Ten Questions To a Lecturer

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“Ten Questions to a Lecturer” was written by Lenin during the first half of May 1908 in London. He had come there from Geneva to work on his book Mateterialism and Empirio-criticism, and he sent the questions to I. F. Dubrovinsky, a member of the Bolshevik centre and one of he editors of the newspaper Proletary, as theses for a speech on the occasion of the lecture entitled “Adventures of One Philosophical School” given by A. Bogdanov in Geneva on May 15 (28), 1908.

Bogdnnov, Lunacharsky and others, who supported Machist standpoints in philosophy, took advantage of Lenin’s absence to increase their activity. Under the guise of criticising “materialism of the Plekhanov school”, they revised materialist philosophy and tried to show that empirio-monism, the variety of Machism invented by Bogdanov, and not dialectical materialism, was the philosophy of Bolshevism.

In preparing his speech, Dubrovinsky made changes in the second, hird and tenth questions and deleted the seventh question. In his speech, which was based on Lenin’s theses, Dubrovinsky (who used the pseudonym Dorov) sharply criticised Bogdanovs views, declaring that Bolshevism had nothing in common with empirio-monism and showing that the advocacy of “god-building" was incompatible with dialectical materialism.

1. Does the lecturer acknowledge that the philosophy of Marxism is dialectical materialism ?

If he does not, why has he never analysed Engels’ countless statements on this subject?

If he does, why do the Machists call their “revision” of dialectical materialism “the philosophy of Marxism"?

2. Does the lecturer acknowledge Engels’ fundamental division of philosophical systems into idealism and materialism, Engels regarding those intermediate between these two, wavering between them, as the line of Hume in modern philosophy, calling this line “agnosticism” and declaring Kantianism to be a variety of agnosticism?

3. Does the lecturer acknowledge that recognition of the external world and its reflection in the human mind form the basis of the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism?

4. Does the lecturer acknowledge as correct Engels’ argument concerning the conversion of “things-in-themselves” into “things-for-us”?

5. Does the lecturer acknowledge as correct Engels’ assertion that the “real unity of the world consists in its materiality”? (Anti-Dühring, 2nd ed., 1886, p. 28, section I, part IV on world schematism.)

6. Does the lecturer acknowledge as correct Engels’ assertion that “matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter"? (Anti-Dühring, 1886, 2nd ed., p. 45, in part 6 on natural philosophy, cosmogony, physics and chemistry.)

7. Does the lecturer acknowledge that the ideas of causality, necessity, law, etc., are a reflection in the human mind of laws of nature, of the real world? Or was Engels wrong in saying so? (Anti-Dühring, S. 20-21, in part III on apriorism, and S. 103-04, in part XI on freedom and necessity.)

8. Does the lecturer know that Mach expressed his agreement with he head of the immanentist school, Schuppe, and even dedicated his last and chief philosophical work to him? How does the lecturer explain this adherence of Mach to the obviously idealist philosophy of Schuppe, a defender of clericalism and in general a downright reactionary in philosophy?

9. Why did the lecturer keep silent about “adventure” with his comrade of yesterday (according to the Studies), the Menshevik Yushkevich, who has oday declared Bogdanov (following in the wake of Rakhmetov) an idealist? Is the lecturer aware that Petzoldt in his latest book has classed a number of Mach’s disciples among the idealists?

10. Does the lecturer confirm the fact that Machism has nothing in common with Bolshevism? And that Lenin has repeatedly protested against Machism? And that the Mensheviks Yushkevich and Valentinov are “pure” empirio-criticists?