§ 162.
THE contradictions noticeable in the Russian Marxists' views concerning the general question of revolution are especially conspicuous in their appraisement and analysis of the Russian revolution of 1905–1906.
with Dietzgen). Upon the foundation of "empiriomonism" (monism, be it observed, not criticism!) revolution arises out of the contradictions of social life, out of the struggle of the productive energies of society against the ideological forms; revolution is social criticism and social creation, it is the harmonisation of human existence. Philosophy results from the recognition of a conflict between human experience and the historically transmitted ideas and conceptual forms. Marx was the first, says Bogdanov, to understand the true nature of this conflict, for Marx recognised that men regarded their social and historical life as determined by the understanding, divine or human as the case may be, and it was this conception of social and historical life which led to the formulation of socialist utopias. Marx perceived that existence determined consciousness, not conversely, and was thus the first to found a true philosophy. With Auguste Comte, Bogdanov conceives the utopian stage of philosophy as religious and metaphysical fetichism, and he discovers the essence of this fetichism in the dualism which results from the individualistic atomisation of the social whole. The dualism of Descartes is outspoken, whilst the dualism of Spinoza is masked. Accurately regarded, Spinoza's "god" is merely the "crystallised reflex" of the interconnection of all the elements of a society organised upon a basis of exchange—an interconnection of which we are elementally aware. Fetichistic dualism must give place to scientific monism. Monism is equivalent to philosophy, that is to say to genuine philosophy. The revolution, harmonising life, will create new motives and a new material for the harmonising of cognition. The old philosophy was often no more than instinctively revolutionary, and was frequently conservative; but the new philosophy, having become self-conscious, is purely revolutionary. When class contrasts disappear, when the class struggle has come to an end, the revolution will be resolved into the continuous and harmonious progress of society, and philosophy will be resolved into the continuous and harmonious progress of the monism of science. According to Bogdanov, modern philosophy must be based upon natural science, for natural science is merely the systematisation of technical experience, the systematisation, that is to say, of what Marx termed the productive energy of society. Bogdanov therefore, in contradistinction to Plehanov, accepts the ideas of Mach, finding in the logical consistency of this writer and in his unsparing positivist annihilation of all intellectual fetiches, the indispensable philosophical revolution. Bogdanov gave expression to these ideas in the preface to the translation of Mach's Analysis of Sensation, and in a number of other writings (notably in the essay, Revolution and Philosophy). I need not undertake a detailed criticism of Bogdanov's views, which are in essence no more than an exposition of the Marxist glosses on Feuerbach, and are tainted with all the errors of positivist materialism and amoralism. The connection between the revolution and philosophy is not clearly elucidated, for surely there is a great difference between revolutionising people's minds in the way suggested by Plehanov, and simply clubbing them on the head. Monism misleads Bogdanov into instituting a deductive parallelism between revolution and philosophy which conflicts with the empiricism customary in natural science. (Be it noted that Marx was not a student of natural science,
