LENIN AS PHILOSOPHER
399
assumed a "conciliatory" attitude toward the former minority, leav–
ing the irreconcilable "majority" leader of yesterday virtually with–
out a faction. It was at this critical moment that Bogdanov and his
friends, most of them just released from Siberia, rallied to Lenin's
standard. The newcomers were all men with a penchant for cultural
and philosophical speculation, a speculation which in no wise re–
sembled the unquestioning Marxist orthodoxy of Vladimir Ilyich. But
it was enough for him that they agreed with him on organization and
tactics. Almost the only continuity between the original Bolshevik
leadership of 1903 and the new Bolshevik leadership of 1904 was
provided by Vladimir Ilyich himself and his tactical-organizational
views. This phenomenon was to occur again in 1909 (when he broke
with Bogdanov) and several times more. Where Lenin and two or
three were gathered together, there was Bolshevism.
Bogdanov (real name A. A. Malinovsky) was a medical doctor
and a writer of considerable reputation on economics, sociology,
natural science, and philosophy. He regarded himself as a Marxist,
but his was an independent and speculative mind which abhorred
authoritarian attitudes in the realm of thought and rejected the
notion that in the scriptures of Marx and Engels would be found
the answers to all problems that might be raised by men who Jived
after them.
Lenin had known Bogdanov by reputation since 1898, when a
copy of the latter's
Short Course in Economic Science
reached him in
Siberia. Lenin found the work "interesting and sensible," so good
in fact that he himself rejected a proposal from a publisher to write a
manual of political economy because "it would be difficult to compete
with Bogdanov" (letters to his mother, February 12 and June 10,
1898).
When they joined forces in 1904, the two men exchanged presen–
tation copies of their latest works. Lenin's gift was his
One Step
Forward, Two Steps Backward,
and Bogdanov's was the first volume
of
his
Empiriomonism. Empiriomonism,
strongly influenced by the
philosophical writings of Ernest Mach, was the work which, in 1909,
was to be the chief target of Lenin's philosophical polemic.
Why did he delay for five years before he made his disagree–
ment public?
If
the work was ihdeed a service to religion and re–
action, as he was later to assert, why did he take its author into ,
leadership in
his
faction?
One thing is certain: the delay was not because Vladimir Ilyich
was slow to read
his
new associate's book. We have Ilyich's own
