ed. 4, p. 353).

In a society divided into antagonistic classes, the contradictory development is expressed in the class struggle. The history of exploiting society is therefore the history of the class struggle.

If the struggle of opposing forces, the struggle of antagonistic classes, drives the development of exploiting society forward, then the conclusion follows: we must not gloss over the contradictions of capitalist society, but expose them, not extinguish the class struggle, but carry it through to the end.

The Bolshevik Party has always built its tactics, looking for ways and methods of struggle for a new social system, in full accordance with this law of materialist dialectics. The Party mobilized the working people of Russia for a decisive struggle against the capitalists and landowners, for the victorious implementation of the Great October Socialist Revolution, for the liquidation of the capitalist elements in town and countryside and the building of a socialist society, and is now confidently leading our people forward to communism. These historic victories won under the banner of Lenin and Stalin speak of the great organizing, mobilizing and transforming power of Marxist-Leninist science.

Today, millions of working people in the people's democracies, led by communist and workers' parties, are successfully building the foundations of socialism. Dialectical and historical materialism, Marxist-Leninist theory, like a mighty searchlight, illuminates the way forward for them.

Contradictions are the source of all development. They also take place under socialism. The elucidation of their features under socialist conditions is of exceptionally great importance for the practical activity of the Communist Party and the Soviet people.

In a socialist society where there are no hostile classes, contradictions do not assume the character of a struggle between opposing classes. But there is also the new and the old and the contradictions and struggle between them. However, contradictions and struggle between the new and the old exist in the new conditions. "... Under our socialist conditions," I.V. Stalin teaches, "economic development takes place not in the order of upheavals, but in the order of gradual changes ...". (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 53).

The transition from the old quality to the new takes place in socialist society without explosions, because in this society there are no antagonistic classes. The development of society is carried out under socialism on the basis of new driving forces: the moral and political unity of Soviet society, the friendship of peoples, and Soviet patriotism. The struggle of the new against the old in the economic, political and spiritual life of Soviet society does not require breaking the foundations of society, but is carried out on the basis of the further strengthening of the principles of socialism, on the basis of the further rallying of the workers, peasants, and Soviet intelligentsia around the tasks of building communism, around the Communist Party. The peculiarity of the struggle between the new and the old, the conflicts between them, is that in socialist society the absolute majority of the people, led by the Communist Party, takes the side of the new. Because of this, Soviet society is in a position to overcome lagging inert forces without bringing matters to a conflict between the productive forces of society and the relations of production. Criticism and self-criticism play a decisive role in overcoming such inert forces that defend the old.

The contradictions between the new and the old in the development of socialism are revealed and resolved through the development of criticism and self-criticism. Criticism and self-criticism are an inalienable and permanent weapon of the Communist Party. Criticism and self-criticism is the key with which the Soviet people reveal and eliminate shortcomings and move society forward.

In his report at the 19th Party Congress, Comrade Malenkov pointed out that in order to successfully advance the cause of building communism, it is necessary to wage a resolute struggle against shortcomings and negative phenomena, and for this it is necessary to develop self-criticism, and especially criticism from below.

“The active participation of the broad masses of working people in the struggle against shortcomings in work and negative phenomena in the life of our society,” says G. M. Malenkov, “is a clear evidence of the genuine democracy of the Soviet system and the high political consciousness of Soviet people. Criticism from below expresses the creative initiative and self-activity of millions of working people, their concern for the strengthening of the Soviet state. The more self-criticism and criticism from below is deployed, the more fully the creative forces and energy of our people will be revealed, the stronger the feeling of the master of the country will grow and strengthen in the masses. (G. Malenkov, Report reportXIXParty Congress on the work of the Central Committee).

The 19th Party Congress paid great attention to the task of developing criticism and self-criticism in every way and to removing the obstacles that hinder the operation of this important dialectical regularity in the development of Soviet society. The new Party Rules, adopted at the 19th Congress, oblige each member of the Party to develop self-criticism and criticism from below, to identify and eliminate shortcomings in work, to fight against ceremonial well-being and ecstasy of success. The Rules declare it incompatible with being in the ranks of the Party to clamp down on criticism, to replace it with showiness and praise.

Such are the practical conclusions from the laws of materialist dialectics.

All this suggests that Marxist dialectics is not only the only scientific method of cognition, but also a method of revolutionary action.

The great transforming power of the dialectical-materialist worldview lies in the fact that, being the only scientific one, it provides the principles for understanding the world as a whole and at the same time points out the ways and means of changing this world. Thus, Marxism-Leninism is an integral, harmonious and practically effective worldview.

* * *

Dialectical materialism is the only scientific interpretation of the phenomena of nature and society, a tool for understanding and changing the world.

The materialistic theory, like the dialectical method, is also not artificially created, invented. The materialistic understanding of the phenomena of animate and inanimate nature is the understanding of them as they are in themselves, without any extraneous additions.

The materialist theory not only makes it possible to scientifically interpret all the phenomena of nature and society, but also serves as a powerful means of transforming reality.

Marxist materialistic theory, or Marxist philosophical materialism, proceeds from the fact that the world is material, that the diverse phenomena in the world are different types of moving matter, that the world develops according to the laws of matter and does not need either God, or spirit, or other idealistic fiction.

Considering consciousness as a reflection of the laws of nature and society, materialistic theory correctly interprets the origin of ideas, views, and social institutions. In this way, the materialist theory also correctly points to the real role of people's ideas and views in social life.

Interpreting the ideas and views of people as a reflection of the objectively existing laws of nature and society, Marxist theory affirms the cognizability of the world and its laws.

These provisions of the materialistic theory are the most important principles of the worldview. They are of great importance for the scientific understanding of all phenomena of animate and inanimate nature.

In extending the principles of dialectical materialism to society, Marxism for the first time saw in society not an accumulation of accidents, but the realization of certain laws inherent in the development of society. This allowed the advanced social forces, the Communist Party, to base their activities not on the demands of "reason", "universal morality" and other principles put forward by all kinds of idealists, but, as I. V. Stalin says, "... on the laws of development of society, on the study of these patterns. (JV Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 1952, p. 583).

Marxism-Leninism teaches that not only the phenomena of nature occur according to objective laws independent of the will of people. The processes taking place in public life are also subject to objective laws. History, political economy and other social sciences study the objective laws governing the development of society, equip people with the knowledge of these laws and the ability to use them in the interests of society. “Marxism,” I.V. Stalin points out in his work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,” understands the laws of science, whether it is about the laws of natural science or the laws of political economy, as a reflection of objective processes that occur independently of will of people. People can discover these laws, know them, study them, take them into account in their actions, use them in the interests of society, but they cannot change or cancel them. Moreover, they cannot form or create new laws of science.” (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 4).

In affirming and creatively developing the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism on the objective character of the laws of science, JV Stalin crushed subjectivist, voluntarist views. Before the appearance of J. V. Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR", these subjectivist views on the economic laws of socialism were quite widespread among Soviet economists, philosophers, historians, jurists, bringing great harm to ideological work. Exposing subjectivism, I. V. Stalin points out that “the laws of political economy under socialism are objective laws that reflect the regularity of the processes of economic life that occur independently of our will. People who deny this proposition essentially deny science, while denying science, they thereby deny the possibility of any foresight, and therefore deny the possibility of directing economic life. (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, pp. 9-10).

Recognition of the objectivity of the laws of economic development should by no means lead to their fetishization. Society is not powerless in the face of objective economic laws. Knowing them, people can master the objective laws, "saddle" them.

While obliging us to carefully study the objective laws of social development, Marxism-Leninism at the same time assigns an enormous role to the revolutionary transforming activity of people, the activity of the advanced classes and parties. Marxism-Leninism teaches that history is always made by people, that in the history of society development does not come about by itself, not automatically, but only as a result of the activity of people, through the struggle and labor of millions. Lenin and Stalin teach that the death of capitalism does not come automatically, but as a result of a stubborn struggle against it by all working people under the leadership of the working class and its revolutionary party.

While noting the decisive role of material production in the development of society, historical materialism in no way denies the significance of ideas. On the contrary, dialectical materialism, in contrast to vulgar materialism, emphasizes the active role of ideas in the life of society. In his brilliant work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Comrade Stalin pointed out the enormous role of progressive ideas, their mobilizing, organizing and transforming significance. In Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, Comrade Stalin shows what the greatest active force in the development of society is the social superstructure over the economic basis, that is, social ideas and institutions.

In his work The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, I. V. Stalin again emphasizes the importance of the activity of the advanced social classes, who use the objective laws of the development of society.

Particularly great is the role of people's vigorous activity, the role of progressive ideas and public institutions under socialism.

The ever-increasing activity of the Soviet people, organizing the activities of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, testifies to the great significance of advanced ideas and institutions in the conditions of Soviet reality. Of great importance for accelerating the advance of Soviet society towards communism is the economic-organizational and cultural-educational function of the Soviet state, which is completely unknown to the bourgeois state. The Soviet state, relying on the basic economic law of socialism and the law of planned, proportional development of the national economy, plans the development of all branches of the economy and culture, mobilizes the Soviet people to fight for new successes in the steady movement towards communism.

The thesis of historical materialism, that under socialism the role of people's conscious activity increases immeasurably, is most fully confirmed by the leading and guiding activity of the Communist Party. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, armed with the most advanced theory, Marxism-Leninism, determines, on the basis of knowledge of the objective laws of historical development, the way forward for Soviet society. By studying the laws of the development of society and summarizing the experience of the labor and struggle of the masses, the Party sets specific tasks for the Soviet people at each individual stage in the construction of communism. The Communist Party plays a decisive role in organizing and mobilizing the working people of our Motherland for the struggle for further successes in communist construction.

The great all-conquering force of dialectical materialism lies in the fact that it gives the only true picture of the development of nature and society.

One of the most important, decisive conditions for the correctness of the conclusions and propositions of dialectical materialism is that it itself is always improving, assimilating new achievements in the natural and social sciences and generalizing the achievements of the practice of the struggle of the working people against capitalism, for socialism, for communism.

Dialectical materialism is not a collection of forever unchanging rules and regulations. Dialectical materialism is constantly developing and enriching itself. He is an enemy of all teaching, dogmatism and Talmudism.

The very nature of dialectical materialism requires this creative attitude towards Marxist science.

If dialectics are the most general laws of the development of nature and society, then it follows from this that the laws of dialectics never and nowhere manifest themselves in the same way. Being the most general and eternal, the laws of dialectics manifest themselves each time in one or another specific area and are always implemented only in a concrete historical form.

So, the position of dialectics that everything in nature is in a state of change, development, is universal and eternal, because the change and development of nature, matter is eternal. However, it has always been different in its content: in the distant past on our planet there were some changes, some processes of development; the appearance of the first living organisms marked the emergence of new processes of change and development; the emergence of human society meant the emergence of new, hitherto unseen processes of change and development. And at every given moment in the life of nature, the eternal laws of dialectics are implemented in different ways: at the same time, the process of movement, change manifests itself both as the movement of the planets around the Sun, and as the oxidation of metal, and as the process of formation of a new biological species, and as the creation people of the new social system, etc., etc.

