Link to originalRebuttal to agnosticism
Agnostic (Hume, Kant): “we only have access to sensations; whether there’s a real world behind them producing them is unknowable.”
Lenin’s rebuttal, compressed:
Unstable middle: You either do or don’t posit something beyond sensations. If you don’t, you’re an idealist (world = sensations). If you do but call it “unknowable,” you’re a shamefaced materialist. There’s no coherent third position; agnosticism is just idealism with cold feet.
Practice settles it: If we synthesize alizarin from coal tar, we’ve made the thing-in-itself act for us. The Kantian “ungraspable” thing has been grasped. The criterion of practice (experiment, industry, successful prediction) refutes the claim that we can never know what’s beyond sensation.
Wrong boundary: Agnosticism puts an absolute fence between phenomenon and thing-in-itself.
Lenin: there’s no difference in principle, only between known and not yet known. What was unknowable yesterday (alizarin in coal tar, atoms, radio waves) is routine today. The fence is imaginary.The political kicker: Once you deny knowability of objective reality, you’ve opened the door to fideism. “We can’t know” leaves room for “so you may as well have faith.” Every major agnostic school, Lenin shows, has been exploited by religion and reaction for exactly this reason. Non-partisanship in epistemology is a de facto alliance with idealism.
