5/18/49
Dear Grace:
I note that in your letter to J1 you mention the division between materialism and dialectics that evidently characterized Lenin's philosophic conception when he wrote Empiro-Criticism.2 It is insufficient however merely to record the fact and that that was contrary to the primacy Marx assigned to dialectics. We must know: why was Lenin thus limited? In my letter to J also dated 5/17,3 I try to develop a historical reason. I point to two facts: the relationship of VIL to Plekhanov4 paralleling that of Marx to Feuerbach and, two, the backwardness of Russia. (Incidentally we must also remember that Empirio-Criticism was written against those who left Marxism for God and hence it was a sort of a natural throwback for Lenin to have taken this "backward" step in stressing materialism and failing to see the dialectics; the great chaos and contradictions we see in 1949 were not anywhere that sharp in 1909).5 Now it seems to me that Lenin's "error" can be worked out philosophically, which is why I am writing to you, and economically, which I hope to do. In other words, what is the relationship of materialism, English, to materialism, French, to materialism, Russian?
That man Marx was a most remarkable genius - we have not yet been able to work out the theses on Feuerbach that he jotted down in 1845, but it seems to me to contain a key to our present problem, and why not dig at it? The two that stand out in my mind particularly are: "The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the object, reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object, contemplation but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Thus it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism - but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real sensuous activity as such...".6
"The standpoint of the old materialism is "civil society"; the standpoint of the new is human society or socialized humanity".7
It seems to me also that with J's working out of the Puritan Revolution,8 we get a different relationship of masses to philosophy than we got when we kept on repeating that Kant for years before the French Revolution worked out the bourgeois mode of thought, n'est-ce pas?9 In other words while working out the philosophic relationship of materialism and dialectics which will explain Lenin and also us - where were the masses in 1908 when Lenin tackled philosophy for the first time and where in 1915?10
Yours, R
1 'J' is an abbreviation of CLR James. The editor has been unable to identify the letter by Grace Lee (Boggs) to CLR James, that Dunayevskaya is referring to.
2 Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, (1908).
3 Dunayevskaya's 17th June 1949 letter to CLR James is the previous one in this collection of correspondence.
4 "VIL" is an abbreviation of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. For more on Dunayevskaya's discussion of the relationship of Lenin to Georgi Velentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918), see letters 4 (14th May 1949) and 5 (17th May 1949) in this collection of correspondence.
5 Lenin's concern with the turn to religion on the part of advanced workers and Party cadres, following the suppression of the 1905 Revolution, can be seen in, for example, his article 'The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion' (1909).
6 The quote is from Marx's 'Theses on Feuerbach', (1845), Thesis One.
7 The quote is from Marx's 'Theses on Feuerbach', (1845), Thesis Ten.
8 In early 1949 CLR James wrote a lengthy analysis of what is variously referred to as 'The English Civil War', 'The English Revolution' and the 'Puritan Revolution'. This analysis was published in the Socialist Workers' Party (USA) journal Fourth International, in two instalments, in the May and September issues.
9 French: 'n'est-ce pas?' is a question added to a declarative sentence to engage, verify, or confirm (examples of translation into English: 'yes or no?', 'do you agree?').
10 1908 and 1915 were two periods of particularly intense philosophical study for Lenin. The main products of those two periods were Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908), which Lenin wrote as part of the struggle to combat the attempt, led by Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873-1928), (a philosopher and founding member of the Bolsheviks), to merge Marxism with Machism. And Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, (1914-15) (an alternative translation is available on the MIA as: V. I. Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel's book The Science of Logic, (1914)). Lenin plunged into a study of Hegel, Dunayevskaya argued, in an attempt to understand the philosophical basis for the betrayal of the international working-class by the leadership of the Second International. These leaders betrayed by either equivocating in their internationalism, or by directly supporting their national ruling-class, at the outbreak of World War One.