One of the important principles of Marxism, referring to that no philosophical thought can avoid either the basic question of philosophy or the two principal alignments, two fundamental trends of philosophy, i.e., materialism and idealism. Engels put forward in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy that “The great basic question of all philosophy…is that concerning the relation of thinking and being.” “The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps.” In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin based on Engels’ theory on the basic question of philosophy, put forward and expounded the principle of the partisan character of philosophy in criticizing empirio-criticism, i.e., Machism, which mainly includes the following points: Firstly, materialism and idealism, in nature, are two parties fighting each other. The “partisanship” of philosophy, according to Lenin, first referred to the party a philosophy is connected with, whether materialism or idealism. Lenin pointed out that “Behind the mass of new terminological devices, behind the litter of erudite scholasticism, we invariably discerned two principal alignments, two fundamental trends in the solution of philosophical problems. Whether nature, matter, the physical, the external world should be taken as primary, and consciousness, mind, sensation (experience—as the widespread terminology of our time has it), the psychical, etc., should be regarded as secondary—that is the root question which in fact continues to divide the philosophers into two great camps.” Although there were trends and schools throughout the history of philosophy, none could avoid answering the basic question of philosophy in one way or another, nor avoid two basic parties, materialism and idealism. The latest philosophy was partisan, just like the one 2,000 years ago. Lenin pointed out that, Mach, Avenarius, Bogdanov and other people boasted of their non-partisanship, or claimed to have “risen above” materialism and idealism, and created new terminology like “elements”, “the principal-coordination theory” and “theory of introjection” to show the superiority of their own theories, but in fact any philosophy trying to reconcile or transcend the antithesis (materialism & idealism) would inevitably slide into idealism and fideism…
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