Philosophical Struggle in the Soviet Union
An Overview of the Mechanist Position
Pre-Soviet Marxist Philosophy
Marxist philosophy in the Russian Empire was defined just as much by disagreement and strife as philosophy in the Soviet Union was. The main conflict was between the Machists, who followed the philosophy of the scientist Ernst Mach, and which was popularized in Russia by Bagdanov, and the dialectical materialists, led by Plekhanov and Lenin. The conflict between the Machists and the dialectical materialists was essentially over whether or not Marxism needed to be supplemented with outside philosophies in order to provide it with a stronger ontological and epistemological base. This is a conflict that would continue to be played out up until the modern day, with both sides taking various different forms each time it arose. But that is a story for another time.
The dialectical materialists believed, essentially, that information gathered by the human senses can in almost all cases be trusted. They held to the reflection theory of knowledge, which states that, through perception/sensation, we construct mental images in our minds which are reflections of the real world. They firmly believed that “the external world reflected by our mind exists independently of the mind.” (Lenin, Materialism and Empiriocriticism, 58).
Lenin
The book that best summed up and defended the dialectical materialist position, and which is perhaps one of the most influential Russian books on marxist philosophy ever written, is Vladimir Lenin’s 1908 polemic Materialism and Empiriocriticism. Lenin begins the book by arguing that the views of the Machists are in no way new, and are merely a modernization of the views of Bishop Berkley. The “new thought” of the machists, Lenin writes, “consists in this: that the concepts ‘matter’ or ‘substance’ are remnants of old, uncritical views. Mach and Avenarius, you see, have advanced philosophical thought, deepened analysis and eliminated these ‘absolutes,’ ‘unchangeable entities,’ etc. If you wish to check such assertions with the original sources, go to Berkeley and you will see that they are pretentious fictions. Berkeley says quite definitely that matter is ‘nonentity,’ that matter is ‘nothing.’” (11).
Not only are the ideas of the Machists not new; they are also absurd. “We are told that bodies are complexes of sensations,” Lenin writes. “To go beyond that, Mach assures us, to regard sensations as a product of the action of bodies on upon our sense-organs, is metaphysics, an idle and superfluous assumption… But the brain is a body. Consequently, the brain also is no more than a complex of sensations. It follows, then, that with the help of a complex of sensations I (and I also am nothing but a complex of sensations) sense complexes of sensation! What a delightful philosophy!” (27).
Lenin, in order to defend the reflection theory, first appeals to the authority of Engels, who “constantly and without exception speaks in his works of things and their mental pictures or images, and it is obvious that these mental images arise exclusively from sensation.” (24). Later in the book, he defends the theory by echoing Marx’s argument in the second thesis on Feuerbach, stating that “if the sensations of time and space can give man a biologically purposive orientation, this can only be so on the condition that these sensations reflect an objective reality outside man; man could never have adapted himself biologically to the environment if his sensations had not given him an objectively correct presentation of that environment.” (145).
The book also maintains a firm monist position, arguing that the distinction between mind and body has been eliminated by materialist philosophy, and that any attempt to defend it is merely a manifestation of philosophical reaction.
Lenin’s book has been unfairly maligned and attacked from nearly all corners of professional philosophy. An example of such a work is an article in the Slavic Review by the academic Z.A. Jordan titled “The Dialectical Materialism of Lenin”. In it, he writes that “...Lenin claimed knowledge of constant entities which are distinct from the series of their respective aspects. On the basis of the theory of knowledge accepted in Materialism and Empiriocriticism, this doctrine of Lenin is indeed untenable and confronts him with a difficulty closely resembling the predicament of Locke. On the one hand, Locke confessed that he could not explain what matter was, and, on the other, he maintained that the existence of this ‘something we know not what’ had to be recognized as an inescapable necessity of thought.”
