Landmarks of Scientific Socialism Part 8

Marx says "It is the negation of the negation. This reestablishes private property but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalistic era, of the cooperation of free laborers and their common ownership of the land and the means of production. The transformation of the private property of individuals, depending upon the labor of individuals, into capitalistic property is naturally a process much more tedious, hard and difficult than the transformation of capitalistic private property, as it now exists, resting upon social production, into social property." That is all. The condition attained by the dispossession of the dispossessor is here shown as the restoration of individual private property resting however on a basis of social property in the land and means of production. For people who can understand English, the meaning of this is that social property extends to the land and means of production, and private property to the products, therefore to consumption. And that the matter should be evident even to infants Marx shows on page 56. "A society of free men who labor with social means of production, and consciously expend their individual labor power as social labor power," therefore a socialistically organised society, and he says further "The total product of the society is a social product. A portion of this product serves again as a means of production. It remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members of the society. It must therefore be distributed among them." And that ought to be clear, even to Herr Duehring, in spite of his having Hegel on the brain. The coexistent individual and social property, this confused and indefinite thing, this nonsense proceeding from the Hegelian dialectic, this misty world, this deep dialectic puzzle which Marx leaves his pupils to solve is merely a creation of Herr Duehring's imagination. Marx, as a so-called Hegelian, is obliged, as a result of the negation of the negation, to furnish a correct higher unity, and since he does not do this in accordance with the taste of Herr Duehring, the latter has to take a lofty stand and to smite Marx in the interests of the full truth of things upon which Herr Duehring holds a patent.

What att.i.tude did Marx take to the negation of the negation? On page 761 and following he states the conclusion with respect to his economic and historical investigations into the so-called acc.u.mulation of original capital, extending over the fifty preceding pages. Before the capitalistic era in England, at least, small production existed, based upon the private property of the worker in his tools. The so-called acc.u.mulation of capital consists in the expropriation of these immediate producers, that is in the abolition of private property resting on the labor of individuals. This was possible because the aforesaid small production is only compatible with a narrow and primitive stage of production and of society and at a certain grade of development furnishes the means of its own suicide.

This suicide, the transformation of individual and divided modes of production into social production, const.i.tutes the early history of capitalism. As soon as the workers are transformed into proletarians and their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalistic methods of production are firmly established, the growing a.s.sociation of labor and the further transformation of the land and other means of production and hence the further expropriation of the owners of private property takes on a new form, "there is no longer the self-employing worker to expropriate, but the capitalist who expropriates many workers. This expropriation fulfils itself through the play of laws immanent in capitalistic production itself, through the concentration of capital. One capitalist kills many. Hand in hand with this concentration, or the expropriation of many capitalists by a few, there develop continually the conscious technical application of science, the deliberate organised exploitation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor which can only be employed collectively, and the economising of all means of production through their employment as the common means of production of combined social labor. With the constantly diminishing numbers of capitalist magnates who usurp and monopolise all the advantages of this process of transformation, grows the ma.s.s of misery, pressure, slavery, degradation and robbery but there grows also revolt and the constant progress in union and organisation of the working cla.s.s brought about through the mechanism of the capitalistic process of production. Capitalism becomes an impediment to the methods of production developed with and under it. The concentration of the means of production and the organisation of labor reach a point where it comes into collision with its capitalistic covering. It is broken.

The hour of capitalistic private property strikes. The expropriators are expropriated."

And now I ask the reader, where are the dialectic twists and twirls, the intellectual arabesques, where the confused thought the result of which is the ident.i.ty of everything, where the dialectic mystery for the faithful, where the dialectic hocus pocus, and the Hegelian intricacies, without which, Marx, according to Herr Duehring, cannot develop his own ideas? Marx simply pointed to history and showed briefly that just as the small industry necessarily produced the conditions of its own downfall, by its own development, that is to say by the expropriation of the small holders of private property so now the capitalistic method of production has itself developed likewise the material circ.u.mstances which must cause its downfall. The process is a historical one and, if it is at the same time dialectic, it is not to the discredit of Marx, that it happens to be so fatal to Herr Duehring.