This suggests that one cannot metaphysically understand the universality and eternity of the laws of dialectics: the laws of dialectics, being universal, always manifest themselves in a new way. The laws of dialectics are eternal in their universality and historical in their concrete manifestation.

Marxism-Leninism not only found general laws in things themselves, not only succeeded in separating them from concrete and particular laws, but also showed how these general laws manifest themselves in nature.

The laws of dialectics, as universal, says Marxism, are manifested in things not next to specific laws, not apart from them, but in themselves - in specific laws. “The general,” says V.I. Lenin, “exists only in the individual, through the individual.” (V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, 1947, p. 329).

In that area of ​​nature, which is studied, for example, by physics, the laws of dialectics are manifested not in addition to and not next to physical laws, but in themselves - in physical laws. The same takes place in all other phenomena of nature and society, where universal laws - the laws of dialectics - are manifested only in the specific laws inherent in these phenomena. That is why it is absurd to look for change and development as such, apart from specific processes of change and development.

In a word, dialectics, by its very nature, requires a creative attitude towards itself: not to “adjust” facts to one or another position of dialectics, but, on the contrary, to find dialectics in the facts themselves, in which it always manifests itself in a peculiar way.

K. Marx in his famous work "Capital" showed how the laws of materialist dialectics manifest themselves in a historically specific period of social development - in the conditions of a capitalist society. While the bourgeois metaphysical sociologists were looking for the eternal principles of morality, law, the eternal laws of the development of society, Marx dialectically, concretely studied a certain society - capitalist - and thereby for the first time and only correctly indicated the real laws of social development.

Engels, in his work Dialectics of Nature, showed how the laws of dialectics manifest themselves in a peculiar way in the phenomena of organic and inorganic nature.

It is precisely this feature of dialectics, which always manifests itself only historically concretely, that determines the fact that the principles of Marxism can never and nowhere be put into practice according to a template, but, on the contrary, are and can be put into practice only taking into account the peculiarities of the economic, political , cultural development of a given country, taking into account the peculiarities of the current moment of domestic and international life.

Lenin says that Marx's theory "...gives only general guidelines, which apply in particular to England differently than to France, to France differently than to Germany, to Germany differently than to Russia." (V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 4, ed. 4, p. 192).

Reality, especially social life, is constantly changing and developing. It is precisely because of this constant emergence of the new in the most material reality that the conclusions and provisions of science cannot be unchanged, but, on the contrary, are always improved, changed.

JV Stalin says: “Scholars and Talmudists consider Marxism, individual conclusions and formulas of Marxism, as a collection of dogmas that “never” change, despite changes in the conditions for the development of society. They think that if they memorize these conclusions and formulas and start quoting them at random, then they will be able to solve any problems, in the expectation that the conclusions and formulas learned by heart will be useful to them for all times and countries, for all occasions in life. . But only people who see the letter of Marxism, but do not see its essence, memorize the texts of the conclusions and formulas of Marxism, but do not understand their content, can think like that ... Marxism, as a science, - says J. V. Stalin further, - does not can stand in one place - it develops and improves. In its development, Marxism cannot but be enriched by new experience, new knowledge, and consequently, its individual formulas and conclusions cannot but change with the passage of time, cannot but be replaced by new formulas and conclusions corresponding to new historical tasks. Marxism does not recognize immutable conclusions and formulas that are obligatory for all epochs and periods. Marxism is the enemy of all dogmatism." (JV Stalin, Marxism and questions of linguistics, pp. 54-55).

At that period in the development of society, when the exploitation of man by man took place everywhere, science knew the struggle between the new and the old only in the form of a class struggle; when a socialist society was born that knew no antagonistic classes, then the doctrine of dialectics about the struggle of opposites was enriched: science now knows that, in addition to clashes between classes, the struggle of the new with the old can also be expressed in the form of criticism and self-criticism.

JV Stalin, generalizing the experience of the life of Soviet society, revealed the enormous significance of criticism and self-criticism as a new dialectical regularity, as a special form of struggle between the new and the old under the conditions of the socialist system. Thus, dialectical materialism was enriched and developed further, in relation to new phenomena of social life.

Not only this example, but all the most important phenomena of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, the era of building socialism and communism in the USSR testify to how life itself requires constant enrichment of the principles of dialectical materialism.

The successors of the teachings and the whole cause of Marx and Engels - Lenin and Stalin - developed dialectical materialism further, in relation to new historical conditions - to the conditions of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, the era of building socialism in the USSR. The founders and leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the creators of the world's first Soviet state enriched dialectical materialism with new experience in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, with new theoretical propositions and conclusions, and raised Marxist philosophy to a new, higher level.

Lenin and Stalin raised dialectical materialism to a higher level, generalizing not only the experience of social life, but also the achievements of the natural sciences.

In his remarkable work "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", V. I. Lenin analyzed the most important discoveries of natural science in the period after the death of Engels.

Lenin's book, writes I. V. Stalin, is "... a materialistic generalization of everything important and essential from what science and, above all, natural science has acquired over a whole historical period, from the death of Engels to the publication of Lenin's book" Materialism and empirio-criticism. (“History of the CPSU(b). A short course”, p. 98).

The works Anarchism or Socialism?, On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, and all other works of JV Stalin are remarkable examples of creative Marxism.

Such laws and categories of materialist dialectics as the interdependence of objects and phenomena, the invincibility of the new, the possibility and reality, the forms of transition from one qualitative state to another, the law of the struggle of opposites, etc., were enriched and developed by I. V. Stalin in relation to the latest achievements of all branches knowledge.

In his work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, JV Stalin, for the first time in Marxist literature, gave a coherent, integral exposition of the main features of the Marxist dialectical method and Marxist philosophical materialism. JV Stalin speaks of four main features of the dialectical method: 1) the universal connection and interdependence of phenomena; 2) about movement, change, development; 3) about the transition from one qualitative state to another; 4) about the struggle of opposites as an internal source of development.

JV Stalin showed the organic interdependence of all the features of the Marxist dialectical method. The law of the struggle of opposites, which is the essence of the last, fourth, feature of the dialectical method, is considered by I. V. Stalin as the inner content of the development process, the inner content of the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, that is, it inextricably links the fourth feature of the Marxist dialectical method with the third feature that precedes it. .

As for the law of “negation of negation”, formulated by Hegel and materialistically interpreted by Marx and Engels, I. V. Stalin rejected this terminology and more fully and correctly expressed the essence of dialectics in this matter, putting forward the position on development “from simple to complex, from lower to the highest."

In Stalin's work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism" Marxist philosophical materialism is just as harmoniously and fully expounded.

JV Stalin formulates the main features of the Marxist materialist theory: 1) the materiality of the world and the laws of its development, 2) the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness, 3) the cognizability of the world and its laws.

JV Stalin emphasizes the organic connection between the dialectical method and materialist theory, and shows how enormously important the extension of the principles of philosophical materialism to the study of social life, the application of these principles to the history of society, to the practical activity of the party of the proletariat.

In his work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, I. V. Stalin further developed historical materialism, formulating fundamental propositions demonstrating the concrete application of dialectical materialism to the understanding of the laws of social development.

The works of IV Stalin "Marxism and questions of linguistics" and "Economic problems of socialism in the USSR" open a new stage in the development of Marxist theory.

In the classic work Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, I. V. Stalin enriches and further develops Marxist dialectics, philosophical and historical materialism.

In this work, questions are developed about the logical nature of social development, about the productive forces and production relations, about the basis and superstructure. Comrade Stalin revealed the characteristic features and role of language in public life, pointed out the prospects for the further development of national cultures and languages.

The greatest contribution to the treasury of Marxism-Leninism is JV Stalin's brilliant work, The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR.

The theoretical and practical significance of this work by Comrade Stalin is truly enormous. In it, Comrade Stalin, on the basis of a deep scientific analysis of the objective processes of development of Soviet society, showed the ways of a gradual transition from socialism to communism.

The 19th Party Congress instructed the commission for the revision of the party program to be guided by the main provisions of Comrade Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR".

In his work The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, JV Stalin subjected anti-Marxist "points of view" and erroneous views on questions of the economy of a socialist society to devastating criticism. Comrade Stalin has thoroughly and comprehensively worked out questions about the economic laws of socialism, about the prospects for the development of the socialist economy, about the paths of a gradual transition from socialism to communism.

A major contribution to Marxist theory is JV Stalin's discovery of the basic economic law of modern capitalism and the fundamental economic law of socialism. Comrade Stalin formulates the main features and requirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism as follows: “... ensuring the maximum capitalist profit by exploiting, ruining and impoverishing the majority of the population of a given country, by enslaving and systematically robbing the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and finally, by wars and militarization of the national economy, used to ensure the highest profits. (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 38).

On the contrary, the fundamental law of socialism shows that under a socialist economic system, production develops in the interests of the whole of society, in the interests of the working people who have been liberated from the exploiting classes. I. V. Stalin formulates the main features of the basic economic law of socialism as follows: "... ensuring maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through the continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher technology." (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p. 40).

Thus, if under capitalism a person is subordinate to the ruthless law of extracting maximum profit, then under socialism, on the contrary, production is subordinate to a person, to the satisfaction of his needs. This noble goal has a beneficial effect on production, on the pace of its development. The action of the basic economic law of socialism leads to an upsurge in the productive forces of society, to a rapid growth in production, to a steady rise in the material well-being and cultural level of all members of society. It leads to the strengthening of the socialist system, while the operation of the basic law of modern capitalism leads to a deepening of the general crisis of capitalism, to the growth and sharpening of all the contradictions of capitalism and an inevitable explosion. Comparison of the basic economic law of socialism and the basic economic law of modern capitalism reveals the decisive advantages of the socialist system over the capitalist one, as a system incomparably higher.

Of programmatic importance are Comrade Stalin's propositions on the paths of transition from socialism to communism.

JV Stalin teaches that in order to prepare the transition to communism, at least three basic preconditions must be met:

"1. It is necessary, firstly, to firmly ensure not the mythical "rational organization" of the productive forces, but the continuous growth of all social production, with a predominant growth in the production of means of production. (JV Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, pp. 66-67).

"2. It is necessary, secondly, by means of gradual transitions carried out to the benefit of the collective farms and, consequently, of society as a whole, to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, and to replace commodity circulation, also by means of gradual transitions, with a system of product exchange, so that the central government or some other socio-economic center could cover all the products of social production in the interests of society. (Ibid., p. 67).

“3. It is necessary, thirdly, to achieve such a cultural growth of society that would ensure to all members of society the comprehensive development of their physical and mental abilities, so that members of society have the opportunity to receive an education sufficient to become active agents of social development, so that they can freely choose a profession, and not be chained for life, by virtue of the existing division of labor, to any one profession. (Ibid., pp. 68-69).

For this, Comrade Stalin points out, it is necessary to reduce the working day to at least 5-6 hours, introduce compulsory polytechnic education, radically improve living conditions and raise the real wages of workers and employees at least twice.

Comrade Stalin teaches that “only after fulfilling all these preconditions, taken together, will it be possible to move from the socialist formula - “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work” to the communist formula - “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. (Ibid., p. 69).

J. V. Stalin developed such new problems as the question of measures to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, the gradual transition from commodity circulation to a system of direct product exchange between state industry and collective farms through the "commodification" of collective farm products, as the question of liquidating the remaining socialist society of essential differences between town and countryside, between mental and physical labor.

