Hilary Putnam used to use it as his philosophy of science textbook at Harvard back in the days when he was in PL. Actually, it is not a piece of hackery. It's a more than respectable job by a very talented amatuer of genius. It's dead right about the central point, that Mach and Avernarius have not transcended phenonomenalism (Berkeleyian idealism), despite a good dealk of wishful thinking. Many of its arguments in favor of scientific realism are just fine. The debate has become more sophisticated, but after many years of enagging in it myself, I'm not sure there has been real progress. Some of the arguments are losers, that's generally true in philosophy. Lenin was mistaken about the connection between idealism and religion, thinking that idealsim leads to religion -- maybe because Berkeley was a bishop -- but that is not a big point.
Marvin Farber was no chump, hack, or Stalinist goon. He was a fine philosopher -- a Husserlian phenomenologist by profession. And a Marxist when it was neither popular nor profitable. Incidentally, Sidney Hook, who counts as a philosopher, introduced Lenin's M&EC and Marxism to American philosophy in a pair of important articles in the J.Phil in the late 1920s. I am sure that Michael P. can provide links.
jks