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p From the time of its inception to the present day Marxist philosophy has been characterised by two basic features—the rejection of philosophy in the traditional sense of the term and the critical assimilation of the major achievements of the philosophy of the past, particularly its materialist and dialectical traditions. This intrinsic contradiction in Marxism’s historical development is quite often misinterpreted by the advocates of Marxism as well as its opponents. Some scholars overestimate the importance of continuity and tradition, while others lay too much stress on Marxism’s rejection of previous philosophical doctrines.  [22•* 

p But the question of Marxism’s relation to pre-Marxist philosophy (and non-Marxist philosophy in general) is a question not only of history but also of world-outlook. As the current controversies concerning the ideological legacy of the founders of Marxism tend to show, it is primarily a question of whether scientific philosophy is possible, of how it can be evolved. What we call "scientific philosophy" is not what modern positivism means when it speaks of the "philosophy of science". What we mean is a scientific philosophical world-outlook. This concept, which has taken shape in the course of the formation and development of Marxism, is 23 organically opposed to contemporary non-Marxist philosophy whose advocates affirm almost unanimously that scientificality and worldoutlook are mutually exclusive concepts. To make it clear what is meant by the Marxist conception of the scientific-philosophical world-outlook we must at least briefly elucidate the Marxist conception of philosophy, the Marxist interpretation of the relationship of philosophy to the natural and social sciences, on the one hand, and to social practice, on the other.

p Marxism rejects the speculative thinker’s counterposing of philosophy to the specialised sciences and practical life in general. Philosophy is not some mental construct sub specie aeternitatis towering above life. The illusion of the autonomy of the philosophical consciousness had some justification in the past, when philosophy was, in fact, the only (or, at any rate, historically, the first) form of systematic theoretical comprehension of man’s picture of reality in all its manifold variety and, on the other hand, reflected the alienation of the individual in a society made up of antagonistic classes, an alienation which often emerged in philosophy as an antithesis between human reason and an irrational empirical reality that the philosophising reason sought to rationalise. Philosophy condemned the “ irrational” in social reality and criticised it from the standpoint of the abstract moralising consciousness. It was, however, incapable of interpreting in scientific terms the very thing that it condemned. Moreover, as Marx and Engels demonstrated in The German Ideology, the speculative criticism of social reality often turned out to be a form of reconciliation with it, because the problem of changing reality was reduced to the changing of consciousness, that is, to giving a different interpretation of this reality. As regards the epistemological roots of the speculative counterposing of philosophy to the sciences and to practice, these must be sought in the disappearance of the original unity between knowledge and practical activity, that is, in the Very fact of the emergence of theoretical knowledge, which by nature is relatively independent of practical activity and for this reason may, under certain circumstances, control it. In other words, the counterposing of philosophy to practice which arose with philosophy, and also the counterposing of philosophy to the natural sciences (most apparent in modern times, when these sciences broke away from philosophy), were organically connected with the development of theoretical knowledge.

p This came about not because philosophers did not want to solve practical, particularly political problems. Quite the opposite is suggested by the example of Plato, the philosopher par excellence. The reason was rather that philosophy was not and could not yet become, because of the lack of development (or of one-sided development) of scientific theoretical knowledge, a specific scientific form of that knowledge. This, in our view, is what Marx and Engels 24 had in mind when they wrote: "One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world.”  [24•*  This peculiar helplessness of philosophy was impressively demonstrated by German classical idealism, which nevertheless signposted the road along which philosophy was to become a specific science. The negation of traditional philosophy was therefore implicit in its most developed forms.

p Scientific knowledge may be either empirical or theoretical; philosophy, on the other hand, is by its very nature theoretical knowledge. But not all theoretical knowledge is scientific knowledge; some theories are unscientific. Historically, the philosophy of Marxism takes shape as a specific form of scientific theoretical knowledge. It poses and solves its problems on the basis of the existing scientific data and practice. Consequently it does not admit the possibility of solving a philosophical problem if the required non-philosophical data are not available. Rejecting in principle the idea of a final and complete philosophical system ("absolute science", as Marx expressed it), Marxist philosophy is constantly in a state of development, on the road to new discoveries. It is constantly seeking the answers to its unsolved problems and, while criticising its ideological opponents, also criticises itself because it recognises the fact that it is limited by the bounds of knowledge so far achieved, both philosophical and scientific, which means that far from all the questions posed by the development of philosophy can be solved at present. Unlike the speculative idealist philosophy, which assumes that a philosophical system can solve any question by logical development of its fundamental premises, Marxism asserts that in philosophy (scientific philosophy), as in any other science, there are unsolved problems. But there are no philosophical problems that are insoluble in principle. As for the so-called pseudoproblems, they quite often turn out to be truly philosophical problems that have been incorrectly formulated. Like any system of scientific knowledge, the philosophy of Marxism regards its propositions only as an approximate reflection of reality which is corrected, developed and enriched in the course of further research.

p Before considering the Marxist understanding of the relationship between philosophy and social practice we must take a closer look at the relationship between philosophical science and the specialised natural and social sciences. The argument as to whether philosophy is a science, and whether it can and should become one, is vital to a correct understanding of the actual, historically evolving relationship between philosophy and the specialised sciences, a relationship that in no small degree determines the status of philosophy in the modern world. We believe that this is the standpoint from which one should 25 assess both the rejection of the possibility of philosophy’s being a science and the attempts to turn it into a specialised scientific discipline, and also the recognition of the need for philosophy as a "strictly defined science" albeit fundamentally different from everything else that is called science, as in Husserl’s phenomenology, for instance.

