At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Russian Machists represented by Bazarov, Bogdanov and Viktor Chernov, starting from Humeism and Kantianism, denied the objective reality of matter and the existence of any form of “thing-in-itself” besides human sensations and experiences. On this basis, they wantonly refuted and attacked Plekhanov and Engels’ ideas about the knowability of “thing-in-itself” and its transformation into “thing-for-me”. In response, Lenin pointed out in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism that all materialists will recognize the knowability of “thing-in-itself”, and recognize that the process of understanding the world is also the process of transforming the “thing-in-itself” into “thing-for-me”. Lenin pointed out that, from this we could draw the only and inevitable conclusion: “…outside of us and independently of us there exist objects, things, and bodies: that our perceptions are images of the outer world.” The inference, which all of us draw in practical life, is consciously taken by materialism as the basis of its theory of knowledge. The converse theorem of Mach (bodies are complexes of sensations) is nothing but sheer idealistic thinking…
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