The Complicated Battle Between Materialism and Idealism Induced by the Scientific and Technological Revolution

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the in-depth development of natural science, especially physics, had provided new research materials and scientific support for dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. Some scientists and philosophers made idealistic explanations around new discoveries such as X-rays and Becquerel rays, showing the vacillation of traditional physics theory of knowledge and the dilemma of metaphysical materialist view of nature. In the face of major breakthroughs and drastic changes in physics, or the so-called “crisis in physics”, two completely different schools of thought emerged. The first is the mechanistic school, who insisted on the spontaneous materialist standpoint and regarded Newton’s classical mechanics as absolute truth. They refused to understand and accept the new discoveries in physics, showing metaphysical characteristics of denying development and change. The second is the critical school, who held that the matters supporting materialism “disappeared” and that the materialist theory was self-defeated. The conflict between the two schools on the philosophical world outlook revealed the defects of metaphysical materialism and also reflected the real purpose of idealism trying to replace materialism.

In the philosophical circles, the most influential thought at that time was empirio-criticism, also known as “Machism”. It was a variant of positivism in modern western philosophy and a typical subjective idealism. Representative figures included Austrian philosopher Mach and German philosopher Avenarius from 1870s to 1880s. They advocated removing the objective content of experience through “criticizing” in order to “purify” experience. They argued that this “pure experience” is neither psychological nor physical, but “neutral”. Mach put forward the concept of “elements” and argued that what constitute the world are elements, or sensations, while objective things are “the combination of sensations”. Avenarius put forward the “theory of principle coordination” and argued that the object and the subject are coordinated, and the object cannot exist without the subject. They followed Kant’s naming of “critical philosophy” and put forward the “principle of the economy of thought”, regarding it as the “foundation of epistemology”.

Empirio-criticism held that the new discoveries in physics showed that “matters disappeared”. The materialistic concept of matter was refuted by natural science, and the discovery of electrons showed that the movement of non-matter had replaced that of matter. They denied the materiality of the world, advocated energetism and labelled it as “the latest philosophy of natural science”. They exaggerated the relativity principle of dialectics one-sidedly, trying to explain the relativity of scientific laws with new scientific discoveries, thus denying the objectivity of scientific laws and the possibility of understanding objective laws. Mach took empiricism as the starting point of philosophy, using “no party spirit” to cover up the fundamental opposition between the two philosophical routes, and showing off that his philosophy surpassed the opposition between materialism and idealism.

The theory of empirical criticism, which had been inherited by many idealist philosophers, was used by the revisionists of the Second International to oppose Marxism. This theory also had many adherents and advocates in Russia. Some people in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, including those with Bolshevik origin A. A. Bogdanov, A. B. Lunacharsky and Bazarov and those with Menshevik origin Yushkevich and B. H. Valentinov, were in line with Machism in their line of thought and theoretical views, who misinterpreted the philosophical significance of the new discoveries in natural science, boasted that Machism was “the philosophy of natural science of the 20th century”, advocated that Marxism was “obsolete” and attempted to “revise” Marxism with Machism. Lenin criticized these erroneous ideas intensively in his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and maintained, upheld and further developed Marxism.

☆See Materialism and Empirio-Criticism on page XXX