On the Significance of Militant Materialism

Lenin’s important article for the Party’s theoretical journal Under the Banner of Marxism, which was written on March 12, 1922 and published in the third issue of Under the Banner of Marxism in March 1922. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 43 of the second edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

At the beginning of 1922, All-Russian Communist Party (B) founded the journal for philosophy and social economy called Under the Banner of Marxism to carry out the propaganda of militant materialism and atheism, so as to eliminate the influence of idealism and pseudo-Marxism, especially to counter the negative influence of religion on the party members and the masses.

Lenin has always been concerned about the struggle on the ideological front. He read a lot of anti-religious books while resting in Gorki village. He deeply felt that the Russian anti-religious propaganda was superficial and could not meet the needs of ideological struggle. In this context, Lenin wrote this article, the central idea of which is that theoretical workers represented by editors and writers of the journal Under the Banner of Marxism must uphold and defend Marxist dialectical materialism and historical materialism, so as to educate and equip the masses and improve their ideological and cultural level.

Lenin affirmed the work of defending materialism and Marxism undertaken by the magazine Under the Banner of Marxism, and put forward more precise tasks and requirements for the work of the editorial department of the magazine: to make the magazine a fighting atheistic magazine. He defined the tasks, ideas and methods of the magazine’s militant materialists and All-Russian Communist Party (B) on the ideological front: (1) We must form an alliance with the progressives in the bourgeoisie, that is, the materialists who are not party members, in a certain form and to a certain extent, to oppose all kinds of idealistic thoughts and defend and develop Marxist materialist philosophy. (2) To fight against the prevailing religious obscurantism and carry out the thorough propaganda of atheism unremittingly. We should provide the masses with various kinds of atheistic propaganda materials, use the facts of atheism and all aspects of real life to awaken the religious dreams of the most backward masses, arouse them to treat religious problems consciously, criticize religion consciously, so as to get rid of ignorance and create conditions for the education of communism. (3) What’s more important is to form an alliance with modern natural scientists, absorb natural scientists to participate in the propaganda work of militant materialism and atheism carried out by philosophy magazine Under the Banner of Marxism; help natural scientists to use materialistic dialectics to study and answer new problems, and guide natural scientists to become a conscientious supporters of dialectical materialism represented by Marx. (4) We should use dialectical materialism to analyze social phenomena and problems, and avoid the so-called “sociology” that disguises itself as science and democracy and in fact flatters the reactionaries and the bourgeoisie and distorts the facts to confuse and deceive the masses.

This article is a brilliant example advocating fthe combination of the proletarian party spirit with scientificity. Lenin’s working ideas and methods for Marxist theorists are of great significance for the transformation of nature, social life and people’s consciousness.