SOURCE: "Lenin on the 'Party' Nature of Science and Philosophy," in Essays in Russian and Soviet History in Honour of Geroid Tanquary Robinson, edited by John Shelton Curtiss, Columbia University Press, 1963, pp. 164-76.

In the following essay, Mikulak discusses Lenin's theory of the "partyness" of science and philosophy as evidenced in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

The Soviet Communist Concise Philosophical Dictionary states: "Dialectical materialism teaches that philosophy, as all of science, appears to be class, party [in nature]." The idea that science and philosophy exhibit class or party characteristics is rather novel in the Western world, where one hardly considers these subjects as being bourgeois, capitalist or socialist in origin. Nonetheless, numerous examples can be found in Soviet publications having such labels according to the Marxist interpretation of the class development of society. In Russia, Lenin was chiefly responsible for spreading the teaching that science and philosophy are...