What sophistry! No where does Lenin state that objects are constant, and there is much evidence to suggest the contrary. Lenin believed, as stated in his Philosophical Notebooks, that “knowledge of matter must be deepened to knowledge (to the concept) of Substance in order to find the causes of phenomenon. On the other hand, the actual cognition of the cause is the deepening of knowledge from the externality of phenomena to the Substance.” (159). It is clear from this that Lenin believes our understanding of the world is constantly changing and developing, and that cognition is a process that never stands still. Further, in Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Lenin says the following; “the development of consciousness in each human individual and the development of the collective knowledge of humanity at large presents us at every step with examples of the transformation of the unknown ‘thing in itself’ with the known ‘thing for us’…” (154). As to Jordan’s comment about how Lenin claims “knowledge of constant entities which are distinct from their series of respective aspects,” we must simply conclude that he is spouting nonsense.
“Materialism,” writes Jordan, “is committed to the view that there are no mental images, as the theories of representative perception propose, which mediate between the cognizing subject and the cognized object. Consequently, materialism seems to favor epistemological monism, that is, the assertion that there are no intermediaries in cognition, that whatever we know we apprehend directly, and that the content or data of perception are composed of the same elements of which the external world is composed.” But is Lenin’s theory really “epistemologically dualist?” Does Lenin assert anywhere that the images of the world in our minds are composed of a different substance than the world itself? No where does he suggest this. In fact, the dialectical materialist position is the opposite of the position outlined by Jordan. The dialectical materialist believes that the mind is merely matter organized in a certain way. The mind is nothing more than the brain; it is neurons, synapses, and glial cells. Thoughts are merely the contents of millions upon millions of neurons, nothing more, nothing less. As such, it follows that the reflections in the world of the mind are composed of the same substance as the world itself. From this, it can clearly be seen that there is nothing “dualistic” about Lenin’s theory. And as regards what Jordan says about materialism favoring the idea that there are no mental images, and that we perceive reality itself, nothing could be more absurd. Science tells us that we see the world reflected in our eyes, that light bounces off of objects and reaches our eyes, and that this information is processed by the brain. There is no other possible materialist theory of perception other than the reflection theory.
The 1920s
The 1920s was a decade of massive social upheaval. The Russian Civil war was raging, and the world was feeling the birth pangs of the Soviet Republic, the first ever workers’ state. But real, physical war wasn’t the only conflict that was going on; there was also an intellectual conflict, a philosophical conflict, between the Deborinites and the Mechanists. This was a conflict over the nature of Marxist philosophy. The Deborinites, led by the philosopher Abram Deborin, believed strongly in the role played by philosophy (and in particular, the philosophy of Hegel) in Marxism. Hegel’s philosophy, which heavily inspired Marx and Engels, was a philosophy of constant change and motion, in which nothing in the world ever stands still or stays the same. Hegel was concerned with many things; the nature of good and evil, being and becoming, the nature of knowledge. But his philosophy was by its nature idealist. To simplify matters greatly, Hegel’s philosophy was standing on its head; Marx and Engels turned it upright, and in so doing created the philosophy of dialectical materialism.
On the other side of the conflict stood the mechanists, whose most prominent representative was the politician, economist and sociologist Nikoli Bukharin. Bukharin and his followers believed first and foremost in the importance of science. While they didn’t disregard philosophy entirely (as I hope to show in this article), they tended to believe that it should take the backseat, and that scientific investigation and inquiry should take the lead.
Bukharin
Oftentimes the conflict between the mechanists and Deborinites is portrayed as a conflict between the dialectical view of the world and the mechanistic view of the world. As such, the Deborinites are often referred to as the “dialecticians.” I believe this to be a false representation of the conflict. Speaking generally, the divide between the mechanists and the Deborinists in the early Soviet Union seems not to be over dialectics as is often claimed, but rather, over the significance of Hegel to dialectical materialism and the philosophy of science, with the mechanists viewing Hegel as being less relevant and the Debornists viewing him as being more relevant. For example, take Nikolai Bukharin’s book, Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. The author includes an entire chapter on dialectics and why it is important; not only that, but he maintains a solid dialectical view throughout the whole book!
