p Lenin did a vast amount of work on the study and elaboration of the history of Marxist philosophy. In his writings he advanced fundamental principles of research into the major methodological problems of the history of philosophy, showed the dependence of philosophy on the economic life of society, the development of science and the needs of practice, and revealed the class and party character of philosophy and the role of the class struggle as a motive force in the development of philosophical thought in a class society. He placed constant emphasis on social motives in the activities of the thinkers and philosophers of various schools and trends.

p He always examined the various philosophical trends from the angle of the struggle waged by materialism against idealism. Throughout the history of philosophy, he stressed, a struggle has been going on between materialism and idealism, the line of Dcmocritus and Plato, science and religion. That struggle is continuing. The forms and methods may change but the struggle itself cannot be smoothed over or eliminated while, side by side with the scientific world outlook of dialectical materialism there exists the anti-scientific world outlook of idealism.

p Lenin elaborated the problem of continuity of philosophical thinking, and its reflection in historico-philosophical concepts and national and international traditions, and their interaction. We must judge thinkers, he said, not by what they were able to achieve in comparison with the present-day level of science but by their contribution to all previous thinking, to the heritage handed down to them by their predecessors.

p From the outset of his revolutionary activities until the end of his life, Lenin paid tremendous attention to the history of philosophy and waged a constant struggle for the preservation of everything valuable created by advanced philosophical thinking in the past. He made a careful study of the history of ancient 55 philosophy, the doctrines of Heraclitus, Dcmocritus, Epicurus, Aristotle, and Plato being given an all-round appraisal in his writings.

p In his precis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Lenin came out strongly against falsification of the former’s philosophical heritage, against those idealist researchers who concealed everything valuable in Aristotle’s philosophy: his criticism of Plato’s ideas and the closeness between Aristotle’s philosophy and materialism on a whole range of problems.

p We know what great attention Lenin paid to the French materialism of the i8th century, German classical philosophy and to progressive Russian philosophy. He gave a profound analysis of the doctrines of the French materialists, of such German thinkers as Hegel, Kant and Feuerbach, as well as of the Russian revolutionary democrats Belinsky, Herzen and Chernyshevsky.

p He also made a close study of the history of Marxist philosophy. His numerous writings on this question contain most important methodological instructions: on the historical conditions and theoretical sources of the rise of the philosophy of Marxism; the links between Marxist philosophy and the working-class movement and the history of human thought; the evolution of the philosophical and political views of Marx and Engels; the fundamental stages in the development of Marxist theory; the qualitative distinction between Marxist philosophical materialism and other materialist theories; the antithesis between the Marxist dialectical method and Hegelian dialectics; the tremendous revolution in the views on society as effected by Marx and Engels; the irresistible and attractive force of Marxist theory.

p It would be hard to overestimate the range and the wealth of Lenin’s ideas, propositions and methodological instructions on the history of philosophy.

p Lenin always emphasised that Marxism is the true reflection of all the knowledge accumulated by mankind. In his article "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism”, he wrote: "The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling ’sectarianism’ in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the highroad of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. 56 His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism."  [56•1 

p Throughout all the works of Lenin runs the idea that, when it became the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat, Marxism did not reject the achievements of the bourgeois era but critically accepted and reworked everything that was valuable in the more than twenty centuries of the development of human thought and culture.

p All his statements on the subject were directed against a Leftist and nihilistic attitude towards the heritage of past philosophical thinking. In this connection it is interesting to take note of the flagrant contradiction between Lenin’s ideas and the present- day Chinese chauvinist view according to which the history of world philosophy, including the European, derives from Confucius and other ancient Chinese philosophers. Also of vast theoretical significance is Lenin’s criticism of the vulgar “economic” materialists who deduced philosophy directly from society’s economic life and ignored the role of the class struggle and the ideological superstructure in the development of philosophy. He demanded, in any study of the history of social thought, a deep analysis of all aspects of social life, not only the economic. In his criticism of Shulyatikov’s justification oj Capitalism in West-European Philosophy. Vrum Descartes to Macb, Lenin pointed out that any attempt to establish a direct link between philosophy and industry and the former’s dependence on the latter leads to an ignoring of a certain independence in the development of ideology, including philosophy, and can harm research into the history of philosophy.

p In respect of the heritage of progressive thought of the past, Lenin always emphasised that to preserve that heritage meant enriching it, supplementing it with new experience, with due account of the new facts and the new conditions of the revolutionary struggle. Preserving the revolutionary traditions in the Leninist spirit means constantly and unswervingly enriching and multiplying the heritage of humanity’s progressive revolutionary thought. It was Lenin who gave a masterly model of the creative application and enrichment of the revolutionary heritage and the revolutionary traditions of the past.