In the first place, since Marx is ready with his historical economic proof, he proceeds "The capitalistic method of production and method of appropriation, that is to say capitalistic private property is the first negation of individual private property founded on labor of individuals, the negation of capitalistic production will be self-produced with the necessity of a natural process, etc." (as quoted above).

Although Marx therefore shows the occurrence of this event as negation of the negation, he has no intention of proving by this means that it is a historical necessity. On the contrary "After he has shown that the actual fact has partially declared itself, and has, as yet partially to declare itself, he shows it also as a fact which fulfils itself in accordance with a certain dialectic law." That is all. It is therefore again merely supposition on Herr Duehring's part to a.s.sert that the negation of the negation must act as a midwife by whose means the future is brought out of the womb of the present, or that Marx wants to convince anyone of the necessity of social ownership of land and capital upon the credit of the negation of the negation.

It shows a complete lack of comprehension of the nature of the dialectic to regard it as Herr Duehring does, as an instrument of mere proof, just as one can after a limited fashion employ formal logic or elementary mathematics. Formal logic is itself more than anything else a method for the discovery of new results, for advancing from the known to the unknown, and so, but in a much more distinguished sense, is the dialectic, which, since it transcends the narrow limits of formal logic, attains a more comprehensive philosophical position. It is the same with mathematics. Elementary mathematics, the mathematics of constant quant.i.ties, proceeds within the limits of formal logic, at least as a rule: the mathematics of variable quant.i.ties which is peculiarly concerned with calculations running to the infinite, is substantially nothing but the application of the dialectic in mathematics. Mere proof becomes secondary before the manifold application of the method to new fields of investigation. But nearly all the proofs of higher mathematics from the first of the differential calculus, are, strictly speaking, false from the standpoint of elementary mathematics. This cannot be otherwise, if one, as is here the case, wishes to establish results won in the realm of dialectics by means of formal logic. For a cra.s.s metaphysician like Herr Duehring to want to prove anything by means of the dialectic would be the same wasted labor as Leibnitz and his pupils went through when they tried to establish the thesis of calculation to infinity by means of the mathematics of their time. The differential gave them the same spasms as the negation of the negation gives Herr Duehring and it played a role in it as we shall see. They admitted it at last, at least as many as did not die first, not because they were convinced but because it always worked out right. Herr Duehring, is, as he says, just in his forties, and if he attains old age, as we hope he will, he may also experience the same.

But what is this dreadful negation of the negation which makes life so bitter to Herr Duehring and which is to him what the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, is to Christianity? It is a very simple process, and one, moreover, which fulfils itself every day, which any child can understand when it is deprived of mystery, under which the old idealistic philosophy found a refuge, and beneath which it will pay unprotected metaphysicians to take refuge from the stroke of Herr Duehring. Let us take a grain of barley. Millions of such grains of barley will be ground, cooked and brewed and then consumed.

But let such a grain of barley fall on suitable soil under normal conditions; a complete individual change at once takes place in it under the influence of heat and moisture, it germinates. The grain, as such disappears, is negated, in its place arises the plant, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal course of life of this plant? It grows, blossoms, bears fruit and finally produces other grains of barley and as soon as these are ripe the stalk dies, and becomes negated in its turn. As the result of this negation of the negation, we have the original grains of barley again, not singly, however, but ten, twenty or thirty fold. Forms of grain change very slowly and so the grain of barley remains practically the same as a hundred years ago. But let us take a cultivated ornamental plant, like the dahlia or orchid. Let us consider the seed and the plants developed from it by the skill of the gardener, and we have in testimony of this negation of the negation, no longer the same seeds but qualitatively improved seed which produces more beautiful flowers, and every repet.i.tion of this process, every new negation of the negation, increases the tendency to perfection. Similarly this process is gone through by most insects, b.u.t.terflies, for example. They come out of the egg by a negation of the egg, they go through certain transformations till they reach s.e.x maturity, they copulate and are again negated, since they die as soon as the process of copulation is completed, and the female has laid her innumerable eggs. That the matter is not so plainly obvious in the case of other plants and animals, seeing that they produce seeds, plants, and animals not once but oftener, does not affect us in this case, we are now only concerned in showing that the negation of the negation actually does occur in both kingdoms of the organic world. Besides, all geology is a series of negated negations, one layer after another following the destruction of old and the establishment of new rock foundations.