p The assertion that philosophy can and should be a science usually encounters the objection that science is only science because it deals with specific, specialised questions. Philosophy, however, does not deal with specialised questions, therefore it cannot be a science. This objection, so it seems to us, ignores the fact that science assumes not only a special kind of subject-matter but also a special method—the scientific method—of investigation. On these grounds philosophy can and should be scientific primarily in its methods of inquiry. This idea may be formulated in another way. Science is a developed, systematised form of true statements that is critically aware of its content. The necessity for limiting one’s subject of inquiry is recognised and heeded by Marxist philosophy, which excludes from its terms of reference those questions that are not per se of a philosophical nature.

p But philosophy, unlike the specialised sciences, cannot confine itself to any specific sphere of nature, society or the process of cognition. The principle of maximum limitation of the subject-matter of philosophy proclaimed by some modern philosophers (the adherents of the analytical or linguistic school, for instance) contradicts the very essence of philosophy. Scientific philosophy therefore differs substantially from any specialised science in that it cannot be a specialised science. This is true not only of the content of philosophy but also of the specific methods of inquiry which we call philosophical. Whereas the specialised sciences, for example, investigate the specific laws governing the behaviour of phenomena in certain closely defined spheres (particularly, the forms of the motion of matter), philosophy is mainly interested in the general nature of the laws revealed by the specialised sciences. Philosophy therefore asks such questions as: What is a law? In what way do the laws of nature differ from the laws of the socio-historical process? Do there exist any universal laws embracing all phenomena? What are the relations, the interconnections between phenomena, that are not laws?

p The list of questions concerning the concept «f law could, of course, be extended to include dozens of other queries, most of which register facts revealed by the specialised sciences and by everyday life and historical experience.

p For centuries philosophy existed partly outside science and partly within it. The transformation of philosophy into a system of scientific philosophical views constitutes not a denial of the traditional philosophical problems, but their specifically scientific postulation. 26 Admittedly, scientific philosophy rejects the ideal of absolute knowledge, regarding the absolute not merely as unattainable but rather as insufficiently meaningful and setting in advance a limit on the further development of knowledge. As of old, philosophy still seeks to know the infinite, the universal, the intransient, to discover the essence of essence (while realising that even this is not the final limit), in view of which the universal and necessary significance of its theoretical propositions is constantly in a process of becoming and developing. This also distinguishes philosophy from the specialised sciences, particularly the so-called deductive sciences. But this special feature of philosophy impels it to rely on scientific methods of inquiry, on scientific discoveries, the interpretation of which points the way to new philosophical orientations. By way of illustration one has only to recall the immense influence exerted on philosophical thought by Copernicus’ heliocentric system, by classical.mechanics, Darwinism, the theory of relativity, quantum physics, the discovery of atomic energy, man’s breakthrough into space, and so on.

p Hegel, who brilliantly demonstrated the paramount importance for the further development of philosophy of synthesising the philosophical ideas of the past, did not, alas, fully appreciate the fact that philosophy also develops by means of interpretation of the scientific discpyeries of its time and the methods by which they were made. The significance of such philosophical generalisations, which was relatively small in ancient and medieval times, has grown tremendously in the modern age and particularly today, when the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics and molecular biology have revealed to man an entirely new world of things, new dimensions of objective reality. These discoveries have emphatically reaffirmed the truth that today philosophy is impossible without critical interpretation and summarising not only of the philosophy of the past but also of the science of the present. Only the closest association with the specialised sciences enables philosophy to draw inferences that are not given in any of these sciences. This becomes possible not because philosophy corrects the data of the specialised sciences; for one thing, it lacks the equipment, the means for that. Scientific philosophy does not claim superscientific knowledge and renounces in principle the whole idea of any such knowledge. But by taking into consideration the history of cognition and its prospects scientific philosophy brings out the universal implications of scientific discoveries, the difference they make to our world-outlook, and prevents the absolutising of the conclusions reached by the specialised sciences at any historically limited stage of their development. This is what enables the philosophers to reach conclusions that do not contradict the data of the specialised sciences, although they are not given in these sciences. Awareness of the historical horizons and perspectives, the methodological assumptions of scientific knowledge at the level 27 already attained—this is what scientific philosophy gives the specialised sciences, on the basis of the data they themselves provide.

p However, scientific philosophy is scientific not only because it is organically connected with the specialised sciences, assimilates the criteria of scientificality that they evolve, and solves its problems on the basis of scientific data. It is scientific also because of its organic connection with all the manifold forms of society’s intellectual and practical life, with current and historical experience, which philosophy summarises and interprets, solving its problems on this basis.

p Our daily experiences tell us about all kinds of important things—that people are born and die, fall asleep and awaken, feel joy and sorrow, take various attitudes to one another, love and hate, seek to achieve various goals, grow old, fall ill, and so on. It would be naive to assume that these facts which evoked the curiosity of the earliest philosophers are of no interest to the philosophy of today. Philosophy took shape historically as the theoretical interpretation of fundamental facts which, though universally observed, remained incomprehensible. It therefore interprets that which, though known, is far from being understood; it meditates upon a world that is open to all. And at every stage in its development it invariably returns to this world of everyday experience, reinterpreting it from new historical and theoretical positions. No wonder, then, that we regard any abandoning of this humanist tradition as one-sided “scientism”. The defect of the latter lies not in its orientation on philosophical problems generated by the development of the specialised sciences, but in its reduction of philosophy to a specialised scientific discipline, in the ignoring of people’s manifold practical activity, in the one-sided interpretation of human experience and man himself (as only the knower, the subject of knowledge), in a word, in the ignoring of the problem of man, which in modern times, and particularly today, has become one of philosophy’s most important themes.

