I think a final evaluation of Soviet philosophy remains to be written. It seems to me that some quite substantive work was done in the early years of the Soviet Union. Certainly, the debates in the 1920s between the Mechanists and the Dialecticians seem to be of some interest, revolving as they did around some perennial issues in Marxist philosophy. (Stalin BTW settled that debated by fiat). Stalin's rule as Justin quite correctly points out put a severe crimp on any truly original work in Soviet philosophy, since most of the best thinkers and scholars were (if they were lucky found themselves in Siberia) and very often were simply liquidated. Many of the scholars at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, who oversaw the publication of Marx's earlier writings (like the 1844 Manuscripts) simply "disappeared" during the 1930s.
The "thaw" that occured upon Khruschev's ascension to power, saw a revival of Soviet philosophy. It was during the "thaw" that Ilyenkov (http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/) first rose to prominence for instance. Justin points out that Soviet philosophers did important work in logic, and it was during the time of the "thaw" that the Czech born Soviet philosopher Ernst Kolman disucssed the relations between formal logic and dialectical logic, in which he proposed that dialectics was actually completely compatible with Aristotelian logic, and that we should be wary of identifying "dialectical contradictions" with the kinds of contradictions treated in formal logic. In his view, dialectics did not violate Aristotle's law of non-contradiction.
In the late Soviet period, some interesting work was done in the philosophy of science. Igor Naletov's *Alternatives to Positivism* provides a well-informed assessment of Anglo-American work in the field from a Soviet Marxist standpoint, and indeed it does seem to have been the case that many Soviet philosophers did take a strong interest in Anglophone analytic philosophy. Dmitry Gorski's writings such as his *Generalisation and Cognition* for instance betrays a knowledge of the Anglophone literature in logic and analytic philosophy. Both Naletov and Gorski provide ample discussions of such thinkers as Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Popper, Quine, and Kuhn amongst others, while adhering to a broadly dialectical materialist standpoint. In fact it seems that one characteristic of Soviet philosophy was while it on the one hand pledged its loyalty to a strict orthodoxy, it was still (at least following Stalin's death) able to absorb ideas and techniques from other philosophical traditions. I seem to recall reading a book many years ago by John Somerville on Soviet philosophy which made exactly that point. Even in Stalin's time it was customary for Soviet philosophers to be assigned to specialize in the work of one or more particular Western bourgeois philosophers, in order to refute their ideas. Very often this resulted in the Soviet philosopher in absorbing many of the ideas of the thinkers that he was supposed to be refuting.
Jim F.
On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 22:15:19 +0000 "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
writes:
> >CB: Uhhhh , I am being deliberately clear as a bell. You said 99
> out of
> >100 Marxist philosophers don't know anything about late 19th
> Century
> >neo-Kantians.
> >
>
> Probably that is too high. Maybe it's 999 out of 1000, assuming that
> there
> are that many Marxsits philosophers left. There'a Harry van der
> Linden and
> who else?
>
>
> >>^^^^^^^^
> >
> >CB: This is just another angle to make your anti-dialectical
> materialist
> >argument,
>
> Now you are insulting me. I never EVER argue that a doctrine is
> false
> because it unpopular. The dimat is (at best) false because it is a
> bunch od
> meaningless unhelpful obscurantist doubletalk. Of course lots of
> stuff that
> fits that bill has been very popular, such as New Age spirituality,
> postmodern "theory," and religious fundamentalsims of various sorts.
> So the
> popelarity of a doctrine is not at all related to its truth value,
> and you
> know that I have always thought that.
>
> >Furthermore, people who are religious-nationalist existentialists
> don't
> >exactly strike me as the one's whose judgments I would respect that
>
> >dialectical materialism is bad.
>
> Nor me either, I was just pointing out that not all, indeed nost
> most,
> Soviet philosophers were Marxists, and most of them bailed out for
> something
> else as soon as they could do so without being fired or going to
> jail. That
> doesn'r mean theyw ere right to do so, of course, but given what
> they
> thought Marxsim was (the diamat) I find theira ttitude
> understandable.
>
>
> >
> >(Gorbachev's wife was a philosphy teacher too)
> >
>
> Actually Raisa Gorbacheva is or was a sociologist, which comes under
> the
> philosophy faculty of a Russian university.
>
>
> >CB; Actually, in the chapter I quote, Lenin explains how Mach
> started out a
> >Kantian and then became more a Berkeleyian. What makes Lenin good
> is the
> >content of his discussion.
>
> I'd have to look at it again. As I said, Lenin was an amateur, but a
>
> talented one.
>
> >
> >What's that appeal to "authority" you make ? Dogmatism ?
>
> No, knowing something about a subject matter. Harry van der Linden
> is a real
> authority on neo-Kantianism. He's studied it enough,a nd written
> about it
> intelligently, so that whatever he says on the subject is worth
> taking
> seriously.
>
> >
> >CB: Lenin doesn't criticize [Mach's0 politics. It is his break with
>
> >philosophical materialism in the guise of still being a materialist
> that
> >Lenin objects too.
>
> On political grounds! He says that it lead to "fideism" (that is,
> religious
> faith), which he considers to be retrograde; of course an
> Enlightenment
> liberal like Mach was almsot certainly an atheist or agnostic, and
> also that
> it leads to various reactionary consequences, which in Mach's case
> happens
> not to be true. Also Lenin has more serious objections to thetruthof
> Mach's
> views or to Mach's arguments, and these deserve critical attention.
>
> >
> >One of the Machists that Lenin criticizes in the book, the
> Bolshevik
> >Lunarcharsky, became Minister of Education, when the Bolsheviks
> came to
> >power. That's how off is your dogmatic, anti-communist ,
> implication that
> >Lenin used state power to enforce his philosophical views.
>
> Charles, you're not gonna get anywhereaccusing me of red-baiting. In
> fact,
> Lenin did use state power to enforce his views, though
> (unlikeStalin) not
> his philosophical ones. It was Lenin who criminalized political
> dissent in
> the FSU, established rule of one party,a nd the like. He was quite
> proud of
> these things, so don't try to pretend otherwise. As a liberal
> democart, you
> cannot expect me to approve. At the same time I have never said that
> Lenin
> was merely a paranoid murderous tyrant, a dictator and butcher, like
> Stalin,
> and I do not think that he was.
>
> Am I anticommunist? I sure as hell am antiStalinist. I hope I have
> made that
> clear. If "anticommunist" means (as it does in post WWII AMerica, a
> defender
> of containment and the national security state, some form of
> McCarthyism at
> home, and imperial intervention abroad (Vietnam, etc.), then you
> know it is
> slander to suggest that's what I am. If it means that I would oppose
> the
> establishhment of a Boslhevik regime in America, yeah, I would, but
> what's
> the point; I'd also oppose the establishment of a sharia Islamic
> regime in
> America, which is probably more likely.
>
> My rejection of diamat has nothing to do with my attitudes towards
> communism
> or socialism, and I remain a socialist and a historical materialist.
> The
> problem with diamat is just that it's bad philosophy. The fact that
> it was
> imposed by political fiat is not a problem with thediamat, except
> insofara s
> the diamat was thought to justify this imposition, as with the
> political
> system that imposed it.
>
> jks
>
>
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