First, the original crust of the earth, through the cooling of the fluid ma.s.s, and through oceanic, meteorological, and chemical atmospheric action, being broken up into small parts, these broken ma.s.ses form layers in the seas. Local elevations of the seas, through the ebb and flow of the waters, bring portions of these layers afresh under the influence of rain, the warmth of the seasons, and the oxygen and carbon in the atmosphere: melted and almost cooled ma.s.ses of rock from the interior of the earth underlie these and break through the layers. Through millions of centuries new layers are continually being formed, always to a large extent destroyed and serving again as building materials for new layers. But the result of the process is always positive, the restoration of a piece of ground made up of exceedingly diverse chemical elements to a condition of mechanical pulverisation, which is the cause of a most abundant and diverse vegetation.

It is the same also in mathematics. Let us take an ordinary algebraic quant.i.ty a. Let us negate it, then we have-a (minus a). Let us negate this negation, that is let us multiply --a by --a and we have + a^2, that is the original positive quant.i.ty but in a higher form that is to the second power. It does not matter that we can attain the same a^2 by the multiplication of a positive by itself. The negated negation is established so completely in a^2 that under all circ.u.mstances it has two square roots a and --a. And this impossibility, the negated negation, the getting rid of the negative root in the square has much significance in quadratic equations. The negation of the negation is more evident in the higher a.n.a.lyses, in those "unlimited summations of small quant.i.ties," which Herr Duehring himself explains as being the highest operations of mathematics and which are usually called the differential and integral calculus. How do these forms of calculation fulfil themselves? I have for example in a given problem two variable quant.i.ties x and y, of which one cannot vary without causing the other to vary also under fixed conditions. I differentiate x and y, that is I consider x and y as being so infinitesimally small that they do not represent any real quant.i.ties, even the smallest, so that, of x and y nothing remains, except their reciprocal relations, a quant.i.tative relation without any quant.i.ty; therefore dx/dy, the relation of the two differentials of x and y, is 0/0 but 0/0 is fixed as the expression of y/x. That this relation between two vanished quant.i.ties, the fixed moment of their vanishing, is a contradiction I merely mention in pa.s.sing, it should give us as little uneasiness as it has given mathematics for the two hundred or so years past. What have I done except to negate x and y; not as in metaphysics so as not to trouble myself any further about them, but in a manner demanded by the problem? Instead of x and y, I have therefore their negation dx and dy in the formulae or equations before me. I now calculate further with these formulae. I treat dx and dy as real quant.i.ties, as quant.i.ties subject to certain exceptional laws, and at a certain point I negate the negation, that is, I integrate the differential formula. I get instead of dx and dy the real quant.i.ties x and y again, and am thereby no further forward than at the beginning, but I have thereby solved the problem over which ordinary geometry and algebra would probably have gnashed their teeth in vain.

It is not otherwise in history. All civilised peoples began with common property in land. Among all peoples which pa.s.s beyond a certain primitive stage the common property in land becomes a fetter upon production in the process of agricultural development. It is cast aside, negated, and, after shorter or longer intervening periods, is transformed into private property. But at a higher stage, through the development still further of agriculture, private property becomes in its turn a bar to production, as is to-day the case with both large and small land proprietorship. The next step, to negate it in turn, to transform it into social property, necessarily follows. This advance however does not signify the restoration of the old primitive common property, but the establishment of a far higher better developed form of communal proprietorship, which, far from being an impediment to production, rather, for the first time is bound to put an end to its limitations and to give it the full benefit of modern discoveries in chemistry and mechanical inventions.

But again; ancient philosophy was primitive naturalistic materialism.