p Marxism presented philosophy with a wealth of human historical experience that Hegel and other great philosophers had only vaguely perceived. There is no need to prove that historical events, particularly those of the time in which he lives, shape the philosopher’s outlook and views, determine his attitude to philosophical tradition, and also to problems which are not in themselves philosophical but stimulate philosophical interest, suggest new philosophical ideas or lead to the regeneration and remoulding of old ones that appeared to have been consigned to oblivion. Indeed it may be said that the great philosophical doctrines are epoch-making events of world history. And not only because they constitute epochs in man’s mental development. Each of these doctrines is the spiritual quintessence of its time. It authentically expresses the needs of the historical epoch, its argument with the opposing forces of past and 28 present, its intellectual, moral and social ideal. This fact is often construed relatively, that is, as recognition of the fact that tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis (Times change and we change with them). But, in fact, the real point is something quite different. The historical course of events in the life of peoples, the unforeseen results of the activity of people in the mass, the collapse of social institutions that had appeared to be eternal and inseparable from human existence, even divinely established, the historical emergence of new social forces, classes and peoples which played only a minor role in the past—all this (and much else composing the fabric of world history) breaks down illusions and dogmas, makes the apparently impossible a reality, reveals what was once a secret, teaches and enlightens.

p Who today would maintain that because of certain congenital differences some people are destined to be slaves and others masters? But this was what the great philosophers of the ancient world maintained, and this was what people’s everyday experience in that world taught them. Why is this assertion never made nowadays, even by those who in practice are prepared to support contemporary forms of slavery, some of which are even more cruel than those of the past? It would appear that even those who have learned no lesson from historical experience are compelled to reckon with the convictions of the overwhelming majority of mankind, convictions derived from world history.

p Would many thinkers in our day attempt to prove that private ownership of the means of production has always existed and will continue to exist for ever? Clearly there are few who would maintain this statement as it stands. Those who unconditionally defend the principle of private property identify it with property in general, or with personal property, to which no one objects. The history of mankind compels us to delimit the forms of property. Even the most stubborn opponents of historical determinism realise today that the abolition of slavery and serfdom was inevitable. They have been persuaded not by theoretical arguments but by historical facts and the universal confidence generated by these facts in the consciousness of the great mass of mankind. This is not to say, however, that they acknowledge historical necessity in general, that is to say, the essential connection between certain social events of past, present and future.

p To be sure, history not only destroys illusions; it quite frequently generates new ones. It is no argument merely to refer to the evidence of history. Historical experience is a subject of philosophical inquiry which leads some thinkers to scepticism and misanthropy, and others to positive views nourished by the lessons of the past.

p The rise and development of Marxist philosophy is historically related to the theoretical interpretation of revolutionary practice, the 29 movement for the emancipation of the working class. The task of overcoming the gap between philosophical theory and nonphilosophical practice was proclaimed by many outstanding preMarxist philosophers, but always on a limited plane. Some philosophers reduced this task to the moral perfecting of the human personality, while others proposed that philosophy should devote itself to mastering the spontaneous forces of nature. The framework of pre-Marxist idealist and metaphysical-materialist doctrines was too narrow, however, to evolve any scientific understanding of social practice as universal human activity. None of these doctrines were able to overcome the abstract counterposing of philosophical theory and practical activity. And yet practical activity, as historical experience has shown, can and should become conscious, cognitive, thinking activity (and hence the activity of scientific and philosophical thought).

p The illusions of the philosophers who believed that by their theorising they had risen above society, a society which did not satisfy them, even though some held it to be the only society that could exist, had their roots in the antagonistic nature of social progress. "The philosopher," Marx wrote, "who is himself an abstract form of estranged man—takes himself as the criterion of the estranged world.”   [29•*  But this very same philosopher, who belongs to the most educated and intellectual section of the ruling class and is trained in the traditions of that class, cannot perceive the true source of the alienation of intellectual creativity. On the contrary, in view of this alienation he believes himself to be spiritually independent of the social forces whose interests he expresses, often without any sense of personal commitment to them.

p Philosophy, regarded as alienated social consciousness in the context of a society divided into hostile classes, was, as Marx and Engels wrote, "only the transcendent, abstract expression of the actual state of things", and because of this, "its imaginary difference from the world, must have imagined it had left the actual state of things and real human beings far below itself. On the other hand, it seems that because philosophy is not really different from the world it could not pronounce any real judgment on it, it could not bring any real differentiating force to bear on it and could therefore not interfere practically, but had to be satisfied at most with a practice in abstracto.”  [29•**  We believe that this profound observation highlights the organic connection that is so characteristic of all pre-Marxist philosophy between contemplativeness, illusory impartiality and the purely speculative criticism of alienated social relations. We have 30 spoken of pre-Marxist philosophy, but its fundamental features are to be found to a greater or lesser extent in contemporary non-Marxist philosophy as well. Here we have the key to Marxism’s attitude to non-Marxist philosophy. Since this philosophy reflects the historical experience of the present epoch, it is definitely of some positive interest to Marxists, but to the extent that this philosophy justifies the capitalist status quo, it is Marxism’s ideological opponent.

