I’m interested in knowing if you have any specific information about members of the SEP or the ICFI that agree, even in part, with the post-modernists against the Trotskyists. If so, this is important to bring forward.

Lenin’s arguments against Ernst Mach in Materialism and Empiro-Criticism weighed heavily in the history of the party because of Alexander Bogdanov, a prominent party member, who brought Mach’s anti-materialist theories into the party. This lead to Bogdanov’s expulsion from the party.

Positivism, while appearing scientific, rejected the interpretation of natural or scientific laws as a way of understanding the world. They counterposed the dialectic to materialism, rather than recognizing the dialectic as modernising it. This division arose within the Bolshevik Party, not just in the general climate they experienced in the university or the political campaign.