By H.B. Acton
Written approximately fifty years in the past, at a time whilst the area used to be nonetheless wrestling with the suggestions of Marx and Lenin, 'The phantasm of the Epoch' is the ideal source for knowing the roots of Marxism-Leninism and its implications for philosophy, glossy political concept, economics, and background. As Professor Tim Fuller has written, this "is now not an intemperate booklet, yet relatively an attempt at a sustained, scholarly argument opposed to Marxian views." faraway from demonising his topic, Acton scrupulously notes the place Marx's account of ancient and fiscal occasions and procedures is largely exact. in spite of the fact that, Acton additionally issues out that Marx is mostly correct approximately issues that have been already widely recognized and authorised in his personal time and certainly were lengthy understood within the 19th century. nevertheless, Acton exhibits that during many instances Marx both is just unsuitable or has acknowledged his perspectives with the intention to render his theories resistant to disproof. Acton additionally explains why the embodiment of Marxist-Leninist concept in a precise social order will require coercive aid if it weren't, in the end, to break down of its personal contradictions.
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Extra resources for ILLUSION OF THE EPOCH, THE
Example text
30 ] marxist realism ries as true than we do perceptions or sensations. It is Marxists themselves, however, who group these things together and maintain that copying and practice are involved in both, so that the expositor and critic must commence by following suit. The Marxist view of sensation, therefore, appears to be that there are material things, that among these material things there are organisms with brains, that the material things that surround the organisms with brains act on them, thus producing reflections, impressions, copies, or images, and that the reflections, impressions, copies, or images are verified or rejected as a result of practical activity.
Nevertheless, Marx does seem to be saying that whatever consciousness may be, it is inseparable from the manipulative activities of organisms. Views of this sort are not, of course, confined to Marxists, and in recent years interesting theories have been developed in which perception is regarded as a sort of practical achievement. 43 He considered Bacon 44 to be the founder of the movement and went on to show how Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding was a decisive influence in the minds of the men who created and led the French Enlightenment, a movement which Marx described as both an attack on the Church and its doctrines and a criticism of the metaphysical thinking that had been so prominent in the preceding century.
Phenomenalism excludes God but appears committed to some sort of idealism. Materialism excludes phenomenalism but only at the expense of making God appear a possibility. The revolutionary tactician cannot afford to ignore this dilemma. To be offset against the atheism of phenomenalism is, however, its alleged conflict with natural science. This made Lenin particularly suspicious of it, since he considered that the natural sciences provided the detailed content of materialism. Our next step, therefore, must be to consider his direct arguments against a phenomenalistic, and in favor of a realistic, theory of perception.