p Marx said that philosophers had only interpreted the world in various ways, but the task was to change it. This famous proposition states, on the one hand, that interpretation constitutes the basic form of development of philosophical knowledge and, on the other, condemns the philosophy that restricts itself to the mere interpretation of what exists. The critics of Marxism usually misinterpret Marx’s proposition as a demand that one should renounce the interpretation of reality and thus abolish philosophy entirely in favour of revolutionary action. This is an obvious misunderstanding of Marx, who demonstrated throughout his teaching the necessity for unity of revolutionary practice and revolutionary theory, that is", an interpretation of social reality that provides grounds for, and the method of, its revolutionary transformation. Need it be proved that such an interpretation of reality involves nothing extraneous to that reality? Change and development are an immanent feature of reality and Marxism proceeds from this fact.

p Of course, Marx’s proposition is only a thesis which, to be fully understood, must be set within the context of Marxist teaching as a whole. This fact is usually ignored by Marx’s critics, who lift this thesis out of its context and thus blind themselves to its real meaning. What Marx actually intended was to contrast the conservative interpretation of the world, which had become the prevalent tendency in philosophy, with its revolutionary interpretation. He was renouncing the idealist and metaphysical interpretations of the world, which ultimately lead to conservative socio-political conclusions, by working out the principles of the revolutionary interpretation of changing, developing reality with the aim of its conscious transformation in the interests of the working masses.

p Examination of the relationship between Marxist philosophy and social practice uncovers its inherent ideological function. Philosophy—and this is true of any philosophy—is not only a special method of inquiry; it is also a specific form of social consciousness, that is, a reflection of social being.

p It is as the reflection of social being that Marxist philosophy is an ideology, a scientific ideology. This means that Marxist philosophy differs essentially from other philosophical doctrines in its scientific method of solving its ideological problems. To elucidate this important feature of Marxist-Leninist philosophy one has to answer certain questions relating to the term "scientific ideology". What, for 31 instance, is the difference between science and social consciousness? How can there be such a thing as scientific ideology? In what way does scientific ideology differ from science?

p The need to sort out the relative distinctions between the sciences and the forms of social consciousness is particularly relevant to philosophy, because philosophy has to do with both the one and the other. The sciences are distinguished from one another mainly according to their subject-matter. It is the subject-matter of a science that determines its specific nature, its functional purpose, that is, its position in the system of the social division of labour. Accordingly, the social function of physics differs substantially from the social function of political economy. As for the forms of social consciousness, the specific nature of each is determined mainly by the social function that it performs. It need scarcely be proved that art has one social function and religion another. It is quite obvious that this difference of function cannot be attributed to the nature of the inquiry, first because art and religion are not, strictly speaking, engaged in inquiry and hence have no subject of inquiry, and, secondly, because their specifics are determined not by their subject-matter but by certain social relationships.

p Social consciousness is a reflection of social being but reflection is not in itself, of course, the same as investigation. Cognition, and particularly inquiry, research, is a higher, specialised form of reflection of objective reality. Such investigation is performed by professional researchers, while the reflection of objective reality (natural or social) takes place in people’s everyday consciousness, often without any conscious effort on their part. The investigation of social being is, like all cognition, infinite. On the other hand, social consciousness within the confines of a definite historical epoch (the society of the ancient world, feudal society, and so on) assumes a relatively perfect form, in which essential changes are brought about mainly by radical socio-economic transformations. This is evidently what Marx had in mind when he stated that in studying social revolutions "it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out”.  [31•* 

p Thus the distinction between science and social consciousness has an objective basis, which does not, of course, give grounds for counterposing them in an anti-dialectical way. The distinction takes place within the framework of identity because cognition is conscious 32 activity, although not all conscious activity is cognition. Difference is no less important than identity, and in certain circumstances, when difference grows into contradiction, it becomes more important than identity. Ideology is a specific form of social consciousness. The possibility of scientific ideology presupposes a critical analysis of the content of the spontaneously formed social consciousness and examination of this content in the light of the facts that it reflects, a scientific assessment of these facts. Moreover we must bear in mind that scientific investigation of social consciousness becomes all the more necessary as social movement acquires a conscious organised character. This need is, of course, also stimulated by the development of the social sciences, which makes possible the scientific understanding and substantiation of certain social needs and interests.

p The status of philosophy in the history of man’s intellectual development is in no small degree determined by the fact that, on the one hand, it is investigation while, on the other, it is a form of social consciousness like art, religion, and so on. As a form of investigation, philosophy, despite its unique features, basically resembles any of the other sciences. As a form of social consciousness, it naturally differs from science, and this, so it seems to us, constitutes one of the main sources of the progressive divergence of philosophical doctrines. It was Marxism that first made philosophy, as a form of social consciousness, the subject of scientific inquiry. Pre-Marxist philosophers ignored philosophy’s ideological function. They regarded philosophy as a science and sometimes as something above science or as having existed long before science, regardless of any historically determined social relations. If in a few individual cases it was recognised that philosophy depended on social relations, this dependence was usually put down to some kind of distortion, to philosophy’s betrayal of its true yocation. It was this that gave rise to the illusion of philosophy’s “impartiality”, its disinterestedness and unbiased approach, an illusion with deep-going social and theoretical roots. The concept of the social consciousness and the scientific conception of ideology were evolved on the basis of the materialist understanding of history, which made it possible to isolate social being as a specific target of scientific philosophical inquiry.

p The founders of Marxism used the term “ideology” in the negative sense that it had historically acquired in their day. Ideology was their term for the illusory social consciousness, particularly the speculative, idealist mystification of objective reality. But Marx and Engels pointed out that only the form of ideology was illusory, not its content. This immediately opened the way for the creation of scientific ideology, which was in fact evolved by Marx and Engels, although they never actually formulated any such concept. The concept was theoretically developed in the works of Lenin.