Lenin’s writings and thoughts on the history of philosophy have always been the foundation for the development of all 57 research into the history of philosophy in the Soviet Union since the October Revolution. Lenin’s scientific activities should always stand before us as a lofty example of consistency, conviction and singleness of purpose in developing and defending one’s ideas.

p Lenin’s philosophical works are an unsurpassed model of a struggle against reactionary bourgeois philosophy. In his writings he subjected to criticism all the main bourgeois philosophical trends of the period of imperialism—neo-Kantianism, Machism, pragmatism, Nictzscheism, Spenglerism and the like. Lenin emphasised the irreconcilability of materialism and idealism: the choice lies between a fully consistent materialism, and the falseness and the muddled thinking of philosophical idealism. All attempts to emerge from these two fundamental trends in philosophy, Lenin pointed out, contain nothing but "conciliatory charlatanism".

p The class approach, one in the Party spirit, was always A guiding principle with Lenin in his treatment of problems of theory and practice. Today, as in the past, certain Western philosophers, who sometimes claim to speak for Marxism, have lost sight of this principle and attempt to blend Marxism with existentialism, the philosophy of abstract bourgeois humanism. Counting on the “erosion” of Marxism, such philosophers would replace the Leninist Party spirit by an eclectic congeries, by tolerance of, and conciliation with bourgeois ideology, something that Lenin always flayed. As far back as the time of his struggle against "legal Marxism”, he exposed the absurdity of Struve’s attempt to find a philosophical “substantiation” of Marxism outside of Marxism. The philosophy of Marxism, Lenin said, is not something extraneous to its other components, but is indissolubly linked with the latter and inseparable from them.

p Lenin’s struggle for the purity of the Party’s world outlook was unbrcakably linked with the immediate tasks of the revolutionary working-class movement and the major problems of the working-class strategy and tactics. I fe constantly told the workers and their Party that capitalism cannot be defeated without the rout of opportunism and revisionism in the ranks of the working-class movement. In its struggle against capitalism, he said, a proletarian party has no right to tolerate the least manifestation of opportunism and should be irreconcilable towards the 58 conciliators and capitulators. Unless it evolves a clear materialist world outlook, the working class will never be able to triumph over capitalism and lead society to socialism.

p The revisionists’ attempts to stand above materialism and idealism were regarded by Lenin as a betrayal of Marxism, a surrendering of its positions to its ideological enemies. This fully holds true of the present-day revisionists, who call for coexistence between bourgeois and proletarian ideology, try to erode the border-line between Marxism-Leninism and bourgeois theories, and blunt the peoples’ attention to the struggle between capitalism and socialism, alleging that they stand above these two camps.

p Created by Marx and Engcls and further developed by Lenin, the Communist and Workers’ Parties, Marxist philosophy has existed for over a hundred years, a period during which many philosophical schools and trends have outlived themselves, after laying claim to being the last word in “free” scientific thinking. Marxist-Leninist philosophy, far from being refuted by the development of science and social life, as was predicted by its numerous enemies, has grown ever stronger and become a great and all-conquering doctrine.

p The greatness of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine is finding ever more vivid confirmation in every step of world history. The claims that Leninism is a purely "Russian phenomenon" have been fully refuted. Today all who have eyes to see realise that Marxism- Leninism is a great internationalist theory, which is lighting up to all progressive mankind the road to freedom and socialism. Today there is not, neither can there be, Marxism without the great contribution made to it by Lenin.

p Even bourgeois ideologists have been forced to acknowledge the tremendous attractive force of Marxism-Leninism, which, as former US President Herbert Hoover once said in alarm, is master of the thoughts of two-fifths of the world’s inhabitants. This idea has been echoed by so reactionary a philosopher as Raymond Aron of France. "There arc in Europe today far more militant Marxists than Christian believers,” he sighs in his book What 1 Believe In.

p Despite the unbridled slander unleashed against the Marxist- Leninist doctrine by the imperialist reactionaries, it is all the time revealing its great vitality and creative power. Lenin showed masterly prevision when he wrote: "Since the appearance of Marxism, each of the three great periods of world history has brought Marxism new confirmation and new triumphs. But a 59 still greater triumph awaits Marxism, as the doctrine of the proletariat, in the coming period of history."  [59•1 

Lenin’s works are to this day a most keen weapon in the struggle against all manifestations of obscurantism and reaction in the struggle for the triumph of a genuinely scientific and materialist world outlook.