JV Stalin drew a clear distinction between the question of eliminating the opposition between town and country, between mental and physical labor, and the question of eliminating the essential differences between them. Comrade Stalin showed that the antithesis between town and country, between mental and physical labor, disappeared with the abolition of capitalism and the strengthening of the socialist system. However, under the socialist system there are essential differences between town and country, between mental and physical labor, and the problem of eliminating these differences is a highly serious one.

Along with the development of economic problems and the problems of scientific communism, I. V. Stalin, in his work “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”, develops and concretizes dialectical and historical materialism, deepening the understanding of such issues of dialectical and historical materialism as the question of the objective laws of the development of society and their use , about the dialectics of the productive forces and production relations, about the possibility and reality, about the relationship between the old form and the new content, and many others.

The works of I. V. Stalin "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" and "Marxism and Linguistics" deal a crushing blow to the vulgarizers of Marxism-Leninism, enrich and further develop Marxist political economy, dialectical and historical materialism, serve as a guide in practical activities for the construction of communism .

"Comrade Stalin's theoretical discoveries are of world-historical significance, arming all peoples with knowledge of the ways of the revolutionary reorganization of society and with the richest experience of our party's struggle for communism." (G. Malenkov, Report reportXIXParty Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, p. 107).

Comrade Stalin's struggle against a dogmatic approach to theory is of enormous importance.

JV Stalin, in developing and advancing Marxist theory, enriched it with new propositions and conclusions, clarified and concretized certain general propositions of Marxism on the basis of historical experience, and pointed out that individual theses of the classics of Marxism had lost their force due to new historical conditions.

Comrade Stalin sharply criticized those who understand Marxism dogmatically, those who establish the Arakcheev regime in science. The struggle of opinions and freedom of criticism, Comrade Stalin teaches, is a decisive condition for the development of science.

Comrade Stalin made an invaluable contribution to the treasury of Marxist-Leninist science through the creative development of the most important principles of Marxism and the struggle against dogmatism and Talmudism.

The teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin illuminate brightly and far ahead the paths of the peoples' victorious advance towards communism.

The teaching of Marx - Engels - Lenin - Stalin is omnipotent and invincible, because it is true. For more than a hundred years of the existence of the Marxist worldview, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie have repeatedly made attempts to “overthrow” it and each time they have broken their foreheads in the fight against the indestructible, scientifically substantiated and confirmed by socio-historical practice, the provisions and conclusions of Marxism-Leninism. Today, such a campaign against Marxism-Leninism is being undertaken by the contemptible serfs of American-British imperialism, the malicious instigators of a new world war.

However, the same inglorious fate awaits them. The world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party - dialectical materialism - illuminates the road to communism for the communist and workers' parties and all working people more and more brightly every day.

11. Dialectical materialism as a new (fifth) philosophical direction, its difference from the old materialism. Philosophical, natural-science and social prerequisites for the emergence of a new materialism in the middle XIXcentury, its current state.

The dialectical method involves the consideration of all phenomena and processes in the general interconnection, interdependence and development. Initially, the term "dialectics" meant the art of arguing and was developed primarily in order to improve oratory. The founders of dialectics can be considered Socrates and the Sophists. At the same time, dialectics was developed in philosophy as a method of analyzing reality. Let us recall the doctrine of the development of Heraclitus, and later Zeno, Kant, and others. However, only Hegel gave dialectics the most developed and perfect form.

Hegel characterized dialectics as the driving soul of true knowledge, as a principle that introduces an inner connection and necessity into the content of science. Hegel's merit, in comparison with his predecessors, is that he gave a dialectical analysis of all the most important categories of philosophy and formed three basic laws: the law of the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, the law of the interpenetration of opposites and the law of negation of negation; in that for the first time he presented the entire natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, that is, in continuous movement, change, transformation and development, and made an attempt to reveal the inner connection of this movement and development.

Modern (dialectical) materialism was formed in the 40s of the 19th century on the basis of those achievements in the field of natural science, which were already mentioned above: the law of conservation and transformation of energy, Darwin's evolutionary theory, the theory of the cellular structure of an organism, achievements in the field of geology and paleontology, the theory organic synthesis. Although these discoveries did not shake the mechanistic picture of the world that dominated until the end of the 19th century, they nevertheless dealt a significant blow to the metaphysical worldview, because they made it possible to explain nature not as a collection of unrelated bodies, but as a system of interconnected bodies and processes in nature; in other words, natural science dictated the need for a transition to a dialectical explanation of the world, developed within the framework of Hegelian philosophy.

Dialectical materialism, both in the period of its formation and at the present time, relies on a certain scientific picture of the world. natural science premise The formation of dialectical materialism, as noted by its creators, was served by three great discoveries:

1) the law of conservation of energy, which affirms the indestructibility of energy, its transition from one form to another; 2) the establishment of the cellular structure of living bodies, when it was proved that the cell is the elementary structural unit of all living things: plants, animal microorganisms; 3) the theory of evolution of Charles Darwin, who substantiated the idea of ​​the natural origin and evolution of life on Earth, as well as the position of natural origin in the process of this human evolution.

Peculiarities:

1) The first feature of dialectical materialism as a philosophical school is that it combines in a single doctrine the materialistic understanding of nature and history with the principles of dialectics.

2) The second feature of dialectical materialism in comparison with classical (metaphysical) is connected with the solution of the WFR. Classical materialism is characterized by a naturalistic understanding of man and his abilities: mind, consciousness, thinking. This understanding consists in the fact that human consciousness was sought to be explained from natural causes. Assuming that consciousness is formed as a result of the direct impact of nature on the human senses, or as a result of biological evolution. Dialectical materialism points out that biological prerequisites are not enough to explain the phenomenon of consciousness, although without such prerequisites its occurrence is inexplicable, that the origins of consciousness lie not in nature as such, but in the active relationship of man to nature through practical activity (labor). Thus, the question of the relation of consciousness to being is solved in a different way: this relation is not direct, it is mediated by labor, due to which all the abilities of a person and he himself as a biological species are formed in the process of social evolution, these abilities are not something given by nature. , it is the result of a long social process.

3) The third feature of dialectical materialism is that it put an end to the natural-philosophical tendency of both materialism and idealism to discover some kind of first principle - the causa finalis of the world. These searches were justified in their time, because they meant an explanation of the world, starting from itself, but at the same time they expressed claims that, by determining such a causa finalis, to build a complete theoretical model of the world. Within the framework of dialectical materialism, the concept of substance has retained its meaning - as a logical requirement to look for an internal regularity behind the visible observable variety.

4) The fourth feature of dialectical materialism is the overcoming of the inconsistency of classical materialism, which is expressed in its inability to extend the principles of materialism to the areas of general phenomena. In other words, all materialists from Bacon to Feuerbach found themselves in positions of idealism in understanding social life.

Marx and Engels, retaining Hegel's idea of ​​the eternal process of development, rejected the preconceived idealistic view. Turning to life, they saw that it is not the development of the spirit that explains the development of nature, but vice versa - the spirit should be explained from nature, matter, and the development of human society is determined by the development of material, productive forces.

Marx and Engels considered the main shortcoming of the "old" materialism, including Feuerbach's, to be that this materialism was "predominantly mechanical", not taking into account the latest developments in chemistry and biology; that they understood the “essence of man” abstractly, and not as the “totality” (defined specifically historically) of “all social relations.

The definition of matter, classical for dialectical materialism, was formulated by VI Lenin. In the book "Materialism and Empiriocriticism" he wrote: "Matter is a philosophical category for designating an objective reality that is given to a person in his sensations, which is copied, photographed, displayed by our sensations, existing independently of them." Thus, V. I. Lenin separated the concept of matter from all concrete scientific ideas about it. The only property of matter with which philosophy is connected is the property of objective reality, i.e. the existence of the real world outside and independently of the consciousness of each individual person and humanity as a whole.

Consciousness as a whole is interpreted in dialectical materialism as a special property of matter inherent in it at the highest stage of development, namely at the stage when humanity was formed in the process of development of matter. Thus the category of matter in dialectical materialism is elevated to the level of substance. Dialectical materialism considers all the diversity of being as types and forms of its manifestation derived from matter. Matter as such does not exist. It exists in specific infinitely diverse types and forms of things, processes, phenomena, states, etc. None of these diverse types, forms, processes, phenomena, states can be identified with matter, but all their diversity, including connection and interaction, constitute material reality. And this means that Lenin's definition of matter contains a materialistic solution to the main worldview question about the primacy of material or ideal being. It orients people towards the recognition of existence outside and independently of the consciousness of the material world.

At the same time, this definition contains an indication of the derivative, secondary nature of human cognition, and, consequently, of consciousness. Cognition is defined in this definition as a reflection of matter.

In our time, the idea of ​​development, evolution, has entered almost entirely into the public consciousness, but in other ways, not through the philosophy of Hegel. However, this idea, in the formulation given by Marx and Engels, relying on Hegel, is much more comprehensive, much richer in content than the current idea of ​​evolution.

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1. Theoretical premises of the philosophy of Marxism

2. Basic provisions of dialectical materialism

3. The difference between the materialism of L. Feuerbach and the materialism of K. Marx and F. Engels

List of used literature

1. Theoretical background of the philosophy of Marxism

Marxist philosophy appeared in the 40s. XIX century, the founders of which were Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). The theoretical prerequisites for this philosophy are the dialectics of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and the materialism of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872).

Hegel entered the history of philosophy as the creator of an extensive philosophical system. Its full presentation is contained in his fundamental work "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences", which was written in 1817. Hegel divides it into three parts:

Philosophy of nature;

Philosophy of spirit.

This order corresponds to the logical sequence of problems considered in Hegel's philosophical system. This system is idealistic, since the whole world is based on an absolute idea and spirit. The absolute spirit is the highest truth of being. The philosophical method of Hegel is dialectical. The world and the absolute idea exist thanks to continuous formation and further development. Hegel considered the world around us, nature and spirit as an example of dialectics, movement, change and development. The philosopher indicated three stages in the development of an absolute idea: the first stage is the stage of pure categories (being, cause, quality). After the development of these categories, the absolute idea enters the second stage - natural otherness. The last third stage is the process of development of a person, society. Further, this process forms art, religion, philosophy. At all these stages, the main role is assigned to the spirit, that is, the absolute idea.

The strength of Hegel's dialectics can be considered the consistency, harmony and orderliness of the system he proposed. He considers the absolute idea starting from its beginning, observing the development, highlighting certain stages in it. In addition, it was Hegel who supplemented the idea of ​​development with a deep philosophical content, formulating the laws of the process of movement, change and development.

The disadvantage of Hegel's dialectic is the exaggeration of the role of reason, its absolutization, which reduces the entire diversity of life to logically derived categories and laws. Thus arises the inexorability of actions that also inexorably govern the world.

Disregard for the real world, which turned out to be a secondary form of being of the absolute idea, is another weak side of Hegel's dialectic. There is no room in his system for the individual. Man, according to Hegel, is just a means.

Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the last representatives of German classical philosophy. In his first works, one of these - "On the One, the Universal and the Infinite", written in 1828, Feuerbach developed Hegelian ideas, but then began to develop his own, opposite in meaning to Hegel's ideas.

The philosopher criticized the Christian religion. In his book The Essence of Christianity, which was written in 1841, he put forward the position that it was not God who created man, but, on the contrary, man created God. Feuerbach believed that any religion is made up of the deep spiritual needs of man. Faith embodies human desires and dreams. Representing God, a person would like to be just like that. The source of religion lies within each person.

Feuerbach contrasted Hegel's idealism with the philosophy of materialism, believing that nature itself is the basis for man, which makes him completely unique and individual. Being is primary and thinking is secondary. The basis of any thinking is matter, reality. Matter is the cause, and thinking, logic, idea are only consequences.

The strength of Feuerbach's materialism lies in the fact that at its center is not an absolute idea, but an ordinary person with his hopes, feelings, spiritual preferences. Man is God, it inspires, inspires to strive for the best, for self-improvement of one's soul, life.

However, materialism is not the path to truth. Only under the condition of the correlation of the physical and mental do they form a dynamic integrity in a person, they form the person himself.

Marx and Engels began to use in their philosophical direction Hegel's teaching on development and change, on the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones. They created a new dialectical method based on the scientific foundation of materialistic philosophy.

Having absorbed separate directions - Hegel's dialectics and Feuerbach's materialism, a completely new philosophical concept arose - dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism arose in the 40s of the 19th century and became a kind of revolutionary leap in the development of philosophy from the old state to a new state, which laid the foundation for a new worldview.

2. The main provisions of dialectical materialism

Marxism Dialectical Materialism Feuerbach

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels became the founders of Marxism, whose philosophy was dialectical materialism. Like any philosophical direction, dialectical materialism has its main provisions.

Dialectical materialism is a worldview, the method of studying the phenomena of nature, human society and thinking are dialectical, anti-metaphysical, and its idea of ​​the world, its philosophical theory is consistent scientific - materialistic. The dialectical method and philosophical materialism mutually penetrate each other, are in an inseparable unity and constitute an integral philosophical worldview. Having created dialectical materialism, Marx and Engels extended it to the knowledge of social phenomena.

Dialectical materialism arose as an integral part of the theory of proletarian socialism and developed in close connection with the practice of the revolutionary labor movement.

Two philosophers were able to combine dialectics and materialism. The problems of society and social life turned out to be in the center of attention of the philosophy of Marxism. Karl Marx believed that the main link of any social system lies not in the field of religion, but in the material and economic field of society. Materialism is the easiest and most accessible philosophy: faith in things, in bodies, in material goods, as in the only true reality of the world. If matter is the lowest and simplest level of being, then materialism is the lowest and simplest level of philosophy.

On the other hand, such materialism belittles the world of science, culture, spirituality and morality. Marx believed that the basis of development is the contradiction and struggle of classes. This is how he viewed and understood history.

Engels wrote that the task of dialectical materialism was to reduce the science of society to a "materialistic foundation". The role of such a "materialistic foundation" should be practice as a social transforming activity of people. Mainly, we are talking about their production activities, the method of production of material goods and the production and economic relations that develop on its basis between the people themselves. These factors directly or indirectly affect the content of people's cognitive activity and, ultimately, all aspects of their life in society. Marx expressed the idea that a theory becomes a material force when it begins to take hold of the masses of people. And this will happen only when this theory expresses the interests of the masses.

Karl Marx believed that the adherents of atheism were in fact the prophets of the new religion. For the philosopher, such a religion was the “religion of the Communist society”, while he criticized the capitalist system of society. In this regard, there were many contradictions in the philosophy of dialectical materialism. The materialist Marx, on the one hand, believed in ideals, in a bright communist future, on the other hand, he left room for idealism.

Dialectical materialism understands society as materialistic and views it precisely from such positions. There is a need to create a science of society, but what will be the scientific laws? After all, each person is individual, has his own character and consciousness. How to subordinate the whole society to the general laws of development, if each individual unit in it is a person. Therefore, Marx considers the inner spiritual world as secondary to the outer world.

The main achievements of the dialectical-materialistic way of thinking can be identified by the following positions:

Criticism of the shortcomings of capitalism;

Development of practice problem;

Understanding the nature of the public.

But the exaggeration of the role of the public was often accompanied by a belittling of the human - individual, personal, loss of a person. Marxists recognized the materiality of the world, the recognition that the world develops according to the laws of motion of matter. Matter, according to Marx, is primary, and consciousness is secondary.

Marxist materialism proves that all the diverse bodies of nature - from the smallest particles to giant planets, from the smallest bacteria to higher animals, to man - are matter in different forms and at different stages of its development. Marxist philosophy is profoundly alien to a passive, contemplative attitude towards the surrounding reality. Dialectical materialism is a tool for the reorganization of society in the spirit of communism.

Thus, Marxist philosophy uniquely resolves the relationship between being and thinking, between nature and spirit. On the one hand, it recognizes matter as primary and consciousness as secondary, on the other hand, it considers their ambiguous, complex and contradictory interactions, sometimes giving the main role to consciousness. Marxism relies on the successes of natural science and the social sciences; and claims that the world is cognizable, and the main problem in it remains - the problem of society and society.

3. DifferencebetweenmaterialismohmL.Feuerbach andmaterialismTO.Marx and F.Engels

Like any materialism, Feuerbach's philosophy insists on the ascent from the material to the ideal. At the same time, the basis of the ideal is nature and man. The ideal is everything material - this is how the Marxists spoke.

Feuerbach places the feeling person at the center of the world. Among many feelings, he singles out love, while remaining a materialist. Love and the whole inner world K. Marx and F. Engels relegated to the background, pushing to the first outer world that surrounds a person.

In addition, Feuerbach dreamed of creating a just society, so he joined the ranks of the Social Democratic Party, where he preached the ideals of social justice. And like any materialism, Feuerbach's philosophy indicates that it is from the material world that the world moves towards the ideal. Marxism also advocated the creation of a new socially just society through practice.

A much more developed form of materialism than the anthropology of Feuerbach is the dialectical materialism of K. Marx and F. Engels. Marx, in particular, reproached Feuerbach for not understanding concretely the social nature of man and the role of practice, especially revolutionary. After all, such practice is the basis and criterion of truth itself.

Marx understands philosophy as a science and seeks to build it strictly according to the scientific method, while society understands it exclusively as materialistic. First, the external world is considered, and therefore already the internal environment of the human soul. The external world is, firstly, nature, and secondly, what is created by people from nature (the products of the labor of an individual and the products of social labor.) It is in social labor that a person leaves his own inner world. Economic relations, Marx argues, determine all other social relations - the relations of rights, politics, religion and morality. That is, the economic dominates everything, even the inner world of man. Feuerbach did not single out the economic relations of people so significantly. But he also expressed thoughts about the need for justice in social relations.

Marx singled out the world as a social one, which no one had done before him. When considering the materialism of Marxism, it is necessary to take into account the fact that it is continuously connected with the revolutionary side. Criticizing the shortcomings of capitalist society, the philosophers Marx and Engels spoke of the need for a transition to socialism, because in the competition of capital, capitalists would simply be forced to drastically violate the rights of workers, whose relative impoverishment would lead to a socialist revolution.

The materialism of Ludwig Feuerbach had a great influence on the formation of the views of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but this does not mean that their philosophical directions are identical. Feuerbach completely rejected dialectics.

In addition, Feuerbach remained an idealist in the field of understanding social phenomena: he distinguished epochs in the development of mankind solely by the forms of consciousness, by successive religions. Feuerbach's materialism is anthropological materialism. At the basis of all his reasoning is an abstract person, considered by him as a biological being. Feuerbach is completely alien to the historical approach to man and human society. Although he spoke of a “generic” connection between people, he understood this connection as purely natural, mainly as a connection between the sexes. He was far from the idea that the social connection between people is really determined by their relations in the process of social production, that people can exist only by influencing nature with the help of the tools of production they have created, and that in the process of this influence people themselves change, experience “true history”. ".

Feuerbach did not see the meaning of political struggle in social development, while Marxists saw a direct connection in this. Engels and Marx extended materialism to the knowledge of society, creating historical materialism. Feuerbach was not a supporter of historical materialism.

Listusedliterature

Philosophy: textbook / ed. V.N. Lavrinenko, V.P. Ratnikov. - M.: UNITI, 2010.

Ikonnikova G.I., Ikonnikova N.I. Philosophy of the Ancient World: a textbook. - M.: UNITI-DANA, 2010.

Kanke V.A. Philosophy for Economists: A Textbook. - M.: Omega-L, 2008.

Ostrovsky E.V. Philosophy: textbook. - M.: Vuzovsky textbook, 2009.

Philosophy: textbook / ed. V.N. Lavrinenko. - 5th ed.; revised and additional - M.: Yurayt, 2009.

Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ed.-Comp.: E.F. Gubsky, G.V. Korableva, V.A. Lutchenko. - M.: INFRA-M, 2009.

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In the USSR, the state forcibly supports a certain philosophical system, namely the materialism of Marx and Engels, called dialectical (diamat for short). Up until 1925, many Soviet philosophers, especially natural scientists, although emphasizing their allegiance to Marxism, were not clear enough about the difference between dialectical and mechanical materialism. In 1925, Engels's manuscript "Dialectics of Nature" (written in the period 1873-1882) was first published, causing a sharp division of Soviet Marxists into "dialectics" and "mechanists"; at the same time, a fierce struggle flared up "on two fronts": against "Menshevik idealism and mechanistic materialism." The foundations of dialectical materialism were clearly defined 325 .

Let us first consider how the term "materialism" is understood by its adherents. Engels and after him Lenin argue that philosophers are divided into materialists, idealists and agnostics. For materialists, says Lenin, matter, nature (physical being) is primary, and spirit, consciousness, sensation, mentality are secondary. For idealists, on the contrary, the spirit is primary. Agnostics deny that the world and its basic principles are knowable.

“There is nothing in the world,” wrote Lenin, “except moving matter, and moving matter cannot move except in space and time.”326

“... the basic forms of any being are space and time; being outside of time is just as great nonsense as being outside of space.

Based on this, it may seem that dialectical materialism is based on the same clear and definite concept of matter as mechanical materialism, according to which matter is an extended, impenetrable substance that moves, i.e., changes its position in space. We will see, however, that the situation is different.

“The concept of matter,” writes Bykhovsky, “is used in two senses. We distinguish between the philosophical concept of matter and its physical concept. These are not two contradictory concepts, but the definition of a single matter from two different points of view” (78). Following Holbach and Plekhanov and quoting Lenin, Bykhovsky defines matter from a philosophical, epistemological point of view, as “that which, acting on our sense organs, produces sensation; matter is an objective reality given to us in sensation, etc. ”328.

This definition contains a simple recognition of the objective reality of matter, in other words, that it exists independently of our consciousness, and the statement about the “sensory origin of knowledge about it” (78), but does not break its nature.

One would expect this to be done by defining matter from a physical point of view. Vain hopes!

What does it mean to "define"? - asks Lenin, Bykhovsky and others. This means, first of all, to bring the given concept under another, wider generic concept as one of its types and indicate its specific difference (for example, in the definition “a square is an equilateral rectangle”, “rectangle” is a generic concept, and “equilateral” is a specific difference) .