33

p When investigating social reality, Marxism proceeds not from ideology, not from consciousness in general, but from the actual living, historical process, which is independent of consciousness. The analysis of this process explains its reflection, including its ideological form. The categorical imperative of Marxist sociology could, tentatively, be formulated as follows: One must return from notions and ideas concerning things to the things themselves, so that by means of scientific investigation one can know their true relationships, discover the mechanism of their distorted reflection in people’s consciousness and replace these distorted images of reality by an accurate, scientific reflection. This way of stating the problem differs considerably from the notions of ideology that were widespread in Marx and Engels’ time, which treated it as a collection of ideas about reality devoid of objective content and cognitive significance. For example, when describing the social doctrine of the French materialists of the 18th century, who presented all individual activity and intercourse as relations of mutual utilisation, Marx and Engels showed that this utilitarian conception reflected the practice of the capitalist society that was growing up in France at the time. "The apparent absurdity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that in modern bourgeois society all relations are subordinated in practice to the one abstract monetarycommercial relation.”  [33•*  This assessment of the actual content of an ideological conception and the indication of its class limitations was by no means a denial of its progressive historical nature or its contribution to the scientific view of social relations and the nature of morality. Pointing out that "Holbach’s theory is the historically justified philosophical illusion about the bourgeoisie just then developing in France, whose thirst for exploitation could still be regarded as a thirst for the full development of individuals in conditions of intercourse freed from the old feudal fetters", Marx and Engels noted not only the historically progressive character of this theory but also the kernel of profound truth which it contained. "Liberation from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie," Marx and Engels pointed out, "i.e., competition, was, of course, for the eighteenth century the only possible way of offering the individuals a new career for freer development. The theoretical proclamation of the consciousness corresponding to this bourgeois practice, of the consciousness of mutual exploitation as the universal mutual relation of all individuals, was also a bold and open step forward. It was a kind of enlightenment which interpreted the political, patriarchal, religious and sentimental embellishment of exploitation under feudalism in a secular way; the embellishment corresponded to the form of exploitation existing at 34 that time and it has been systematised especially by the theoretical writers of the absolute monarchy.”  [34•* 

p We thus find in Marx and Engels a profound analysis not only of the form but also of the actual content of ideology, and this in fact argues the need for a positive ideology as a necessary social phenomenon. It also constitutes a most important theoretical precondition of the scientific understanding of ideology. If the founders of Marxism nevertheless refer to ideology as false social consciousness, it must be remembered that they used the term “ideology” only to define the social consciousness of the politically (or economically) dominant exploiting classes. In working out the scientific theory of the movement of the proletariat for liberation, in creating a scientific socialist ideology, they did not give it the designation of “ideology”. This fact, however, did not prevent Marx and Engels from noting scientific views in those ideological systems where such views existed. In Marx’s economic researches we find a profound analysis of the ideological illusions of the classical exponents of English political economy. While exposing these illusions, however, Marx constantly emphasises the scientific character of classical English political economy, contrasting it with the theories of the vulgar economists who, instead of investigating the economic relations of capitalism, gave a deliberate apology for them. Marx further explained that even vulgar political economy is not without meaning because it reflects an objective reality, the external, superficial form in which capitalist relations are manifested, but a form that is uncritical and unscientific.

p Vulgar political economy, Marx pointed out, provides a theoretical basis for the ideas of the prevalent bourgeois consciousness. This does not mean, of course, that any ideology may ultimately be regarded as the ideas of an ordinary class consciousness. English classical political economy, the ideology of bourgeois Enlightenment and other historically progressive bourgeois doctrines, despite their class limitations, came into conflict with the everyday bourgeois notions of their time. Insofar as they contained elements of a scientific understanding of reality they anticipated the social practice of the bourgeoisie. Anticipatory reflection of social reality—advance knowledge of the trends of its development, orientation towards the future, the theoretical elaboration of new social criteria, ideals and historical goals—is a characteristic feature of the historically progressive ideology.

