Otto Kuusinen (dir.) Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, date

Materialist philosophy is based on recognition of the existence of nature — the stars, the sun, the earth with its mountains and valleys, seas and forests, animals, and human beings endowed with consciousness, with the ability to think. There are no supernatural phenomena or forces, nor can there be. Man is only a particle of multiform nature, and consciousness is a property, a faculty, of man. Nature exists objectively, that is, outside and independent of the human mind.

One of the greatest physicists of our time, the late Albert Einstein, was influenced by idealism in some of his philosophical conceptions, but in the realm of science he is known for his theory of relativity, the real content of which is materialistic.

Materialism reached a new, its highest, stage in the dialectical and historical materialism of Marx and Engels, the great teachers and leaders of the proletariat, the most progressive and revolutionary class of modern society. Marx and Engels achieved a veritable revolution in philosophy. Conversant with the highest achievements of contemporary social and natural science, and having mastered and creatively interpreted everything of value in the preceding development of philosophical thought, Marx and Engels created dialectical and historical materialism, a new form of materialism free of the shortcomings of its forerunners.

The term “matter” as used in Marxist philosophical materialism designates objective reality in all its multiform manifestations. Matter is not only the tiny particles of which all things are composed. It is the infinite multitude of worlds in an infinite universe; the gaseous and dust clouds of the cosmos; our own solar system with its sun and planets; the earth and everything existing on it. It is, also, radiation, the physical fields that transfer the action of one body or particle to another and connect them: electro-magnetic, nuclear and gravitational fields. Everything existing outside and independent of our mind is of a material nature.

Nature and society do not know absolute rest, immobility, immutability. The world presents a picture of constant motion and change. Motion, change, development is an eternal and inalienable property of matter. “Motion is the mode of existence of matter,” Engels said. “Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be.” Every material body, every material particle — the molecule, atom or its components — are by their very nature in a constant state of motion and change.

The existence of physical bodies and of man himself has a duration in time — minutes, hours, days, etc. Everything in the world undergoes change. Every body, every phenomenon of nature, has its past, present and future. These are expressions of time. Time, like space, is a universal mode of the existence of matter. Every individual thing, every process, and the material world as a whole, exist in time. But again there is a difference between the duration of existence of an individual thing and of nature as a whole: the existence of individual things is restricted in time, while nature as a whole exists eternally. Every thing arises, undergoes change and subsequently ceases to exist. Nature, on the other hand, has no beginning and no end. Individual things are transient, but the connected finite things constitute an eternal nature that knows neither beginning nor end.

Philosophy cannot give us any knowledge of the external world and its laws; it should confine itself exclusively to logical analysis of the language of science, …

One of the favourite proofs of the divine creation of the world that Catholic philosophers put forward is the theory of the “expanding universe”. It is based on the discovery in 1919 of the displacement of the lines towards the red end of the spectrum in the case of radiation reaching us from the very distant galaxies. Science has not yet fully established the cause of this, but the most probable explanation — the rapid recession of the galaxies from our solar system — was immediately seized on by idealist philosophers as proof that the universe began from a God-created “primordial atom” in which at one time all matter and energy were concentrated. There is absolutely no scientific justification for that conclusion, if only because we are not justified in extending conclusions based on facts observed now, and confined to a limited portion of the universe, to the whole infinite universe and to a time separated from us by thousands of millions of years. Nonetheless, this and similar “theories” were used by Pope Pius XII in his address of November 22, 1951, “Proofs of the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Science” for the statement: “Thus, creation in time; and hence a creator, and, consequently, God! […]”