Materialism and Empirio-criticism

An economist and journalist, leader of an underground party, and founder of the first state in history of workers and peasants—few other people influenced the fate of Russia and the world in the 20th century as Vladimir Lenin did. Is Lenin’s cause alive today? That question remains open. But his books—undoubtedly. Elites can argue endlessly about what literature is and what it isn’t, what form is normative and what is marginal; but when the writer Lenin appears, all commonly accepted canon simply gets devalued and abolished. All of this once again confirms the Marxist thesis that true literature is, above all, a social practice.

The book, whose full title sounds like “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Notes on a Reactionary Philosophy,” was written by Lenin from February to October 1908, when he was exiled in Geneva and London, and was published with great difficulty in Tsarist Russia in May 1909. Lenin insisted on the book spreading quickly and emphasized that its publication was connected not only with “literary, but also serious political obligations.” This is one of Lenin’s most important works. It was written as a response to and critique of the three-volume work “Empiriomonism” (1904–1906) by Alexander Bogdanov, his political opponent in the party. “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” was reissued in Russian in 1920. Later it appeared in more than 20 languages and acquired a canonical status in Marxist-Leninist philosophy, as did many other of Lenin’s writings.