A theme that appears again and again throughout Bukharin’s book is the idea that, in any given relationship, both sides are active; that is, there is no such thing as a relationship in which one side is merely passive and the other active. Both sides act on each other, and in so doing act on themselves. Taking the example of nature, he follows Marx by referring to the divide between society and nature as a “metabolic rift.” This idea is an essential part of Bukharin’s book. I would go so far as to say that it is one (but not the only) of its core principles. However, I believe a more accurate term would be “metabolic relationship,” for as Engels shows in Dialectics of Nature, the world created by human beings is merely another part of the natural world.
The metabolic relationship, as was said earlier, essentially means that both sides of any relationship are active participants. This goes far beyond the relationship between humanity and nature. Take, for example, the relationship between the worker and the machine. As Marx says in page 549 of Capital, “the technical subordination of the worker to the uniform motion of the instruments labor … gives rise to a barracks-like discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory … dividing the workers into manual labor and overseers, into the private soldiers and the N.C.O.s of an industrial army.”
Here Marx explains that not only do the workers act on the machinery, but so too does the machinery act on the workers by reducing them to a “barracks-like” existence, and by dividing them into two qualitatively different categories, laborers and overseers.
Let us now move on to how Bukharin answers the question of cause, effect, teleology and determinism. He says that the phenomenon of nature must not be regarded as a “confused mass in which nothing may be distinguished or understood or predicted.” Rather, we must admit that everywhere we look we see things governed by “a certain regularity….” Therefore, Bukharin says, “everything in nature … from the movements of the planets down to the little grain or mushroom, is subject to a certain uniformity … to a certain natural law.”
Bukharin says that uniformity can be based either in cause or in purpose. He says that, at first, it seems as if the world is based on purpose, or, as he puts it, teleology. For example, he says that “everything in nature seems informed with a plan: the mole, living under the surface of the ground, has little blind eyes, but very excellent hearing, while the deep sea fish against whose body the weight of the water is pressing, resists this pressure from an equal pressure from within.”
However, Bukharin goes on to show that this formulation of the world (that is, the teleological view) inevitably leads into theology, for in order for there to be a plan there must be a planner, i.e. a God, who existed before all other things and created them. A much simpler explanation would be that things are determined not by their purposes (which in nature are non existent) but by their causes. The mole has blind eyes and excellent hearing not because it was designed that way, but because over time the forces of nature exerted themselves and forced the mole to evolve that way.
On the question of determinism and indeterminsim (whether human beings have free will or not), Bukharin says the following; “If the human will is free and depends on nothing at all, this would mean that it is without cause. But this being the case, what would be the result? The result would be the good Old Testament religious theory.” Not only this, but it is a very contradictory philosophy. If it were true, it would mean that everything in the world is governed by necessity, governed by laws, except human beings. It places human beings above nature, when we all know that human beings are very much a part of nature.
Bukharin says that there is a difference between the feeling of independence and real independence, and that just because we feel independent doesn’t mean we actually are. To be free in will means to act without cause, but as we know, everything has a cause, including human behavior. The truth of the matter is our bodies are constituted in a certain way; we are situated in certain environments, and in certain relationships with it and others. We are determined by all of these things. But we also determine them. In this sense, the question of free will must be answered dialectically. Our environment has an impact on us, and we also have an impact on our environment. However, this does not mean we have “free will” in any literal sense. Our “will” is still determined, and the fact that we determine our environments doesn’t change that. In the same way all parts of a natural system act on each other yet don’t have free will, the human being acts on its environment and is acted on by it, yet is not free.
