PARTISAN
REVIEW
to human progress. He does not mention pragmatism, but his American
publishers voice their confidence on the dust cover that "the reader
can easily see for himself the essential unity of pragmatism with the
doctrines discussed."
Though he follows in the footsteps of Lenin, Cornforth is incom–
parably more subtle and expert in philosophical matters than was his
guide. He does not systematically confuse, as Lenin so often did, ques–
tions of the genesis
of'
knowledge with issues concerning the meaning
and validity of the conclusions of inquiry. Nor does he rely as uniformly
as did Lenin on invidious epithets in order to dispose of views he does not
like. Moreover, he advances sound criticisms of atomistic sensationalism
and of the attempts to base all knowledge on the apprehension of
"atomic facts"--even if the criticisms are of a type frequently made
by many who subscribe to the general positions under his attack. Never–
theless, the book as a whole is essentially a document for true believers.
Its measure of what is sound in philosophy is borrowed uncritically from
the sacred texts of the Communist Fathers. It misconstrues central theses
of the positions criticized, so that the accounts given of them are fre–
quently little short of caricature. And its ultimate criteria of validity
are not the normal standards of truth employed in scientific inquiry
and philosophical analysis, but are explicitly formulated in terms of
the alleged social significance of the views considered. "The test of a
philosophy,'' Cornforth declares, "must be judged by how far it helps
to understand and to solve the practical problems facing humanity.
This is a test, not merely of its social utility, but of its truth."
Only a fraction of the evidence to support this over-all judgment
can be presented here. Cornforth claims to show that antimetaphysical
empiricistic philosophy inevitably eventuates in solipsism. But in the
case of Mach, for example, he establishes this conclusion only by inter–
preting Mach's "neutral elements" as inherently and exclusively "sub–
jective" and "mental." And yet Mach explicitly denied this, and held
that on the contrary the directly apprehendable data into which he
believed things are analyzable are neutral to the distinction between
the physical and the mental. Again, Cornforth rejects the analyses of
Russell and others, which aim to exhibit the meaning of ordinary scien–
tific statements in terms of statements about sense-data, on the ground
that knowledge is not gained through comparing sensations, but only
by "acting on things." However, though Cornforth is undoubtedly cor–
rect in his positive claim, he states it in a way so as to misrepresent
those whom he is discussing. There is no inherent incomparability be–
tween an "activist" account of the way knowledge is achieved and Rus-
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