In the state of thought at that period it was, as such, incapable of clear conceptions of matter. But the necessity of clearness on this point led to the doctrine of a soul which could leave the body, then to the idea of the immortality of the soul, finally, to monotheism.

The old materialism was therefore negated by idealism. But in the further development of philosophy idealism became untenable, and is negated by modern materialism. This, the negation of negation, is not the mere reestablishment of the old, but unites, with the surviving foundations, the whole thought content of a two thousand years'

development of philosophy and science, as well as the history of these two thousand years. It is in a special sense no philosophy but a single concept of the universe which has to prove and realise itself not in a science of sciences apart, but in actual science. Philosophy is here also cast aside, that is "destroyed and preserved," destroyed as to its form, preserved as to its real content. Where Herr Duehring only sees word-jugglery a more real content is brought to light by the newer point of view.

Finally, even the Rousseau doctrine of equality, of which that of Herr Duehring is only a feeble and false plagiarism, has no existence unless the Hegelian negation of the negation serve it as a midwife, although it originated twenty years prior to the birth of Hegel. Far from being ashamed of this it bears in plain sight the stamp of its dialectic derivation in its earliest manifestation. In a state of nature and savagery men were equal, and, since Rousseau regards speech as a falsifying of natural conditions, he is quite right in predicating equality of animals of one species as far as this reaches, and the same also with regard to those speechless animal-men, recently hypothetically cla.s.sified by Haeckel as Alali. But these equal animal men had one quality beyond the other animals,--perfectibility, the power of further development and this was the reason of inequality.

Rousseau sees therefore in the existence of equality a step forward.

But this advance was self contradictory, it was at the same time a retrogression. "All further advances (beyond the primitive stage) were so many steps, seemingly in the development of individual men, but actually in the decay of the species. Working in metals and agriculture were the two arts whose discovery brought about this great revolution" (the transformation of the primitive forests into cultivated lands, but also the introduction of poverty and slavery together with private property). "The poets hold that gold and silver, the philosophers that iron and corn have civilised men and ruined the human race." Each new advance of civilisation is at the same time an advance of inequality. All contrivances with which society endows itself by means of civilisation are in direct opposition to their original purpose. "It is beyond question and a foundation principle of the entire public law that people made rulers to defend their liberties, not to destroy them." And yet these rulers become of necessity the oppressors of the people and they carry the oppression to the point where inequality is brought to a climax and, then, transformed into its opposite, again becomes the reason of equality, for to despots all are equal, that is equally of no account. Here is the extreme of inequality, the crowning point which closes the circle, and touches the point from which we have proceeded; here all private individuals are equal, since they are of no account, and subjects have no law other than the will of their master. "But the despot is master only as long as he has the power, and for this reason he cannot complain of the use of force if he is banished.... Force upholds him, force throws him down, everything goes according to a straight and naturally appointed path." And thus again inequality is transformed into equality, but not into the old materialistic equality of speechless, primitive men, but into the higher equality of organised society. The oppressor is oppressed, it is negation of the negation.

We have then, as regards Rousseau, not merely a method of thought which is quite a.n.a.logous to that pursued in Marx's "Capital," but also a whole series of single dialectic turns of which Marx avails himself: Processes, which are antagonistic in their nature, containing a contradiction in themselves, are transformed from one extreme to its opposite, finally, as the quintessence of the whole, negation of the negation. Although Rousseau in 1754 could not speak the jargon of Hegel, he was then, at a period twenty-three years before the birth of Hegel, deeply infected with the Hegel contagion, the dialectic of contradiction, doctrine of logic, theology, etc. And if Duehring in his misapplication of Rousseau's theory of equality, operates with his two victorious men, he having lost his feet, falls, of necessity into the arms of the negation of the negation.

The conditions under which the equality of the two men flourishes and which is set forth as an ideal condition is shown on page 271 of the Philosophy as the original condition. This original condition on page 279 is of necessity destroyed by the "robber system"--first negation.