But “matter cannot be defined through its genus and species difference, since matter is everything that exists, the most general concept, the genus of all genera. Everything that exists is different kinds of matter, and matter itself cannot be defined as a special case of some kind. Therefore, it is impossible to indicate the species difference of matter. If matter is everything that exists, then it is unthinkable to look for its distinguishing features from something else, since this other can only be something that does not exist, that is, it cannot be” (78).

Thus, dialectical materialists have greatly simplified the task of finding a basis for a materialistic worldview. Without any evidence, they claim that "everything that There is, there is material being... Being by its very essence is a category material"(Deborin, XLI 329).

This statement makes it possible, in accordance with the requirements of modern science and philosophy, to attribute to "being" all sorts of manifestations, properties and abilities, very far from being material, and yet call this theory materialism on the ground that "everything what is, is material being".

Engels in his "Dialectics of Nature" indicates the path that can lead us to the knowledge of what matter is: "Once we have known the forms of motion of matter (for which, however, we still lack a lot due to the short duration of the existence of natural science), then we have known matter itself, and this is the end of knowledge. This statement sounds very materialistic, if we understand the word "motion" in the way it is usually understood in science, namely as movement in space. However, elsewhere Engels writes that dialectical materialism understands motion as "change in general" 331.

All dialectical materialists accept this word usage: they designate by the word "movement" not only movement in space, but also any qualitative change. Thus, everything that has been said to us about matter so far boils down to the fact that matter is everything that exists and changes. But we must not despair: a consideration of the struggle of the "dialectics" with mechanistic materialism and other theories will give us a more definite idea of ​​the character of their philosophy.

Metaphysical philosophy, says Engels, including mechanical materialism in this term, deals with "immovable categories", while dialectical materialism deals with "fluid ones".

So, for example, according to mechanistic materialism, the smallest particles are unchanging and uniform. However, says Engels: “When natural science sets itself the goal of finding uniform matter as such and reducing qualitative differences to purely quantitative differences formed by combinations of identical smallest particles, then it acts in the same way as if it wanted to see instead of cherries, pears, apples fruit as such, instead of cats, dogs, sheep, etc. - mammal as such, gas as such, metal as such, stone as such, chemical compound as such, movement as such... this "one-sided mathematical point of view" , according to which matter is only quantitatively determinable, and qualitatively the same from the beginning, is "nothing but the point of view" of the French materialism of the eighteenth century" 333 .

Dialectical materialism is free from the one-sidedness of the mechanistic point of view, since it proceeds from the following three laws of dialectics, derived from the "history of nature and human society": "The law of the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa. The law of mutual penetration of opposites. The law of negation of negation" 334 . The second and third laws have been mentioned by us in connection with Hegel's dialectical method; The first law is that, at a certain stage, quantitative changes lead to sudden changes in quality. Moreover, generally speaking, "there is no quality without quantity, and there is no quantity without quality" (Deborin, LXX).

Movement, i.e., any change in general, is dialectical through and through. “The main, main feature of any change,” writes Bykhovsky, “as we know, is that a certain thing in its movement is denied, that it ceases to be what it was, acquires new forms of existence ... In the transition to a new quality, in the process of the emergence of a new one, the former quality is not destroyed without a trace and without a trace, but enters the new quality as a subordinate moment. There is a negation, using the usual term in dialectics, "sublation". The removal of something is such a negation of the thing, in which it ends and at the same time is preserved on a new level ... Thus, food or oxygen is doubled by the body, transforming into it; in this way the plant retains the nutritive juices of the soil; so the history of science and art absorbs the legacy of the past. What remains of the previous, old, is subject to new laws of development, it falls into the orbit of new movements, harnessed to the chariot of a new quality. The transformation of energy is, at the same time, the conservation of energy. The destruction of capitalism is, at the same time, the absorption of the technical and cultural results of the development of capitalism. The emergence of higher forms of movement is not the destruction of the lower ones, but their removal. Mechanical laws exist within the higher forms of motion, as secondary, subordinate, sublated.

“How is the further development of the thing proceeding? After a certain thing has been transformed into its opposite and has “removed” the previous state, development continues on a new basis, and at a certain stage of this development the thing again, for the second time, turns into its opposite. Does this mean that at the second negation the thing returns to its original state?.. No, it doesn't. The second negation, or, using the terminology common among dialecticians, the negation of negation is not a return to the original state. The negation of negation means the removal of both the first and the second stages of development, the rise above both” (Bykhovsky, 208-209). Lenin wrote: "...development...in a spiral, not in a straight line" 335 .

The opposite, into which a thing turns in its development, is “something more than a simple difference,” explains Bykhovsky. Opposite is "qualified difference". Opposite is an internal, essential, necessary, irreconcilable difference in a certain respect... the whole world is nothing but the unity of such opposites, a bifurcated unity containing polarities... Electric and magnetic processes are a unity of opposites... Matter is the unity of protons and electrons, the unity of a continuous wave and a discontinuous particle. There is no action without reaction. Every emergence is necessary at the same time as the annihilation of something!.. The survival of the more adapted is the extinction of the less adapted. Class society is a unity of opposites. "The proletariat and the bourgeoisie are social categories in which the difference is at the level of opposition" (Bykhovsky, 211).

Thus, "the moving world is a self-contradictory unity" (Bykhovskii, 213). The basic principle of the dialectical interpretation of the world is that "the world is a unity bifurcated in itself, a unity of opposites, a carrier of internal contradictions" (Bykhovsky, 213; Pozner, 59). “...objective dialectics [i.e. e. development through contradictions. - N. L. reigns in all nature» 336 .

"The condition for the cognition of all the processes of the world in their 'self-movement'," writes Lenin, "in their spontaneous development, in their living life, is their cognition as a unity of opposites."

Now the profound difference between dialectical and mechanistic materialism becomes apparent. “For a mechanist,” Bykhovsky points out, “contradiction is a mechanical contradiction, a contradiction of colliding things, oppositely directed forces. With a mechanical understanding of movement, a contradiction can only be external, not internal, it is not a contradiction contained and accomplished in unity, there is no necessary internal connection between its elements ... A clearly expressed model of methodology based on the substitution of the dialectical principle of the unity of opposites with the mechanical principle of collision oppositely directed forces, the “theory of equilibrium” (A. Bogdanov, N. Bukharin) can serve. According to this theory, “balance is such a state of a thing when it by itself, without externally applied energy, cannot change this state ... An imbalance is the result of a collision of oppositely directed forces”, i.e. forces located in a certain system and her environment.

The main differences between the mechanistic theory of equilibrium and dialectics are as follows: “Firstly ... from the point of view of the theory of equilibrium, there is no immanent emergence of differences, bifurcation of a single, mutual penetration of opposites ... The opposite breaks away from unity, antagonistic elements are external, alien to each other each other, are independent of each other, their contradiction is random. Secondly, internal contradictions, as the driving force of development, are replaced by external contradictions, the collision of the system and the environment. Self-movement is replaced by movement due to external influence, push. Internal relations in the system are reduced to the level of derivatives dependent on external relations of objects. Thirdly, the theory of equilibrium reduces the whole variety of forms of motion to a mechanical collision of bodies. The equilibrium scheme borrowed from mechanics absorbs the richness of higher supra-mechanical (biological, social) types of development. Fourth, in the theory of equilibrium, the relationship between motion and rest is put on its head. It is the doctrine of equilibrium, albeit mobile, relative. Movement in the theory of equilibrium is a form of rest, and not vice versa. It is not movement that brings peace, balance, but balance is the carrier of movement. Fifth, the theory of equilibrium is the theory of abstract quantitative change. A greater force determines the direction of a lesser one... The transition to a new quality, the emergence of new forms of development, other patterns - all this does not fit into a flat, oaky scheme of balance. Finally, sixthly, the negation of negation, the removal of the positive and negative moments of development, the emergence of a new mechanist, is replaced by the restoration of balance between the system and the environment” (Bykhovsky, 213-215).

Since change is a dialectical self-movement based on internal contradictions, it deserves the name of "development" and, as Lenin says and Deborin following him, has immanent character, “... the subject,” writes Deborin, “ necessary develops in certain direction and cannot develop in another direction thanks to its "immanent nature, thanks to its essence" (Deborin, XCVI).

It is not surprising, therefore, that Lenin points out that development is creative character. He distinguishes "two ... concepts of development (evolution) are: development as a decrease and increase, as a repetition, And development as a unity of opposites (bifurcation of the one into mutually exclusive opposites and the relationship between them)... The first concept is dead, poor, dry. The second is vital. Only the second gives the key to the "self-movement" of all things; it alone gives the key to the "leaps", to the "break in gradualness", to the "transformation into the opposite", to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.

In his article “Karl Marx”, Lenin points out the following features of the dialectical theory of development: “Development, as it were, repeating the steps already passed, but repeating them differently, on a higher basis (“negation of negation”), development, so to speak, in a spiral, not in a straight line; - development is spasmodic, catastrophic, revolutionary; - "breaks of gradualness"; the transformation of quantity into quality; - internal impulses to development, given by contradiction, clash of various forces and tendencies acting on a given body either within a given phenomenon or within a given society; - interdependence and the closest, inseparable connection all aspects of each phenomenon (moreover, history reveals more and more new aspects), a connection that gives a single, natural world process of movement - these are some of the features of dialectics, as a more meaningful (than usual) doctrine of development.

If, according to Lenin, evolution is creative and is immanent and spontaneous self-movement containing "internal impulses", it is clear that one can speak of the transition from certain stages of being to other stages, not just as a fact, but as a process with intrinsic value, "... any process of development," writes Deborin, - there is an ascent from lower forms or steps to higher ones, from abstract, poorer definitions to richer, meaningful, concrete definitions. The higher level contains the lower ones as "removed", i.e., as being independent, but becoming dependent. The lower form developed into the higher; thus, it did not disappear without a trace, but itself turned into a different, higher form ”(Deborin, XCV).

From this it is clear, moreover, that the dialectical development may be called historical process, “... the higher form,” continues Deborin, “is connected with the lower one, and therefore the result does not exist without development ways, leading to him. Every given phenomenon, or every given form, must be regarded as developed, How which has become i.e., we must consider them as historical formations.” "Marx and Engels," Ryazanov writes, "establish the historical character of phenomena in nature and society" 340 .

Even inorganic nature is in a state of development and transformation. Ryazanov cites the following words of Marx: “Even the elements do not remain calm in a state of separation. They continually transform into each other, and this transformation constitutes the first stage of physical life, the meteorological process. Every trace of the various elements as such disappears in the living organism.

These words clearly express Marx's conviction that the higher levels of cosmic existence are profoundly qualitatively different from the lower ones and therefore cannot be regarded only as more and more complex aggregates of lower, simpler elements.