Though this essay is primarily about philosophy, I find it necessary to briefly comment on the sociological content of Bukharin’s book. For my purposes, I find Stephen F. Cohen’s summary of Bukharin’s theory to be most useful. In his biography of the thinker, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, Cohen writes that “applied to society, Bukharin’s theory reads as follows: An existing society presumes a certain equilibrium between its three major social elements - things, persons and ideas. This is internal equilibrium. But ‘society is unthinkable without its environment,’ that is, nature. Society adapts itself to nature, strives towards equilibrium with it, by extracting energy from it in the process of social production. In the process of adaption, society develops ‘an artificial system of organs,’ which Bukharin calls technology and which constitutes ‘a precise material indicator of the relationship between society and nature. It is by identifying social technology with productive forces… and by making the internal structure a function of external equilibrium, that Bukharin is able, despite his pluralistic analysis of social development, to preserve monistic causality in economic determinism.” (117).
It was precisely the systematizing nature of Bukharin’s work that made it so unique. There was, of course, systematic analysis carried out by Marxists before Bukharin, the most relevant example being Capital by Marx himself. But no one had yet undertaken the task Bukharin had, that is, the task of totally systematizing marxist sociology. As Cohen points out, despite being a mechanist, Bukharin did not ignore or undermine the influence played by factors such as ideology, culture, religion, or even, to a certain extent, human will. As Bukharin says, his theory doesn’t deny these things, but rather, it “explains them.”
There has been much speculation on the connection between the views Bukharin sets forth in Historical Materialism and his political and economic policies, which were rather conservative as far as bolshevik policies go. Though it won’t be thoroughly investigated here, I’d like to point out that Trotsky, who will be discussed later in this essay, held very similar views to Bukharin with regards to philosophy, yet he put forward policies that were the opposite of his.
There are some who argue that the views Bukharin set forth in Historical Materialism contradict the views of his earlier works, such as The Economics and Politics of the Transition Period. The former work, compared to the latter, is much more moderate. However, as Cohen explains, “...the dissimilar tempers of The Economics and Historical Materialism, the latter an almost quietist tract by comparison, derived in part from the fact that they focused on different periods in society’s life: The first portrayed a transitory state of revolutionary disequilibrium, the second the more usual state of equilibrated society.” (119).
The way Cohen words this statement may seem strange at first, for, in marxist theory, isn’t the usual state of society that of class and social antagonism? Yes, but we must make the distinction between open antagonism and concealed antagonism. Concealed antagonism is the struggle of everyday life, when society is running at least somewhat smoothly, and things go on as normal. Open antagonism is the opposite: it is civil war, revolution, mass social unrest, things of that nature. Marx says that the history of society is the history of class struggle. He clarifies this by distinguishing between open and concealed antagonism. It is necessary to add to Marx’s formula the following: History is made by open class struggle, and it is sustained by concealed class struggle. So, in this sense, Bukharin was right to change his views. His change in view is not the changing of from one perspective to another contradictory perspective; it is the natural development of sociology as society progresses and as class antagonisms cease to be open, and things once again become somewhat normal.
However, Bukharin’s philosophical development doesn’t end with Historical Materialism. In his essay Theory and Practice From The Standpoint of Dialectical Materialism, Bukharin further develops his views. In it, he deals more thoroughly with questions of epistemology and experience. For example, following Lenin’s argument in Materialism and Empirocriticsm, he states that “it is only in the case of the first-created Adam, just manufactured out of clay and for the first time seeing, again with eyes opened for the first time, the landscape of paradise with all its attributes, that such a statement could be made. Any empirical subject always goes beyond the bounds of ‘pure’ sensual ‘raw material’; his experience, representing the result of the influence of the external world on the knowing subject in the process of his practice, stands on the shoulders of the experience of other people.”
Here, Bukharin lays down the Marxist view of empiricism; though it’s basic premise is correct, it fails to take into account that all knowledge is built on the experience of other people, not just one’s own experience.