But we have now, thanks to the philosophy of reality, arrived at the point of abolishing the "robber system" and subst.i.tuting for it the economic commune discovered by Herr Duehring--negation of the negation, equality on a higher plane.

What is the negation of the negation, therefore? It is a very far reaching, and, just, for this reason, a very important law of development of nature, human history and thought, a law which we see realised in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history, and philosophy, and which Herr Duehring himself, in spite of his opposition and resistance, must follow, after his own fashion. It is evident that I say nothing of the special development of the grain of barley from the germ to the crop bearing plant, if I say it is negation of the negation. Since the integral calculus is likewise negation of the negation, with the other a.s.sertion I should only affirm that the life process of a grain of barley is integral calculus or even socialism. But that is just the kind of thing which the metaphysicians push off on the dialectic. If I say that all these processes const.i.tute negation of the negation, I embrace them all under this one law of progress, and leave the distinctive features of each special process without particular notice. The dialectic is, as a matter of fact, nothing but the science of the universal laws of motion, and evolution in nature, human society and thought.

At this point, however, the objection may be urged that the final negation is no true negation, I negate a grain of barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it, a positive quant.i.ty when I eliminate it, etc. Or I negate the statement "the rose is a rose" if I say "the rose is no rose" and what happens if I negate this negation again and say "but the rose is a rose"? These objection are, in fact, the chief arguments of the metaphysicians against the dialectic and are quite worthy of this idiotic method of reasoning. To negate in the dialectic is not simply to say "No," or to describe a thing as non-existent, or to destroy it after any fashion that you may choose.

Spinoza says "omnis determinatio est negatio," every limitation or determination is at the same time a negation. Furthermore, the sort of negation here is shown first by means of the universal and in the second place by means of the distinctive nature of the process. I must not only negate but I must also restore the negation again. I must therefore so direct the first negation that the second remains possible or shall be so. How? Just according to the peculiar nature of each particular case. I grind a grain of barley, I crush an insect, I have certainly fulfilled the first act but have made the second impossible. Every species of things has therefore its own peculiar properties to be negated in order that a progression may proceed, and every species of properties and ideas is precisely the same in this regard. In infinitesimal calculations the negation is brought about after a different fashion than in the restoration of positive powers from negative roots. That has to be learnt like everything else. With the mere knowledge that the stalk of barley and infinitesimal calculation fall under the principle of the negation of the negation, I cannot cultivate more barley nor can I differentiate and integrate, just as I cannot play the violin by virtue of a mere knowledge of the laws of harmony. But it is evident that a merely childish negation of the negation such as writing down a and erasing it, or by affirming that a rose is a rose and that it is not a rose leads to no conclusion other than to show the silliness of the people who undertake processes so tedious. And yet metaphysicians would inform us that that is the right way to carry out the negation of the negation.

Herr Duehring is therefore a mystifier when he a.s.serts that the negation of the negation was an a.n.a.logy made by Hegel derived from religion and built up on the story of the Fall and the Redemption. Men thought dialectically a long time before they knew what the dialectic really was, just as they spoke prose a long time before the term "prose" was used. The law of the negation of the negation which operates in history and which until it is once learned goes on in our brains unconsciously to ourselves, was first clearly formulated by Hegel, and if Herr Duehring desires to employ it in secret but cannot stand the name, he should discover a better name. But if he insist on expelling it from the processes of thought, he must first be good enough to expel it from nature and from history, and find a system of mathematics in which --a multiplied by --a does not give us + a^2 and where the differential and integral calculus are both forbidden by law.

_Conclusion._

In this short section Engels leaves the general discussion in order to again pay his respects to the shortcomings and deficiencies of Herr Duehring. The matter possesses no general interest for Engels merely teases his opponent upon the magnificence of his claims and the slightness of his performances.

PART II

CHAPTER VIII

POLITICAL ECONOMY

_I. Objects and Methods._

Political economy is, in the widest sense, the science of the laws controlling the production and exchange of the material necessities of life in human society. Production and exchange are two entirely different functions. Production may exist without exchange, exchange--since there can only be exchange of products--cannot exist without production. Each of the two social functions is controlled by entirely different external influences and thus has, generally speaking, its own peculiar laws. But on the other hand they become so mutually involved at a given time and react one upon the other that they might be designated the abscisses and ordinates of the economic curve.