p So, the fact that the founders of Marxism did not describe the system of scientific communist views which they had evolved as an ideology, while at the same time emphasising that this system of views expressed the fundamental interests of the working class, was by no 35 means accidental because it reflects the objective logic of historical development, which led to the emergence of Marxism. Marx and Engels contrasted the social theory they had evolved with bourgeois social consciousness, dissociating themselves from the unscientific ideologies that dominated the working-class movement at the time. For this reason the assertion that the founders of Marxism rejected all ideology in principle, an assertion which at first glance may be fully confirmed by quotations from Marx and Engels, seems to us extremely superficial. One might just as well claim, for example, that Marx and Engels rejected all philosophy, whereas in reality Marxism, as we have already stated, only rejects the philosophy of the old, traditional type. This perfectly justifiable analogy indicates the specific, dialectical character of negation. This is the negation of negation, that is, the creation of a fundamentally new, scientific ideology. The fact that in the works of Marx and Engels we do not find the expression "scientific ideology", that they contrasted to the "German ideology", for example, and ideology in general, the social science which they had created, can mislead those who underestimate the complex and contradictory nature of the historical process of the emergence of a new scientific theory that is fundamentally different from its predecessors, or who try to counterpose Marx and Lenin on the grounds that Lenin, in developing the teaching of the founders of Marxism, formulated a concept of scientific ideology which, formally speaking, is not to be found in the works of Marx and Engels, although their doctrine implied it.  [35•* 

p Scientific ideology is a system of regulative ideas, notions, ideals, imperatives, based on a specialised investigation of the social process, which reflects the position, needs, interests and aspirations of a definite class, social group or the whole of society and gives them their permanent social orientation. Social theory is an ideology not because it gives a distorted reflection of reality but because it reflects, 36 assesses the given historical reality and the whole socio-historical process from definite social positions. We stress the fact that they are social positions, and not merely the personal, subjective positions of the researcher, who must of course abandon the personal in the process of his study if he is a real scientist.

p For a scientific ideology to appear there must be a class, whose interests coincide with the objective trends of the socio-historical process, and there must be theoreticians of this class who are capable of scientifically comprehending this unity of the subjective and the objective.

p A scientific ideology can be created only in certain historical conditions and by means of a comprehensive scientific investigation of social life. The ruling classes of the ancient world, of feudal and bourgeois society, did in their day express the interests of social development, they were the agents of historical necessity. Nevertheless, their ideologists never produced a scientific ideology. The progressive bourgeoisie in the person of its most outstanding ideologists created economic, historical and legal science, and philosophical materialism. But the concept of scientific ideology cannot be applied to these scientific theories because scientific ideology presupposes cognition of one’s own historical, class content, origin, significance and relationship to other ideologies, classes and epochs. Hence it must be free of idealist illusions and claims to intransient extra-historical significance. The scientific socialist ideology meets these criteria. Regarded from this standpoint, scientific ideology is clearly on a higher scientific plane than a scientific theory, such as Ricardo’s theory of labour value.

p Marxism (and this is also true of the philosophy of Marxism) is a unity of science and scientific ideology, a unity which does not, however, erase the difference between them. This difference will become manifest when the world has rid itself of social inequality, exploitation, political oppression, racial and national discrimination and war, and when, consequently, the problems of the class struggle, socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the working class are relegated to the historical past. But the science created by the founders of Marxism and their successors will undoubtedly retain its significance as a scientific philosophical world-outlook, a theory of social creativity and a methodology of scientific research. This science will develop and be enriched with new discoveries.

p Any ideology, including the scientific ideology, is only valid within the historical limits of its possible social application. From this standpoint any ideology is historically transient. The significance of science is determined exclusively by the limits of the objective truth it contains and the possibilities of its further development. In this sense science, insofar as it remains such, retains its intransient significance as the only accurate expression of the "living, fertile, genuine, 37 powerful, omnipotent, objective, absolute human knowledge”.  [37•*  It is from this standpoint, so it seems to us, that we have to approach the problem of the ideological function of the cognitive process, including philosophical cognition.

p The philosophical doctrines of Heraclitus, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers of the ancient world performed certain ideological functions. It is not difficult to see the social significance of Heraclitus’ interpretation of dialectics as a constant returning, or the struggle of opposites as an unending war. It is even easier to discover the ideological significance of Plato’s theory of the state. But Heraclitus’ dialectics, the atomic theory of Democritus, or Plato’s theory of ideas cannot, of course, be reduced to the ideological interpretation of reality. This is due not only to the fact that cognition, and particularly philosophy, studies the natural as well as the social reality. The main point is that the ideological function of cognition is an inseparable part, but only a part, of an all-embracing cognitive process that is of unlimited content and significance. Cognition expresses the needs of social production, both material and spiritual. It forms a many-sided sphere of man’s spiritual life, which like all human life is an end in itself as well as a means.

p The dialectical interpretation of the unity of philosophy and ideology rules out any notion that they may be regarded as the same thing. In some respects the concept of philosophy is broader than that of ideology; in others the concept of ideology has wider scope than philosophy because of the numerous forms of non-philosophical ideology. Philosophical knowledge is relatively independent within the framework of the unity of philosophy and ideology. This independence derives from its origin, subject-matter and the possibility of its non-ideological application. This relative independence of philosophical knowledge explains the relationship of historical continuity between philosophical doctrines that differ radically in their ideological orientation. Marxism arises and develops in the struggle with bourgeois ideology, and yet, as Lenin emphasised, Marxism is the direct and immediate continuation of the most outstanding philosophical, economic and sociological doctrines evolved by the ideologists of the progressive bourgeoisie. This is a contradiction of historical reality, in which philosophical knowledge always performs a definite ideological function, while at the same time remaining knowledge which, like any knowledge, does not depend on its application.