This idea is persistently emphasized by Soviet dialectical materialism. In this it differs sharply from mechanistic materialism. “To reduce the complex to the simple,” writes Bykhovsky, “means to refuse to understand the complex. To reduce the whole variety of laws of the world to mechanical laws means - to refuse to know any laws, except for the simplest mechanical ones, it means to limit knowledge to the understanding of only elementary forms of motion ... An atom consists of electrons, but the laws of existence "of an atom are not exhausted by the laws of motion of individual electrons. A molecule consists of atoms, but is not limited to the laws of the life of atoms. A cell consists of molecules, an organism - of cells, a biological species - of organisms, but they are not exhausted by the laws of life of their elements. Society consists of organisms, but its development cannot be known from laws of life of organisms.

There are three main, main areas of reality: the inorganic world, the organic world (in which the emergence of consciousness, in turn, forms a break of paramount importance), and the social world. The forms of movement of each of these areas are irreducible to others, qualitatively unique and at the same time arising from others. The mechanistic materialist reduces the laws of the organic world to mechanical ones, "and at the same time, social laws, reduced to biological ones, also dissolve in the laws of mechanics." Sociology turns into a collective reflexology (Bekhterev). In reality, however, each higher level is subject to its own special laws, and these “specific regularities, supra-mechanical types of development, do not contradict mechanical laws and do not exclude their presence, but rise above them as secondary, subordinate” 342 .

Engels writes: “... each of the higher forms of motion is not always necessarily connected with some real mechanical (external or molecular) motion, just as higher forms of motion simultaneously produce other forms of motion, and just as a chemical action impossible without a change in temperature and electrical state, and organic life is impossible without mechanical, molecular, chemical, thermal, electrical, etc. change. But the presence of these secondary forms does not exhaust the essence of the main form in each case under consideration. We will doubtless "reduce" thought sometime experimentally to molecular and chemical movements in the brain; but is this the essence of thinking? 343 . Thus, everything obeys not only the laws of mechanics.

The view that the laws of higher forms of being cannot be completely reduced to the laws of lower forms is widespread in philosophy. Thus, it can be found in Comte's positivism; in German philosophy, it is associated with theories that the higher levels of being have the lower ones as their basis, but are qualitatively different from them; in English philosophy, this view appears in the form of the theory of "emergent evolution", i.e., creative evolution that creates new levels of being, the qualities of which do not follow exclusively from the qualities of the components 344 . Those who believe that "everything There is, there is material being..."(Deborin, XI), and at the same time recognizes creative evolution, must attribute to matter the capacity for creative activity. “Matter,” Yegorshin writes, “is exceptionally rich and has a variety of forms. She does not receive her properties from the spirit, but she herself has the ability to create them, including the spirit itself” (I68) 345.

What then is this mysterious matter in which so many forces and abilities are embedded and which, however, dialectical materialism does not give any ontological definition? It is permissible to ask a question, which is essential for ontology (the science of the elements and aspects of being), about whether the material is substance or only by a complex of events, i.e., temporal and space-time processes. If matter is a substance, it is the carrier and creative source of events - the beginning, which as such is something more than an event.

Revolutionary materialists, who study philosophy not out of love for truth, but for purely practical purposes, in order to use it as a weapon to destroy the old social order, bypass questions that require subtle analysis. Nevertheless, Lenin's attacks on Mach and Avenarius, who denied the substantive foundations of reality, provide some data to answer the question that interests us.

Criticizing Mach and Avenarius, Lenin writes that their rejection of the idea of ​​substance leads them to consider "sensation without matter, thought without brain" 346 . He considers absurd the teaching that "... if instead of a thought, an idea, a feeling of a living person, a dead abstraction is taken: no one's thought, no one's idea, no one's feeling ..." 347 .

But , Perhaps Lenin considers that sentient matter (the brain) in itself is only a complex of movements? Nothing of the kind, in a paragraph entitled "Is motion conceivable without matter?", he sharply criticizes all attempts to represent motion separately from matter and quotes from the works of Engels and Dietzgen to confirm his point of view. “The dialectical materialist,” writes Lenin, “not only considers motion to be an inseparable property of matter, but also rejects a simplified view of motion, etc.” 348, i.e., the view that motion is “no one’s” motion: “Moves” - and that's it" 349 .

Deborin, therefore, is right in introducing the term “substance” (“In the materialistic “system” of logic, the central concept should be matter as substance") and supporting Spinoza's concept of substance as a "creative force" (XC, XCI).

Lenin himself does not use the term "substance"; he says that it is “a word which Messrs. professors like to use "for the sake of importance" instead of the more precise and clear: matter" 350 . However, the above excerpts show that Lenin had sufficient insight to distinguish between two important aspects in the structure of reality: the event, on the one hand, and the creative source of events, on the other. Therefore, he should have understood that the term "substance" is necessary for clarity and certainty, and not "for the sake of importance."

Let us pass to the question which is of decisive importance both for the defense and for the refutation of materialism, the question of the place of consciousness and mental processes in nature. Unfortunately, speaking of this question, dialectical materialists do not make a distinction between such different subjects of study as consciousness, mental processes, and thought. They also refer to this category sensation as the lowest form of consciousness.

It is necessary to say a few words about the difference between all this, so that we can better understand the theory of dialectical materialism. Let's start with an analysis of human consciousness.

Consciousness always has two sides: there is someone who is conscious and something that he is conscious of. Let us call these two sides respectively the subject and the object of consciousness. When it comes to human consciousness, the conscious subject is a human person.

The nature of consciousness is that its object (an experienced joy, an audible sound, a visible color, etc.) exists not only for itself, but also in a certain internal relation. for the subject. Most modern philosophers and psychologists believe that in order for cognition to take place, there must be, in addition to the subject and object, a special mental act of awareness directed by the subject to the object (to joy, sound, color). Such mental acts are called intentional. They are directed at the object and have no meaning apart from it. They do not change the object, but place it in the field of consciousness and cognition of the subject.

To be aware of an object is not yet to know it. A member of the winning football team, talking animatedly about the game, may experience a sense of joyful excitement, in the absence of observations behind this feeling. If it turns out that he is a psychologist, he can focus on his feelings of joy and know his, as, say, high spirits, with a touch of triumph over a defeated enemy. In this case, he will not only experience a feeling, but will have an idea and even a judgment about it. In order to cognize this feeling, it is necessary, in addition to the act of awareness, to perform a number of other additional intentional acts, such as the act of comparing this feeling with other mental states, the act of distinguishing, etc.

According to the theory of knowledge which I call intuitionism, my knowledge of my feeling in the form of a representation, or even in the form of a judgment, does not mean that the feeling is replaced by its image, copy, or symbol; my knowledge of my feeling of joy is the direct contemplation of this feeling as it exists in itself, or intuition, aimed at this feeling in such a way that by comparing it with other states and establishing its relationship with them, I can give an account of it to myself and other people, highlight its various sides (make its mental analysis) and indicate its connection with the world.

It is possible to be aware of a certain mental state without directing intentional acts of discrimination, comparison, etc. to it; in this case there is awareness, not knowledge. Mental life can take on an even simpler form: a certain mental state can exist without an act of awareness directed at it; in this case it remains a subconscious or unconscious psychic experience.

Thus, a singer may make critical remarks about the performance of his rival under the influence of an unconscious feeling of envy, which the other person may see in his facial expression and in his tone of voice. It would be completely wrong to assert that the unconscious mental state is not mental at all, but is a purely physical process in the central nervous system. Even such a simple act as an unconscious desire to take and eat during a lively conversation at the table a piece of bread lying in front of me cannot be considered as a purely physical process, not accompanied by internal mental states, but consisting only in centrifugal currents in the nervous system.

It has already been noted that even in inorganic nature the act of attraction and repulsion can take place only by virtue of a previous inner psychoid striving for attraction and repulsion in a given direction. If we are aware of such domestic condition like pursuit, and in such an external process as moving material particles in space, we will see with absolute certainty that these are profoundly different, though closely related, phenomena.

Thus, consciousness and mental life are not identical: perhaps unconscious or subconscious mental life. In fact, the distinction between "conscious" and "mental" goes even further. According to the theory of intuitionism, the cognizing subject is able to direct his acts of awareness and acts of cognition not only on his mental states, but also on his bodily processes and on the external world itself. I can be directly aware and have direct knowledge of the falling stone and the crying child who has his finger caught in the door, and so on, as they really are, independently of my acts of attention directed at them. The human personality is so intimately connected with the world that it can look directly into the existence of other beings.

According to this theory, when I look at a falling stone, this material process becomes immanent in my consciousness staying transcendent in relation to me, as to the knower subject, in other words, it does not become one of my mental processes. If I am aware of this object and know it, my acts of attention, discrimination, and so on, belong to the psychic sphere, but what I distinguish - the color and shape of the stone, its movement, etc. - is a physical process.

In consciousness and in cognition, a distinction must be made between the subjective and objective sides; only the subjective side, in other words, my intentional acts, are necessarily psychic.

From this it is obvious that "mental" and "consciousness" are not identical: the mental may be unconscious, and consciousness may contain non-psychic elements.

Thinking is the most important aspect of the cognitive process. It is an intentional mental act directed at the intelligible (non-sensory) or ideal (i.e., non-spatial and non-temporal) aspects of things, for example, relationship. The object of thought, such as relations, is present in the knowing consciousness, just as it exists in itself, and, as already said, this is not a mental, not a material process; it is the ideal object.

What is the sensation, say, the sensation of the color red, the note la, warmth, etc.? Obviously, colors, sounds, and so on are something essentially different from the mental states of the subject, from his feelings, desires and aspirations. They are physical properties associated with mechanical material processes; thus, for example, sound is associated with sound waves or, in general, with the vibration of material particles. Only acts of awareness, acts of feeling directed at them, are mental processes.

After this long digression, we may attempt to make sense of the muddled theories of dialectical materialism relating to psychic life.

“Sensation, thought, consciousness,” writes Lenin, “are the highest product of matter organized in a special way. Such are the views of materialism in general and of Marx-Engels in particular.

Lenin apparently identifies sensation with thought, consciousness, and mental states (see, for example, p. 43, where he speaks of sensation as thought). He considers sensations to be "images of the external world," 352 precisely copies of it, and according to Engels, Abbild or Spiegelbild (reflection or mirror image).

“Otherwise, as through sensations, we cannot learn anything about any forms of matter and about any forms of movement; sensations are caused by the action of moving matter on our sense organs... The sensation of red reflects the fluctuations of the ether, occurring at a speed of approximately 450 trillion per second. The sensation of blue reflects the fluctuations of the ether at a speed of about 620 trillion per second. The vibrations of the ether exist independently of our sensations of light. Our sensations of light depend on the action of ether vibrations on the human organ of vision. Our sensations reflect objective reality, i.e., that which exists independently of humanity and human sensations” 353 .

It might seem that this means that Lenin holds a "mechanistic" view, according to which sensations and mental states are generally caused by mechanical processes of movement that take place in the sense organs and in the cerebral cortex (see, for example, p. 74). This doctrine has always been regarded as the weak point of materialism. Dialectical materialism understands this and rejects it, but puts forward nothing clear and definite in its place.

Lenin says that the true materialist doctrine consists not in deriving sensation from the motion of matter or reducing it to the motion of matter, but in recognizing sensation as one of the properties of moving matter. Engels, on this question, took the point of view of Diderot. By the way, Engels fenced himself off from the "vulgar" materialists Focht, Büchner and Mole-Schott, by the way, precisely because they strayed into the view that the brain secretes thought Also, how the liver secretes bile.