The conditions under which men produce and exchange develop from land to land, and in the same land from generation to generation. Political economy cannot be the same for all lands and for all historical epochs. From the bow and arrow, from the stone knife and the exceptional and occasional trading intercourse of the barbarian to the steam engine with its thousands of horse-power, to the mechanical weaving machine, to the railway and the Bank of England is a tremendous leap. The Patagonians do not have production on a large scale and world-commerce any more than they have swindling or bankruptcy. Anyone who should attempt to apply the same laws of political economy to Patagonia as to present-day England would only succeed in producing stupid commonplaces. Political economy is thus really a historical science. It is engaged with historical material, that is, material which is always in course of development. At the close of this investigation it can, for the first time, show the few (especially as regards production and exchange) general laws which apply universally. In this way it is made evident that the laws which are common to certain methods of production or forms of exchange are common to all historical periods in which these methods of production and forms of exchange are the same. Thus for example with the introduction of specie, there came into being a series of laws which holds good for all lands and historical epochs in which specie is a means of exchange.

The method of distributing the product is in accordance with the method of production and exchange of a given society at a given time.

In the tribal or village community with communal ownership of land, of which there are obvious survivals in the history of all civilized peoples, there is practically an equal distribution; where a greater inequality of distribution of the product has been introduced among the members of a society, it is a sign of the coming dissolution of the community--large and small farming have very different modes of distribution according to the historical circ.u.mstances from which they have developed. But it is apparent that large farming requires a different mode of distribution than small farming; that the large farming shows the existence of cla.s.s antagonism--slave-holders and slaves, landlords and tenants, capitalists and wage workers,--but that, on the contrary, in small farming, cla.s.s distinction does not arise from the farming operations of separate individuals but from the mere beginnings of farming on a large scale. The introduction and development of the use of gold into a country where formerly exchange of actual goods was the exclusive or general practice, is closely a.s.sociated with a slow or rapid revolution of the mode of distribution hitherto prevailing, and to such an extent that inequality of distribution among individuals and, so, antagonism between rich and poor becomes more and more apparent. Local gild hand-production as it prevailed in the Middle Ages made great capitalists and life-long wage-workers just as impossible as the great modern industry, the credit system of to-day, and form of exchange, corresponding with the development of these, free compet.i.tion, render them inevitable.

With the difference in distribution however cla.s.s differences are introduced. Society becomes divided into upper and lower cla.s.ses, into plunderers and plundered, into master and servant cla.s.ses, and the state which the original groups composed of societies claiming the same ancestry only regarded as a means of protection of the common interests (remnants of which remain in the Orient, e.g.) and against foreign force, takes upon itself the duty of maintaining the economic and political supremacy of the dominant cla.s.s against the dominated cla.s.s by means of force.

So distribution is not a mere pa.s.sive witness of production and exchange; it has an immediate influence on both. Every new method of production and form of exchange is impeded, not only through the old forms and their particular forms of political development, but also through the old method of distribution. It can only bring about its own method of distribution as the result of long conflict. But just in proportion as a given method of production and exchange is built up and develops, distribution all the more rapidly reaches a point where it outstrips its predecessor and where it comes into collision with the system of production and exchange existing up to that time. The old tribal communistic forms of which we have already spoken may last thousands of years, as is seen in the case of the Indians and Slavs of to-day, until intercourse with the outside world develops causes of disruption within them as a conclusion of which their dissolution comes about. Modern capitalistic production on the other hand which is hardly three hundred years old and which first became dominant with the introduction of the greater industry about one hundred years ago, has, in this short time, developed antagonisms in distribution--concentration of capital on the one hand in the possession of a few persons and, on the other, concentration of propertyless ma.s.ses in the great cities--which must of necessity bring it to an end.