p The natural sciences as well as philosophy and social theories also have a certain ideological function because their discoveries dispose of superstitions and illusions that play a definite ideological role. Modern natural science exposes racialism, the neo-Malthusian 38 apology for war, and so on. This shows that under certain circumstances the natural sciences have an ideological function. There is no such thing as bourgeois (or communist) physics, chemistry, etc., but there are various ideological interpretations of the major discoveries made in the natural sciences. Thus, the nonideological, natural scientific sphere of knowledge also reveals the contrasts between various ideological approaches. This means that scientists also take part in the ideological struggle insofar as they evaluate not the special but the social significance of discoveries, the prospects of science and its role in solving social problems.

p Today, when natural science increasingly determines the character and rate of development of material production, natural scientists, like philosophers, sociologists and economists, are compelled to question themselves about the practical application of their discoveries, the social consequences of scientific and technological progress, which depend on the character of the social system, the correlation of the various classes of society, politics, and so on. It is no accident that outside his special field the natural scientist takes up a definite ideological position, as can be seen, for example, from the active participation of many eminent natural scientists in the struggle for peace and efforts to prevent the military use of the discoveries made by nuclear physics, chemistry, and bacteriology.

p Thus the comparative analysis of philosophy, the natural and social sciences, and ideology, reveals not only a difference between these forms of the intellectual mastery of objective reality, but also their unity and consequently the possibility of a scientific philosophy performing certain ideological functions. Marxism makes this possibility a reality. Whereas the neopositivists maintain that philosophy (which they interpret in a subjectivist, agnostic spirit) must be stripped of ideology if it is to become scientific, the Marxists regard “deideologising” as a hypocritical form of bourgeois partisanship adorned with the fig leaf of impartiality. Partisanship, Lenin wrote, is a socialist idea, non-partisanship is a bourgeois idea. Scientific ideology is the necessary expression of proletarian, socialist partisanship. A philosophy that renounces its ideological function cannot be scientific.

p The Marxist understanding of the possibility and necessity of scientific philosophy has certain premises, of course. Chief among these is acknowledgement that the pluralism of philosophical systems must be regarded as a historically transient form of the establishment of philosophy as a science, that is, acknowledgement of the possibility and necessity of the overcoming of this pluralism under certain social conditions. In this sense the person who believes the continuing divergence of philosophical systems to be the everlasting form of development of philosophical knowledge, is morally bound, of course, to renounce the concept of philosophy as a science, and also any 39 attempt to define the concept of philosophy in general. If such is his belief he must naturally rule out in principle any possibility of the development of philosophy on a collaborative basis, as in all the other sciences. For such a thinker the deepening divergence of philosophical doctrines is the highest manifestation of the free philosophical spirit, whose sole need is to assert itself. He is therefore bound to maintain that the true value of a philosophical doctrine has nothing to do with truth, which for philosophy must be recognised as merely a fortuitous possibility. But if this is so, our opponent must put the philosopher on the same plane as the popular novelist whose work depends for its power of attraction on being different from any other novels yet written.

p The classical pre-Marxist philosophers regarded the fact of the coexistence, the competition and replacement of numerous systems as a sign of the weakness of philosophy, which must be overcome by devising scientific methods of inquiry into philosophical problems; but the majority of contemporary philosophers, following Wilhelm Dilthey, regard the anarchy of philosophical systems as a normal situation peculiar to philosophy. For example, the philosopher of the irrationalist school is convinced that belief in the truth of one’s philosophical views is really an illusion or even a superstition. He therefore postulates the idea that all existing and possible philosophical doctrines are untrue but possess the attractive force of truth because each of them has its own meaning, at any rate, for those who can find it. It need not be thought that the neopositivist differs essentially from the irrationalist on this point. He merely tries to back up his subjectivist understanding of philosophy with scientific arguments.

p So, from our point of view, the concept of scientific philosophy (like the scientific definition of the concept of philosophy) demands theoretical premises that are fully accepted only by dialectical and historical materialism. Acknowledgement of the historically transient nature of the divergence of philosophical doctrines, however, has nothing in common with denial of its necessity and progressive nature in certain historical periods. In other words, the deepening divergence of philosophical doctrines, the polarisation of philosophy into irreconcilably opposite systems of beliefs, played its positive role. It was necessary to the extent that humanity had to develop and try out a multitude of philosophical hypotheses in order subsequently to accept as a basis, a point of departure, the one that found greatest confirmation in scientific data, and everyday and historical experience.

p The anarchy of philosophical doctrines was to a certain extent justified until the development of science and practice provided the necessary preconditions for the development of scientific philosophy. It is also obvious that the pluralism of philosophical systems was 40 related to the ideological function of philosophy and particularly the absence of scientific ideology. But since philosophy develops and does not merely vary in time, since scientific ideology arises and develops, certain inevitable errors and misconceptions are overcome and not merely replaced by new ones. Even idealist philosophy has recourse to positive scientific data to fortify its unscientific propositions. The diversity of incompatible philosophical doctrines loses its historical justification not through the convergence of philosophical doctrines, which is fundamentally impossible, but through the development of a scientific approach to the solving of philosophical problems, an approach which demands that a doctrine must be a special kind of research, a scientifically grounded interpretation of reality, and not just a notion conjured up by some individual thinker.