Logical consistency requires that we then admit that, besides motion, sensation (or some other, more elementary, but analogous internal state or mental process) is also the original characteristic of matter.

It is this idea that we find in Lenin. “Materialism,” he writes, “in full agreement with natural science, takes matter as the primary given, considering secondary consciousness, thinking, sensation, because in a clearly expressed form, sensation is associated only with higher forms of matter (organic matter), and “in the foundation of the building itself matter," one can only assume the existence of a faculty similar to sensation. Such is the assumption, for example, of the well-known German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, the English biologist Lloyd Morgan, and others, not to mention Diderot's guess, which we cited above.

It is obvious that here Lenin has in mind what I have called psychoid processes. V. Posner, quoting Lenin, also says that “the ability to feel” is a property of highly organized matter, but that internal states are also inherent in unorganized matter (46).

Adherents of metaphysical and mechanistic materialism, he says, do not see "that the faculty of reflection cannot simply be reduced to the external movement of material particles, that it is connected with the internal state of moving matter" (67).

At the same time, V. Pozner, attacking Plekhanov for sharing the hylozoist point of view on the animation of matter (64), does not at all try to show how Plekhanov's point of view differs from Lenin's assertion that even unorganized matter has internal states similar to sensations.

Bykhovsky also does not give a clear answer to the question. He says that “consciousness is nothing but a special property of a certain type of matter, matter organized in a certain way, very complex in its structure, matter that arose at a very high level of the evolution of nature ...

The consciousness inherent in matter makes it seem to be two-sided: physiological, objective processes are accompanied by their internal reflection, subjectivity. Consciousness is an internal state of matter, an introspective expression of certain physiological processes...

What is the type of connection between consciousness and matter? Is it possible to say that consciousness is causally dependent on material processes, that matter affects consciousness, resulting in a change in consciousness? Material change can only bring about material change.”

Assuming that mechanical processes are not the cause of consciousness and mental states, Bykhovsky comes to the conclusion that “consciousness and matter are not two heterogeneous things... Physical and mental are one and the same process, but only viewed from two sides... That which from the front, objective side is a physical process, the same from the inside is perceived by this material being itself as a phenomenon of will, as a phenomenon of sensation, as something spiritual” (Bykhovsky, 83-84).

He further writes that "this ability itself, consciousness, is a property due to the physical organization, similar to its other properties" (84). This statement contradicts his assertion that "material change can only bring about material change."

Inconsistency can be avoided only with the following interpretation of his words: the material basis of the world (not defined by dialectical materialism) first creates its mechanical manifestations, and then at a certain stage of evolution, namely in animal organisms, in addition to external material processes, also internal mental processes.

With this interpretation, the difference between the theories of Lenin and Pozner, on the one hand, and Bykhovsky, on the other, is as follows: according to Lenin and Pozner, the material basis of the world creates from the very beginning at all stages of evolution not only external material processes, but also internal processes. or sensations, or at least something very close to sensations; according to Bykhovsky, the material basis of the world supplements external processes with internal ones only at a relatively high stage of evolution.

However, whichever of these opposing points of view is accepted, it will be necessary to answer the following question: if the beginning underlying cosmic processes creates two series of events that form a single whole, but cannot be reduced to one another, namely, external material and internal mental (or psychoid) events - what right did we have to call this creative source and carrier of events "matter"?

It is obvious that this beginning, which goes beyond both series, is metapsychophysical Start. The true worldview is to be sought not in one-sided materialism or idealism, but in ideal realism, which is the actual unity of opposites. It is significant that Engels and Lenin, speaking of primary reality, often call it nature, which implies something more complex than matter.

One could defend the use of the term "matter" in the sense of primary reality on the basis of the doctrine that the mental is always secondary in the sense that it is always a copy or "reflection" of the material process, in other words, always serves the purposes knowledge of material changes.

However, it is obvious that such an intellectualistic theory of mental life is untenable: the most important place in mental life is occupied by emotions and volitional processes, which, of course, are not copies or "reflections" of the material changes with which they are associated. As we have seen, striving is the starting point of all interaction, even such a simple form as collision.

Dialectical materialists believe that mental processes are something sui generis, 356 different from material processes. It is now necessary to ask whether, in their opinion, mental processes have any influence on the further course of cosmic changes, or are they completely passive so there is no need to mention them when explaining the development of the world.

Lenin believes that materialism does not at all assert a lesser reality of consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is just as real as material processes. One might think that this means that mental processes influence the course of material processes in the same way that the latter influence the occurrence of mental events. However, Marx asserts that it is not consciousness that determines being, but being that determines consciousness. And all dialectical materialists invariably repeat this saying, understanding by the word "consciousness" all mental processes. If we accept Marx's saying as a law of nature, this would force us to admit that all the highest expressions of mental and spiritual life - religion, art, philosophy, etc. - are passive superstructure over social material processes. The essence of the historical and economic materialism preached by Marxists lies precisely in the doctrine that the history of social life is conditioned by the development of productive forces and production relations. Economic relations, Marxists say, are real basis social life, while political forms - law, religion, art, philosophy, etc. - are only superstructure over the basis and depend on it.

Marx, Engels and true Social Democrats adhere to this doctrine, believing that the social revolution will take place in countries with a highly developed industry, where the dictatorship of the proletariat arises by itself, thanks to the enormous numerical superiority of workers and employees over a small group of owners. However, Russia was an industrially backward country, and the communist revolution in it was carried out by a relatively small Bolshevik party. The revolution resulted in the development in the USSR of a terrible form of tyrannical state capitalism; the state is the owner of property and, concentrating in its hands both the military and police forces and the power of wealth, exploits the workers on a scale that the bourgeois capitalists could not dream of.

Now that the state has shown itself in its true light and the peasants have been transformed from small landowners into collective farmers, there can be no doubt that the Soviet regime is supported by a small group of communists against the will of the vast majority of the population; to preserve it, those in power must strain their will to the limit and use skillful propaganda, advertising, take care of the appropriate education of young people and apply other methods that clearly prove the importance of ideology and deliberate conscious activity for the maintenance and development of social life.

Therefore, the Bolsheviks now quite definitely began to talk about the influence of ideology on the economic basis of life. Political and legal relations, philosophy, art and other ideological phenomena, says Posner, "... are based on economics, but they all influence each other and the economic basis" (68). Curiously enough, on the same page he says that “it is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness” (68) 1 . And further: when “... huge productive forces...” create “... a classless society... there will be a planned, conscious leadership of the process of social production and all social life. Engels calls this transition a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom” (68).

Lenin, writes Luppol, assumed that "final causes" were real and knowable, in other words, he argued that certain processes were purposive or teleological (186).

Bykhovsky, who is generally more systematic than Posner, gives an equally vague answer to this question. “The materialistic understanding of society,” he writes, “is such an understanding of it, which believes that it is not social consciousness, in all its forms and types, that determines social being, but it itself is determined by the material conditions of people’s existence ... not mind, not will people, people, races, nations determine the course, direction and nature of the historical process, and they themselves are nothing more than a product, expression and reflection of the conditions of existence, a link in the objective course of historical events, i.e., the result of how it develops from the will independent relations between nature and society and relations within society itself” (Bykhovsky, 93). Below, however, Bykhovsky states: “A malicious and false caricature of the Marxist understanding of society is the assertion that it brings together all social life to the economy, denies any historical significance of the state, science, religion, turns them into shadows that accompany economic transformations ... Materialism does not deny the reverse influence of the "superstructure" on its "foundation", but it explains the direction of this influence and its possible limits ... Thus, religion is not only the product of certain social relations, but also affects them inversely, affecting, for example, the marriage institution ... manifestations of social life that are more remote from the production basis not only depend on those that are less remote, but also, in turn, influence them... On the basis of a given mode of production and around the production relations corresponding to it, a most complex system of interacting and intertwining relations and ideas grows. The materialist conception of history does not at all favor dead schematism" (106).

Recognizing that other sociologists (Jores, Kareev) "argue that being affects consciousness, but consciousness also affects being" (93), he declares this view of theirs "eclectic"; however, he considers himself entitled to say the same thing, since his materialism "explains the direction" of the influence of consciousness and "its possible limits." As if his opponents did not pay attention to the direction of the influence of consciousness or imagined that this influence is boundless!

The vagueness of the dialectical-materialist concept of consciousness stems both from the desire to subordinate non-material processes to material processes at all costs, and from the fact that dialectical materialism does not distinguish between “consciousness” and “mental process”.

Consciousness presupposes the existence of a certain reality For subject: it is the consciousness of reality. In this sense, all consciousness is always determined by reality.

In the same way, all cognition and thought have reality as their object and, according to the intuitive theory, actually include it as directly contemplated, therefore, all cognition and thought are always determined by reality.

The mental side of consciousness, cognition and thought consists only of intentional mental acts, aimed at reality, but not affecting it; investigator, consciousness, knowledge and thought as such determined by reality, not defined by it. However, other mental processes, namely volitional processes, always associated with emotions, aspirations, attachments, desires, have a very strong influence on reality and determine it. Moreover, since volitional acts are based on cognition and thought, through them, cognition also significantly affects reality.

The fact that modern Marxists admit the influence of mental life on material processes clearly shows that dialectical materialism is in fact not materialism at all. We know from the history of philosophy that one of the most difficult problems for human thought is to explain the possibility of the influence of the spirit on matter and vice versa (backwards). Monistic and dualistic philosophical systems cannot solve this problem due to the deep qualitative difference between physical and mental processes.

The only way to explain their interconnection and the possibility of their mutual influence while denying their causal interdependence is to find a third principle that creates and unites them and is neither mental nor material. According to the theory of ideal-realism outlined above, this third principle is specifically ideal being, supra-spatial and extra-temporal substantial factors 357 .

Being hostile to mechanistic materialism, dialectical materialists do not seek to replace philosophy with natural science. Engels says that naturalists, who denounce and reject philosophy, unconsciously for themselves submit to wretched, philistine philosophy. He believes that in order to develop the ability for theoretical thinking, it is necessary to study the history of philosophy. Such a study is necessary both for the improvement of our abilities for theoretical thinking, and for the development of a scientific theory of knowledge. Bykhovsky writes that "philosophy is the theory of science" (9). According to Lenin, "dialectic and eat theory of knowledge...» 358 .

The interest shown by dialectical materialists in the theory of knowledge is understandable. They fight against skepticism, relativism and agnosticism and claim that reality is knowable. If dialectical materialists want to defend their assertion, they must work out a theory of knowledge.

Referring to Engels, Lenin writes: “...human thinking is by its nature capable of giving and gives us absolute truth, which is made up of the sum of relative truths. Each stage in the development of science adds new grains to this sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific proposition are relative, being either expanded or narrowed by the further growth of knowledge.

Lenin believes that the source of true knowledge lies in sensations i.e., in the data of experience, interpreted as that which is caused by "the action of moving matter on our senses" 360 . Luppol rightly describes this theory of knowledge as a materialistic sensationalism (182).

One might think that it inevitably leads to solipsism, i.e., to the doctrine that we know only our own, subjective states, generated by an unknown cause and, perhaps, completely different from it.