The connection between the form of distribution and the material economic conditions of a society is so much in the nature of things that it is generally reflected in the popular instinct. As long as a method of production is in the course of development, even those whose interests are against it, who are getting the worst of the particular method of production, are highly satisfied. It was just so with the English working cla.s.s at the introduction of the greater industry. As long as this method of production remained the normal social method, satisfaction with the methods of distribution was, on the whole, prevalent; and when a protest against it rose even in the bosom of the dominant cla.s.s itself (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) it found at first practically no sympathy among the ma.s.ses of the exploited. But directly the method of production has travelled a good portion of its upward progress, when half of its life was over, when its destiny was in a great measure accomplished and its successor was knocking at the door--then for the first time the ever increasingly unequal distribution appeared as unjust. Then was the first appeal made from actual facts to so-called eternal justice. This appeal to morality and justice does not bring us a step further scientifically. Economic science can find no grounds of proof in moral indignation, however justifiable, but merely a symptom. Its task is to show the newly developing social wrongs as the necessary results of existing methods of production and, at the same time, as signs of its approaching dissolution, and to point out, amid the break up of the existing economic system, the elements of the new organization of production and exchange which will abolish those social wrongs. The feeling stirred up by the poets whether in the picturing of these social wrongs or by attack upon them or, on the other hand, by denial of them and the glorification of harmony in the interests of the dominant cla.s.s, is quite timely, but its slight value as furnishing proof for a given period is shown by the fact that one finds an abundance of it in every epoch.

Political economy, as the science of the conditions and forms under which various human societies have produced and exchanged and according to which they have distributed the products of their labor,--political economy, in this broad sense, has yet to be planned for the first time. All that we have so far of political economic science is almost entirely limited to the beginning and development of the capitalistic mode of production. It begins with the genesis and growth of the capitalistic mode of production, and exchange, recognises the necessity of the disappearance of these by means of the capitalistic forms, then develops the laws of the capitalistic methods of production and their corresponding forms of exchange on the positive side, that is on the side on which they further the objects of society, as a whole and closes with the socialist criticism of the capitalistic methods of production, that is, with the exhibition of its laws on the negative side, with the proof that this method of production arrives at the point, by its own development, where it is no longer possible. This criticism proves that the capitalistic methods of production and exchange const.i.tute more and more an insufferable fetter upon production itself. The mode of distribution which is necessarily a.s.sociated with this form of production has brought about a cla.s.s condition which grows daily more unbearable. It has produced the daily sharpening antagonism between the continually less numerous but constantly richer capitalists and the more numerous, but on the whole, continually poorer propertyless wage-workers.

Finally the tremendous productive forces of the capitalistic methods of production, which are practically unlimited, are only awaiting their seizure at the hands of an organized co-operative society to secure for all the members of that society the means of existence and the fuller development of their faculties in an ever increasing degree.

In order to fully accomplish this criticism of the bourgeois economy acquaintance with the capitalistic form of production of exchange and of distribution was not enough. Preceding forms and others, existing side by side with the capitalistic mode in a few highly developed countries, had to be examined and compared at least in their chief features. Such an investigation and comparision has been undertaken as a whole by Marx alone and we consider that this investigation practically sums up all that has been established respecting theoretical economy prior to that of the bourgeois.

While political economy in a narrow sense arose in the minds of a few geniuses of the seventeenth century, it is, in its positive formulation by the physiocrats and Adam Smith, substantially a child of the eighteenth century, and expresses itself in the acquisitions of the great contemporary French philosophers with all the excellencies and defects of that time. What we have said of the French philosophers applies also to the economists of that day. The new science was with them not the expression of the condition and needs of the time but the expression of eternal reason; the laws of production and exchange discovered by them were not the laws of a given historical form of those facts but were eternal natural laws; they derived them from the nature of man. But this man, seen clearly, was a burgher of the Middle Ages on the high road to becoming a modern bourgeois, and his nature consisted in this that he had to manufacture commodities and carry on his trade according to the given historical conditions of that period.

