Materialism and Empirio-Criticism

This work-written in 1908 as a militant, occasionally virulent, polemic against certain Bolsheviks who had strayed from dialectical materialism into the jungle of "Machism" and associated idealist philosophies-serves today as an invaluable example of Lenin's approach to philosophy and as a general exposition of dialectical materialism.

Lenin's breadth of knowledge shines in this text: he discusses the Marxist theory of knowledge, critiques the idealists, from Berkeley to the then current s...