Lenin, however, does not draw this conclusion. He asserts confidently that "our sensations are images of the external world" 361 . Like Engels, he is convinced that they similar or correspond reality outside of us. He contemptuously rejects Plekhanov's assertion that human sensations and ideas are "hieroglyphs", i.e. "not copies of real things and processes of nature, not images of them, but conventional signs, symbols, hieroglyphs, etc.". He understands that the "theory of symbols" logically leads to agnosticism, and argues that Engels is right when he "does not speak of symbols or hieroglyphs, but of copies, photographs, images, mirror images of things" 362 .

Engels "... constantly and without exception speaks in his writings about things and about their mental images or reflections (Gedanken-Abbilder), and it goes without saying that these mental images arise only from sensations" 363 .

Thus, the theory of knowledge of Engels and Lenin is a sensationalist theory of copying or reflection. It is obvious, however, that if truth were a subjective copy of transsubjective things, it would at any rate be impossible to prove that we have an exact copy of a thing, i.e., the truth about it, and the theory of copying itself could never get a genuine proof.

Indeed, according to this theory, everything that we have in our minds is only copies, and it is absolutely impossible to observe a copy together with the original in order to establish by direct comparison the degree of similarity between them, as, for example, it can be done by comparing a marble bust with the face he portrays. Moreover, for materialism, the situation is even more complicated; really, how can mental image to be an exact copy material things? To avoid the absurdity of such a statement, it would be necessary to accept the theory panpsychism, i.e., to assume that the external world consists entirely of mental processes and that my ideas of, say, the anger or desire of another person are exact copies of this anger or desire.

The example given by Lenin concerning sensations as a "reflection" fully reveals his views. “The sensation of red reflects the fluctuations of the aether, occurring at a speed of approximately 450 trillion per second. The sensation of blue reflects the fluctuations of the ether at a speed of about 620 trillion per second. The vibrations of the ether exist independently of our sensations of light. Our sensations of light depend on the action of ether vibrations on the human organ of vision. Our sensations reflect objective reality, that is, that which exists independently of humanity and of human sensations” 364 .

Of the colors red and blue it cannot be said in any sense that they are "similar" to the vibrations of the ether; considering also that, according to Lenin, these vibrations are known to us only as "images" in our mind and composed of our sensations, which can be based on claims that these images correspond to external reality.

Plekhanov understood that the theories of reflection, symbolism and the like could not explain our knowledge of the properties of the external world or prove the existence of this world. Therefore, he was forced to admit that our belief in the existence of an external world is an act of faith, and argued that "such a" faith "is a necessary preliminary condition for thinking critical in the best sense of the word...” 365 .

Lenin felt, of course, the comic nature of Plekhanov's assertion that critical thought is based on faith, and did not agree with him. We shall soon see how he resolves the difficult question himself, but first we shall conclude our consideration of his sensationalist theory.

Does human cognition really consist only of sensations? Relationships like unity properties
object, causation, and so on, cannot, apparently, be sensations; it would be absurd to assert that the yellowness, hardness and coldness of an apple are given to us in three sensations (visual, tactile and thermal), and the unity of these properties is the fourth sensation.

People who have a better knowledge of philosophy than Lenin, even if they are dialectical materialists, understand that knowledge includes both sensible and non-sensuous elements.

So, Bykhovsky writes: “A person has two main tools at his disposal, with the help of which cognition is carried out - his experience, the totality of data acquired through his senses, and the mind, ordering the data of experience and processing them” (13). “The data of observation and experiment should be comprehended, thought over, coordinated. With the help of thinking, connections and relationships of facts must be established, they must be systematized and evaluated, their laws and principles must be revealed ... At the same time, thinking uses numerous general concepts, through which relations between things are expressed and determined, a scientific assessment is given to them. . These concepts and logical categories are an absolutely necessary element in all branches of knowledge in any cognitive process... It is difficult to overestimate their significance for science, their role in the formation of consciousness is enormous” (18-19).

Knowledge of these aspects of the world is achieved, of course, by abstracting on the basis of experience. Lenin cites the following words of Engels: "... Thought can never draw and derive forms of being from itself, but only from the external world..." 366 .

This is true, but it means that experience certainly does not consist of sensations alone, and that nature, from which ideal principles are derived by abstraction, contains these principles in its very structure. Deborin rightly argues that categories “are nothing more than a reflection, result and generalization of experience. But observation and experience are by no means reduced to direct sensation and perception. There is no scientific experience without thinking” (Deborin, XXIV).

These extracts from Bykhovsky and Deborin show that, having a certain idea of ​​Kant, Hegel and modern epistemology, they cannot defend pure sensationalism or deny the presence of non-sensory elements in knowledge; however, they fail to explain them. They are too strongly dominated by the traditions of mechanistic materialism.

For mechanistic materialists, the world consists of impenetrable moving particles, the only form of interaction between which is a push; our sense organs respond to these jolts by means of sensations-, according to such a theory, all knowledge as a whole proceeds from the experience produced by shocks, and consists only of sensations. (Lenin develops exactly the same theory as the mechanistic materialists.)

For dialectical materialists, true cognition consists of subjective mental states that must reproduce external reality. But why do they think that this miracle of reproduction of material things in mental processes really takes place? Engels answers this question in the following way: "... our subjective thinking and the objective world are subject to the same laws and... therefore they cannot contradict each other in their results, but must agree with each other" 367 .

This statement, he writes, is "...a prerequisite for our theoretical thinking" 368 . Posner, quoting Lenin, says that dialectics is the law of objective reality and at the same time the law of knowledge (34).

The doctrine that subjective dialectics corresponds to objective dialectics cannot be proved if we accept the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism. According to this theory, we always have in our minds only subjective dialectics, and its correspondence to objective dialectics must forever remain a hypothesis that cannot be proven. Moreover, this hypothesis does not explain how the truth about the external world is possible.

Dialectical materialists regard the law of dialectical development as a law of universal application. Therefore, not only thought, but also all other subjective processes, such as, for example, imagination, fall under its action. But if the subjective process of imagination does not give an exact reproduction of external reality, but obeys the same law, the subjective process of thinking may not reproduce it either.

Trying to set a criterion compliance between the subjective knowledge of the external world and the actual structure of this world, Engels, following Marx, finds it in practice, namely in experience and industry.

“If we can prove the correctness of our understanding of a given natural phenomenon by the fact that we ourselves produce it, call it from its conditions, make it serve our goals, then the Kantian elusive (or incomprehensible: unfassbaren - this important word is also omitted in Plekhanov’s translation , and in the translation of Mr. V. Chernov) “things-in-themselves” comes to an end. The chemicals produced in the bodies of animals and plants remained such "things-in-themselves" until organic chemistry began to prepare them one by one; thus the “thing-in-itself” was transformed into a “thing for us”, like, for example, alizarin, the coloring matter of madder, which we now get not from the roots of madder grown in the field, but much cheaper and easier from coal tar” 369 .

Dialectical materialists found this argument of Engels quite to their liking; they enthusiastically repeat and develop it 370 . Indeed, successful practical activity and its progressive development give us the right to assert that we Can have true knowledge of the world. This, however, leads to a conclusion unfavorable for the sensationalist theory of "copying" reality. It is important to develop a theory of knowledge and the world that would give a reasonable explanation of how a subject can have true knowledge not only about his experience, but also about the real nature of the external world, independent of our subjective cognitive acts.

The theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism, according to which only our subjective mental the process (images, reflections, etc.) is directly given in consciousness, cannot explain the possibility of true cognition of the external, especially the material world. It cannot even explain how, proceeding from its subjective mental processes, the human person can ever come to the idea of ​​the existence of matter in general.

Modern epistemology can help materialists in this matter, but only on condition that they abandon their one-sided theory and admit that cosmic existence is complex and that matter, although it is part of it, is not the main principle. Such a view of the world can be found, for example, in the intuitionist theory of knowledge, in its combination with ideal-realism in metaphysics. The doctrine of ideal realism presupposes, among other things, "pansomatism", that is, the concept that every concrete phenomenon has a corporeal aspect.

Lenin, who supposed "in the foundation of the very building of matter" ... the existence of a faculty similar to sensation," 371 apparently approached the point of view of ideal-realism.

“Philosophical idealism,” writes Lenin, “is only nonsense from the point of view of crude, simple, metaphysical materialism. On the contrary, from the point of view dialectical materialism philosophical idealism is unilateral, exaggerated uberschwengliches (Dietzgen) development (inflation, swelling) of one of the lines, sides, facets of knowledge into the absolute, torn off from matter, from nature, deified” 372 .

It must be added, however, that an adequate expression of truth, free from one-sided exaggeration of any particular element of the world, is to be sought not in idealism, not in any form of materialism (including dialectical materialism), but only in ideal-realism.

Dialectical materialists reject traditional logic with its laws of identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle and want to replace it with dialectical logic, which Bykhovsky calls "the logic of contradictions" because "contradiction is its cardinal principle" (232). It has already been shown above that these attacks on traditional logic stem from a misinterpretation of the laws of identity and contradiction (see, for example, B. Bykhovsky, Outline of the Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism, pp. 218-242).

Materialists who try to base their entire worldview on experience and at the same time are forced by their theory of knowledge to assert that it is not matter that is given to us in experience, but only its images, find themselves in a hopelessly difficult situation. Therefore, one would expect that an attempt would be made to intuitively interpret Lenin's words that "all matter has a property essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection ..." 373 .

Such an attempt was indeed made by the Bulgarian T. Pavlov (P. Dosev) in his book The Theory of Reflection, published in Russian translation in Moscow.

In this book, Pavlov opposes the intuitionism of Bergson and especially Lossky. Bergson's name appears fifteen times in this book, and Lossky's name more than forty. And yet, considering the relationship between “a thing and an idea about a thing,” Pavlov writes: “... dialectical materialism does not raise an impenetrable abyss between ideas about things and the things themselves. This question is resolved by him in the sense that in their form (namely, in their awareness) ideas differ from things, but in their content they coincide with them, although not completely and not absolutely, not immediately” (187). But this point of view is precisely Lossky's intuitionism,

Party fanaticism, like any strong passion, is accompanied by a decrease in intellectual abilities, especially the ability to understand and criticize the ideas of other people. Pavlov's book is a prime example of this. T. Pavlov constantly draws absurd and completely unjustified conclusions from Lossky's theories. Thus, for example, he says that Bergson and Lossky discredited the word "intuition" and that for intuitionists logical thinking "has no real scientific value." Pavlov does not notice the main difference between the intuitionism of Bergson and Lossky. Bergson's theory of knowledge is dualistic: he believes that there are two essentially different kinds of knowledge - intuitive and rationalistic. Intuitive knowledge is the contemplation of a thing in its true real essence; it is absolute knowledge; rationalistic knowledge, i.e., discursive-conceptual thinking, consists, according to Bergson, only of symbols and therefore has only a relative value.

Lossky's theory of knowledge is monistic in the sense that he regards all kinds of knowledge as intuitive. He attaches particular importance to discursive thinking, interpreting it as an exceptionally important type of intuition, precisely as intellectual intuition, or the contemplation of the ideal basis of the world, which gives it a systematic character (for example, the contemplation of the mathematical forms of the world).