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Lenin’s Philosophy in Intellectual Context

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The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy

Abstract

Both Lenin’s attitude towards philosophy and his philosophical legacy have been highly controversial. This chapter considers ‘Materialism and Empiriocriticism’ on the background of its historical and polemical context. For Lenin, philosophy was not just the field for ideological polemics, since he shared Plekhanov’s opinions about the necessity of a sound theoretical background for any successful practice. Moreover he connected philosophical thought with the problem of the relationship of the revolutionary élite and the proletariat. Lenin’s involvement in the polemics against Machists was at the same time a strategic task and an authentic theoretic enterprise. The analysis of the relationships between Lenin and Bogdanov shows both the overwhelming polemical way of discussing in Lenin’s work, but also some theoretical cores in his ideas. In particular, a central issue in the intellectual debate became how to combine the claim for truth and the risk of dogmatism.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks should be expressed to the Aleksanteri Institute (University of Helsinki) for assistance during my visiting fellowship in 2015, and the Slavonic Library in Helsinki, particularly Irina Lukka.

Translated into English by Lucia Pasini.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Daniela Steila

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  1. Daniela Steila
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Correspondence to Daniela Steila .

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  1. Avignon, France

    Tom Rockmore

  2. Independent scholar, AL, USA

    Norman Levine

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Steila, D. (2018). Lenin’s Philosophy in Intellectual Context. In: Rockmore, T., Levine, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51650-3_3

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