410
PARTISAN REVIEW
In pursuance of this idea that every man must have his author–
ities, Lenin matches a maze of quotations -from Engels with a coun–
termaze of quotations from the "other camp," lumping together the
most diverse names, on the philosophical theory, as Bogdanov wryly
observed, that "who is not with us, is against us." By this device
Lenin blames Bogdanov for things he has not said, and even for
things he specifically rejects. It is sufficient that Mach has said them
and that Bogdanov is a "Machist" and therefore "responsible" for all
of his "authority's" views. And for all other Machists! And for all
the utterances of any who has praised Mach or been praised by him!
This "philosophical chain-reaction method," and "quotational shock
treatment," as Bogdanov dubbed them, were calculated as much to
impress the reader as to overwhelm the opponent.
The most notable difference between Engels and Lenin is the
angry moral tone of Lenin's attacks, the opprobrious moral epithets
that pepper his pages. Engels had spoken of three philosophical
"camps": materialism, idealism, and agnosticism. Insensibly, Lenin
converts "camps" into "parties" and proclaims that "philosophy is a
partisan
struggle." Where Engels finds "philosophical agnosticism" to
be a "shamefaced way of accepting materialism by the back door,"
Lenin enlarges the "shame" until it becomes a monstrous thing, a
plot to dr.ag in not materialism but "religion by the back door." Those
in the "idealist camp" are at least to be respected as "open agents
of reaction and religion," but those in the "agnostic camp" are to
be exposed as covert agents, whose agnosticism is "only a despicable
cloak of servility to idealism and fideism."
Mar.x and Engels could be scornful and ironic in theoretical
controversy, and devastating and reckless in their private letters to
each other. But even in the
Anti-Duhring,
which so largely served
Lenin as source and model, all that Engels aims at is to convict
Professor Diihring of inconsistency and "higher nonsense." Nowhere
do we find the imputations of evil intention that abound in Lenin's
pages, or the passionately held belief that defects in a man's epistemo–
logical theories are defects in his charcter, willful immoralities of the
spirit leading to inevitable political sin.
If
Lenin's philosophical targets disavow a view he has imputed
to them, it is sinister trickery.
If
they have modified a view under
criticism (his criticism or another's ) , it is but the better to deceive.
If
their views seem very close to his, or to his masters'-still worse:
they are "surreptitiously and illegally borrowing'' from materialism