Not only that, but in this essay Bukharin also shows much greater understanding of the role of human practice in the mediation of both nature and thought. He says that “Practice is an active break-through into reality, egress beyond the limits of the subject, penetration into the object, the "humanising" of nature, its alteration. Practice is the refutation of agnosticism, the process of transforming "things in themselves" into "things for us," the best proof of the adequacy of thought, and of its truth--understood historically, as a process. For, if the objective world is changed through practice and according to practice, which includes theory, this means, that practice verifies the truth of theory; and this means that we know to a certain extent (and come to know more and more) objective reality, its qualities, its attributes, its regularities.”
Here Bukharin shows an understanding of the role of practice in the growth and development of knowledge, of how we change the world by our practice (or praxis), and of how it bridges the gap between subject and object and transforms the thing-in-itself into the thing-for-us. This will require some further explanation. Lenin, in his already mentioned book Materialism and Empiriocriticism, says that “the development of consciousness in each human individual and the development of the collective knowledge of humanity at large presents us at every step with examples of the transformation of the unknown ‘thing in itself’ with the known ‘thing for us’… Epistemologically, there is no difference whatever between these two transformations, for the basic point of view in both cases is the same, viz., materialistic, the recognition of the objective reality of the external world and of the laws of external nature, and of the fact that this world and these laws are fully knowable to man but can never be known to him with finality.” (154).
This essentially means that, when the nature of an object becomes known to us, it must not necessarily change. However, we must add to this the clarifier that, though in coming to know an object we more often than not have to tinker with it and change what it is, the object as a universal remains the same. The nature of the chemical composition of, say, coal (the example Lenin gives) does not change when we investigate it, even if we must alter an individual piece of coal in order to discover said nature.
Important in Bukharin’s essay is the idea that all knowledge - science included - springs from practice, that is, the practical needs of human beings. Bukharin states that the function of science is “in the sum total of the process of reproduction of social life, is the function of orientation in the external world and in society, the function of extending and deepening practice, increasing its effectiveness, the function of a peculiar struggle with nature, with the elemental progress of social development, with the classes hostile to the given socio-historical order.” Science, in Bukharin’s view, is one of humanity's greatest weapons in the struggle to understand - and thus subdue - the natural world. “Naturally, it is not a question of the direct practical importance of any individual principle--e.g., in the sphere of the theory of numbers, or the doctrine of quantities, or the theory of conditioned reflexes. It is a question of systems as a whole, of appropriate activity, of chains of scientific truths, representing in the long run the theoretical expression of the ‘struggle with nature’ and the social struggle. Active relationship with the external world, which at the purely animal stage of human development presupposes the natural organs of man, as a variety of hominis sapientis, is replaced by relationship through the medium and with the help of the "continuation of those organs," i.e., with the help of the ‘productive organs of social man’ (Marx), the implements of labour, and systems of social technique.” He goes on to list a series of inventions, and explains that they “immeasurably widen our natural sensual capacities, open new worlds, render possible the victorious advance of technique.” It is also in this essay that Bukharin restates the importance of the idea of the metabolism between man and nature, by stating that it is this metabolism that forms the basis of all production.
Here Bukharin coins a new phrase, what he calls the “mode of conception,” which is determined by the dominant mode of production; “theoretical activity is a ‘step’ in the reproduction of social life; its material is furnished by experience, the breadth of which depends on the degree of power over the forces of nature, which is determined, in the long run, by the development of productive forces, the productivity of social-labour; the level of technical development. Stimuli proceed from the tasks set by practice; the forming principles, the "mode of conception" in the literal sense, reflect the "mode of production," the socio-class structure of society and its complex requirements…”
Though slightly reductionist, this line of thinking is in its essence the correct one. It could be argued that the dominant mode of conception is not entirely and directly determined by the dominant mode of production, and that other factors also come into play. But it must be kept in mind that these factors are themselves determined by the dominant mode of production. Though it is not always a direct determination, the dominant mode of production sets the backdrop - both economic and social - against which all ideas develop. It is impossible for someone to base their worldview on a previous mode of production, for two reasons; 1: such modes of production no longer exist, and 2: as such, they have no direct bearing on the modern individual. It may be argued (as many reactionaries do) that it is possible and preferable to base one's worldview on older, no longer dominant modes of conception. Whether or not this is preferable will not be discussed, but whether or not it is possible is something that must be discussed. In short, it is not possible to do so, for how we view previous dominant modes of production is itself determined by the current dominant mode of production.
