Marxism, Mach and Einstein

Marxism

Karl Marx died in England in 1883 without much notice. His worldview would not be a sensation until the 20th century. Marx had believed that the labor movement was to be the historical vehicle that would take political power away from Europe's bourgeoisie and elite and give it those who had been the employees of capitalists. This would happen, he believed, with the failure of capitalism and the working class no longer accepting the capitalist rationale as to how society should be. Workers, he believed, would then seize the means of production and run everything in their interest rather than the interest of capitalists.

The labor movement in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century was dominated by the Social Democrats. They emerged from socialist movement of the 19th century, including the socialist Second International, which in 1889 had declared May 1 as International Workers' Day. In 1910 the Second International declared March 8 as International Women's Day, and it was campaigning for the 8-hour working day. Its focus was advancing the interests of Labor, and some members pursued Marx's goal of complete power in the factories as well as in Europe's parliaments.

A clash of opinions existed among Social Democrats. There was Eduard Bernstein, a Social Democrat elected to Germany's parliament, the Reichstag, in 1902 and the author of two books: The Problem of Socialism and The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy. Bernstein took issue with Marx's predictions about the demise of capitalism, and he took issue with various other aspects of Marx's theory of economic development. Bernstein favored improving conditions for the working class within capitalism rather than through capitalism's destruction. Marxist Hegelianism had one historical force (the workers) overcoming another force (the capitalists), producing a new society without capitalists. Bernstein was not a Hegelian.

A number of leaders among the Social Democrats took issue with Bernstein. Kark Kautsky, an Austrian recognized as a leading Marxists theoretician, denounced him. In Germany, Rosa Luxemburg, the fiery orator with a doctorate in Political Economy, called Bernstein an "opportunistic philistine." Her call for Bernstein's expulsion from the German Social Democratic Party failed as not enough of her fellow Social Democrats agreed with her.

A Russian Social Democrat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, in his book What Is to be Done, published in 1902, described Bernstein as having abandoned Marx's scientific socialism. Lenin stuck by Marx's conclusions about "growing impoverishment, the process of proletarisation, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions." Bernstein, he complained, had denied "the antithesis in principle between liberalism and socialism" -- antithesis being a word that was part of Marxism's Hegelian language.

Lenin responded to an ideological dispute within the Russian branch of the Socialist International with a book on epistemolgy entitled Materialism and Empiriocriticism, published in 1909. The book was written as a reaction to a three volume work Empiriomonism by Alexander Bogdanov, a fellow Russian Social Democrat. Bogdanov tried to merge Marxism with the philosophy of Ernst Mach, an Austrian physicist who was a critic of Newtonian physics and a forerunner of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Mach had developed a "philosophy of science," a belief in empiricism worked on within one's mind and void of metaphysical pronouncements. Lenin believed in Marx's dialectal materialism -- a carry over from Hegelian logic. Lenin quibbled with Bagdanov and Mach over their use of the word "symbols" rather than "images" in describing what ideas were. Lenin took a firm stand in declaring that there was a reality outside of heads. We all know, he complained, that nature came before humans. Bagdonov and Mach were not denying that this was so, but Lenin put the two in league with the solipsim of Bishop Berkeley.

Soon after publication of Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Lenin defeated Bogdanov at a congress of the "Bolshevik" (majority) wing of Russia's Social Democratic Party. Pursuing what they believed to be ideological conformity with Karl Marx, the Bolsheviks expelled Bagdanov.

Materialism and Empiriocriticism would be a seminal work of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union, part of the curriculum called "Marxist-Leninist Philosophy" and published in over 20 languages.

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