p Leaving the motley crowd of incompatible philosophical doctrines to the past, Marxist philosophy offers instead of the pluralism of speculative conceptions the all-round development of philosophical propositions that have been confirmed by life, practice and science. This theoretical position is radically different from the belief prevalent in contemporary non-Marxist philosophy, according to which philosophising is a kind of search for knowledge that yields a certain intellectual satisfaction but no results that may be called truths. The supporters of this view regard philosophy as a labyrinth from which only those who dislike philosophy or overestimate their philosophical potential and the scope of knowledge in general would wish to escape. Ariadne’s thread, so these philosophers maintain, does not exist and would not be needed if it did. Philosophy will never become a science, that is, it will never betray its true nature and consequently will always remain the realm of absolutely sovereign philosophical systems, like the world of Leibniz’s monads, with the only difference, however, that it has no hierarchy or predestined harmony. The things that accord in the different philosophical doctrines are of no interest to the philosopher who takes this stand. Philosophising must remain only an attempt in which failure, depending on one’s frame of mind, may be interpreted either as inevitable defeat or as an everlasting prospect. The idea of scientific philosophy is quite untenable and can inspire only the ignorant. It is not difficult to see that the fundamental fault in all these arguments lies in their ignoring the fact that philosophical doctrines have become polarised into main directions, in their denial of the fact that the divergence of philosophical doctrines is at the same time the development of diversified forms of the fundamental opposition between materialism and idealism, so that the meaning and significance of all other philosophical trends and schools can be correctly understood only in their relationship to materialist philosophy, on the one hand, and idealist philosophy, on the other. It is in the existence 41 of a multitude of philosophical doctrines that the diversity of the forms of development of materialism and idealism manifests itself historically. By highlighting the main philosophical trends and elucidating their relationship to the other trends, schools, etc., we prove that the philosopher cannot evade a choice. To philosophise is to choose.

p Materialism or idealism—such is the unavoidable alternative in philosophy. These two world-outlooks are incompatible, and this is far more obvious today than at any time in the past. The need to solve the dilemma that sums up the historical experience of philosophical development, recognition of the fact that there is no alternative to idealism but materialism, all this does away with the superficial understanding of philosophy as a labyrinth in which all paths are blind alleys. The choice which the philosopher (and to some extent anyone studying philosophy) must make is ultimately a choice not between many but between two mutually exclusive decisions. Here one chooses one’s philosophical future, so to speak, after which comes the choice of this or that specific variety of materialism or idealism.

p It would be extremely superficial to underestimate the importance of this second choice. Materialism and idealism do not exist in any pure form, isolated from other not only numerous but meaningful trends. Materialism may be dialectical or, on the contrary, metaphysical, mechanistic, or even vulgar. These are not only various historical stages of development of one and the same doctrine; they are also varieties of materialism that exist today. And a study of contemporary bourgeois philosophy shows that those of its philosophers who, having overcome the prevalent ideological prejudices of capitalism, embrace the positions of materialism by no means always make the best of this second and decisive choice.

p It would be an even greater and more disastrous mistake to underestimate the significance of philosophical self-determination, that is to say, to assume, as sometimes happens among specialists with highly restricted research interests, that one can do without a philosophical world-outlook altogether. In this statement of the problem, in philosophical nihilism, one sees a tremendous failure to understand the place of philosophy in human history, and particularly in the present age, whose colossal scientific and technological achievements have brought the fundamental philosophical problems very much to the fore.

p Quite a few people are inclined to compare the development of philosophical thought through the centuries to a comedy of errors, and not a very amusing one at that. But philosophy, no matter what may be said about it, constitutes one of the most important dimensions of mankind’s intellectual progress. The search for a correct world-outlook and the tragic misconceptions, the divergence of philosophical doctrines and their polarisation into mutually 42 exclusive trends, the conflicts between them which some people regard as a permanent feature of philosophy, all this is not merely the search, the agony and misunderstanding of philosophising individuals. This is the intellectual drama of all mankind, and those who regard it as a farce must also see the tragic as merely the Idola Theatri. The antinomies to which philosophy is prey, the crises that shake it to its foundations, the retrograde steps and the repetition of what has been done before, including the misconceptions that have been stubbornly adhered to as truths—are these facts characteristic only of philosophy? Philosophy is the spiritual image of mankind, and its successes and failures comprise the essential content of man’s intellectual biography.

p The philosophy of Marxism, while rejecting along with mysticism and idealism a contemptuous attitude to scientifically established facts, verities, and laws, naturally rejects the snobbish notion of philosophy’s exclusiveness along with philosophical nihilism and mistrust of philosophy in general. Dialectical materialism elaborates the concept of philosophy, proceeding from acknowledgement of the objective necessity of philosophical science and the fact that this necessity is being realised historically.

The development of the philosophy of Marxism—a constant process taking place through the interpretation of scientific discoveries and mankind’s historical experience—is also the constant rejection of philosophy that does not seek rational ways of understanding being and cognition that would enable it to work, on equal terms with the other sciences and claiming no special privileges or allowances, for the theoretical investigation and practical remaking of the world. More than a century of fruitful development of Marxist philosophy fully confirms the words of Engels: "It is no longer a philosophy at all, but simply a world-outlook which has to establish its validity and be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but in the real sciences. Philosophy is therefore ‘sublated’ here, that is, ’both overcome and preserved’; overcome as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content.”  [42•*  The transformation of philosophy into a scientific philosophical world-outlook and its development in this fundamentally new direction is the fulfilment of a tendency that existed embryonically in the first materialist doctrines, a tendency that waxes ever stronger in the process of development of philosophical thought and has assumed a clearly defined pattern since the emergence of Marxism.