For Bukharin (and the bolsheviks in general), science was to play a massive role in the transformation of society. Bukharin wanted to see science brought to the working masses; “gradually destroying the division between intellectual and physical labour, extending the so-called "higher education" to the whole mass of workers, Socialism fuses theory and practice in the heads of millions. Therefore the synthesis of theory and practice signifies here a suite of exceptional increase in the effectiveness of scientific work and of the effectiveness of Socialist economy as a whole. The unification of theory and practice, of science and labour, is the entry of the masses into the arena of cultural creative work, and the transformation of the proletariat from an object of culture into its subject, organiser and creator. This revolution in the very foundations of cultural existence is accompanied necessarily by a revolution in the methods of science: synthesis presupposes the unity of scientific method: and this method is dialectical materialism, objectively representing the highest achievement of human thought. Correspondingly is also being built up the organisation of scientific work: together with a concentrated planned economy there is growing the organisation of scientific institutions, which is being transformed into a vast association of workers.”
Bukharin argues that the proletariat, by becoming educated in the method and content of the sciences (both social and natural) cease to simply be passive observers of culture, and become active creators of it. This becomes an important step in the abolition of classes, for it weakens the need for specialists whose purpose is to dictate to the masses on cultural, philosophical and scientific matters.
Trotsky
Trotsky never wrote a systematic exposition of his views on philosophy. Most of the essays and articles he wrote concerning the topic were specifically about the philosophy of science, and nearly all of them were written in the 20s, meaning we aren’t able to know whether or not Trotsky would go on to change his views. Nevertheless, Trotsky’s essays and speeches on philosophy were, if not immensely popular, at least influential, within the Soviet Union in the 20s. After the 20s, however, they became subject to vicious attacks by the official Soviet press and academic institutions. Some of these attacks have survived and carried on to the modern day, where they can be found in Helena Sheehan’s otherwise excellent book Marxism and the Philosophy of Science. In it, she writes that Trotsky’s speech “Dialectical Materialism and Science” was a “sweeping reductionism.” She claims that Trotsky reduced all things to biology, physiology, and chemistry. “Trotsky held that the ‘so-called soul’ was nothing more than a complex system of conditioned reflexes, completely rooted in elementary physiological reflexes that, in turn, through the potent stratum of chemistry, found their root in the subsoil of mechanics and physics.” (170).
Sheehan’s statement, though not entirely inaccurate, was certainly greatly exaggerated. Trotsky, like Bukharin, is also an example of why the categories “mechanist” and “Deborinist” weren’t always as clear cut as they seemed to be, for, as Sheehan points out, “Trotsky was inclined to a sweeping reductionism, whatever ambiguous qualifications he introduced, along with his adherence to a rather thoroughgoing determinism, that has been responsible for his being classified as a mechanist.. There were, however, other aspects of his thought that made this classification problematic, most particularly his admiration for Hegel and the concept of the dialectic.” (171).
So, to the question, “was Trotsky a mechanist?” we must answer yes, but we must also qualify this answer by saying that his mechanism had nothing to do with him being against dialectics, or even Hegel for that matter, and everything to do with his opinion on science.
So what, then, did Trotsky believe? As stated, Sheehan gives a somewhat accurate (but also very exaggerated) view of Trotsky’s opinions. On September 17, 1925, Trotsky delivered a speech to the Mendeleyev Congress of Chemists titled “Dialectical Materialism and Science.” In this speech, Trotsky emphasizes that science under socialism will serve humanity by “acquiring knowledge of reality… in order to gain mastery over it.” He says that “science is not a function of individual scientists; it is a public function. The social evaluation of science, its historical evaluation, is determined by its capacity to increase man’s power and arm him with the power to foresee and master nature. Science is knowledge that endows us with power.” (Problems of Everyday Life, 276-277).