(Herr Duehring having applied the two man theory to political economic conditions and having decided that such conditions are unjust, upon which conclusion he bases his revolutionary att.i.tude, Engels remarks as follows):

"If we have no better security for the revolution in the present methods of distribution of the products of labor with all their crying antagonisms of misery and luxury, of poverty and ostentation, than the consciousness that this method of distribution is unjust and that justice must finally prevail, we should be in evil plight and would have to stay there a long time. The mystics of the Middle Ages who dreamed of an approaching thousand years kingdom of righteousness had the consciousness of the injustice of cla.s.s antagonisms. At the beginning of modern history three hundred years ago, Thomas Muenzer shouted it aloud to all the world. In the English and French bourgeois revolutions the same cry was heard and died away ineffectually. And if the same cry, after the formation of cla.s.s antagonisms and cla.s.s distinctions left the working, suffering cla.s.ses cold until 1830, if it now takes hold of one land after another with the same results and the same intensity, in proportion as the greater industry has developed in the individual countries if, in one generation, it has acquired a force which defies all the powers opposed to it and can be sure of victory in the near future--how comes it about? From this, that the greater industry has created the modern proletariat, a cla.s.s, which for the first time in history can set about the abolition not of this or that particular cla.s.s organization or of this or that particular cla.s.s privilege but of cla.s.ses in general, and it is in the position that it must carry out this line of action on the penalty of sinking to the Chinese coolie level. And that the same greater industry has on the other hand produced a cla.s.s which is in possession of all the tools of production and the means of life but in every period of prosperity (Schwindelperiode) and in each succeeding panic shows that it is incapable of controlling in the future the growing productive forces; a cla.s.s under whose leadership society runs headlong to ruin like a locomotive whose closed safety valve the engine driver is too weak to open. In other words it has come about that the productive forces of the modern capitalistic mode of production as well as the system of distribution based upon it are in glaring contradiction to the mode of production itself and to such a degree that a revolution in the modes of production and distribution must take place which will abolish all cla.s.s differences or the whole of modern society will fall. It is in these actual material facts, which are necessarily becoming more and more evident to the exploited proletariat, that the confidence in the victory of modern socialism finds its foundation and not in this or that bookworm's notions of justice and injustice.

_II. The Force Theory._

(Herr Duehring argues that the causes of cla.s.s subjection are to be sought in political conditions and that political force is the primary, and economic conditions merely the secondary, cause of cla.s.s distinctions Engels makes the following reply to these arguments):

This is Herr Duehring's theory. It is set out, decreed so to say, here and in several other places. But we cannot find the slightest attempt to prove it or to disprove the opposite theory in the three thick volumes. Moreover if there was an abundance of proof we should get none from Herr Duehring, for the matter is proven by the famous fall of man in that Robinson Crusoe made Friday his slave. That was an act of force and so a political act. And this slavery const.i.tutes the point of departure and fundamental fact of history up to the present time and inoculates the heirs of sin with injustice so certainly that only lately it has become milder and "transformed into the more indirect forms of economic dependency." Since the whole of the remaining actual "force-possession" rests upon this original enslavement, it is clear that all economic phenomena can be explained from original political causes, that is from force. And whoever is not satisfied with this is a secret reactionary.

Let us first remark that one has to be as much in love with himself as Herr Duehring is to consider this idea as "original" since it is not so by any means. The idea that the political doings of monarch and states are decisive events in history is as old as the writing of history itself and is the reason why we are so little aware of the real and quietly developing progress of the peoples which goes on behind these noisy and spectacular activities. This idea has dominated the whole of history in the past and got its first shock at the hands of the French bourgeois historians of the Restoration period.

To proceed, let us grant for the present that Herr Duehring is correct when he says that all history up to now has been the slavery of man by men, and we are still a long way from the root of the matter. Let us ask now how it was that Robinson came to enslave Friday. Was it merely for the pleasure of doing so? Surely not. On the contrary we are informed that Friday "was subjugated as a slave or mere tool for economic service and was kept in subjection merely as a tool."