Trotsky compares the idea of the soul to the outdated idea of phlogiston in chemistry. Phlogiston was invoked whenever a chemical reaction or something's chemical composition couldn’t be explained. He says that it is nothing more than “a generalization for the ignorance of alchemists.” He says that science - particularly psychology - no longer needs the soul, the same way chemistry no longer needs phlogiston. “Psychology for us is in the final analysis reducible to physiology, and the latter - to chemistry, mechanics and physics.” (279).
We must keep in mind here that Trotsky is not making the reductionist mistake of denying social and historical influences and reducing all things to physiology. He is simply stating that, in the last instance, psychology is reducible to physiology. To support his claims, Trotsky invokes the work of Pavlov, who discovered that dogs could be made to salivate at the ringing of a bell, if the bell ringing had been previously associated with the arrival of food. He also founded the psychological school of behaviourism, of which Trotsky seems to have been very fond.
Trotsky, being a dialectical materialist, rejects the idea that there is some force or essence that is separate from matter that imbues matter with life, and argues that science has no need for such ideas; “scientific, materialist physiology does not require a special superchemical vital force (as is the claim of the vitalists and neo-vitalists) to explain phenomenon in its field. Physiological processes are reducible in the last instance to chemical ones, just as the latter are to mechanics and physics.” He goes on to explain that just as physiology has no need for a vital force, neither does psychology have need for a soul, and that the “so-called soul” is nothing but a “complex system of conditioned reflexes… rooted in the elementary physiological reflexes which in their turn find their root, through the potent stratum of chemistry, in the subsoil of mechanics and physics.” (281).
Trotsky is, of course, not perfect. He is a bit overzealous in his faith in humanity’s ability to use science to “conquer” nature. He is too uncritical of his humanist (one could even say pre-marxist) ideas about the struggle between humanity and nature, which reveals itself in passages such as the following; “The social evaluation of science… is determined by its capacity to increase man’s power and to arm him with the power to foresee and master nature. Science is knowledge that endows us with power.” (276-277).
I am not saying that Trotsky is wrong to make this assessment; what I am saying is that one should not become overzealous. Yes, it is as Trotsky says, that “science is knowledge that endows us with power.” But science cannot tell us what we should do with this power, and all attempts made by scientists to do so have resulted in a morbid defense of the current status quo (for evidence of this, see Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape).
Practical Applications
In order to avoid falling into the trap of scientism, we must always remember one thing; science is the arm of man, not his brain. That is, as said before, science can provide us with the tools needed to subdue nature and bring it in accordance with our will, but it cannot tell us how we should do it, or even if we should do it. That task is left wholly to philosophy, which is why it’s so important for any state that wishes to remain stable to raise up a class of professional philosophers, whose job is to provide guidance to state officials and policy makers.
Citations
Bukharin, Nikolaĭ. Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. Martino Publishing, 2013.
Bukharin, Nikolai. “Theory and Practice from the Standpoint of Dialectical Materialism.” Nikolai Bukharin: Theory and Practice From The Standpoint of Dialectical Materialism, Marxist Archive, May 2002, https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1931/diamat/index.htm.
Cohen, Stephen F. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. Oxford University, 1980.
Jordan, Z. A. “The Dialectical Materialism of Lenin.” Slavic Review, vol. 25, no. 2, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 1966, pp. 259–86, https://doi.org/10.2307/2492779.
Lenin, V I. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Wellred Books, 2021.
Sheehan, Helena. Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History: The First Hundred Years. Verso, 2017.
Trotsky, Leon. Problems of Everyday Life: Creating the Foundations for a New Society in Revolutionary Russia. Pathfinder, 2000.