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 Landmarks of scientific socialism : 
 
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 3 1924 030 355 956 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030355956 
 
LANDMARKS OF 
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 "ANTI-DUEHRING" 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK ENGELS 
 
 TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY AUSTIN LEWIS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE 
 
Copyright, 1907 
 By Charles H. Kerr & Company 
 
 
 80 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Translator's Introduction 9 
 
 Chapter II 
 
 Prefaces 23 
 
 Part 1 23 
 
 Part II 27 
 
 Part III.- 35 
 
 Chapter III 
 
 Introduction 36 
 
 I. In General 36 
 
 II. What Herr Duehring Has to Say 50 
 
 PART I 
 Chapter IV 
 
 Apriorism 54 
 
 The Scheme of the Universe 63 
 
 Chapter V 
 
 Natural Philosophy 70 
 
 Time and Space 70 
 
 Cosmogony, Physics, and Chemistry 82 
 
 The Organic World 94 
 
 The Organic World (conclusion) 107 
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 Moral and Law 116 
 
 Eternal Truths 116 
 
 Equality. . 130 
 
 Freedom and Necessity 146 
 
" TABLE X)F CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Dialectic 150 
 
 Quantity 150 
 
 Negation of the Negation 159 
 
 Conclusion 175 
 
 PART II 
 
 Chapter VIII 
 
 Political Economy 176 
 
 I. Objects and Methods 176 
 
 II. The Force Theory 184 
 
 III. Force Theory (continued) 193 
 
 IV. Force Theory (conclusion) 20J 
 
 V. Theory of Value 214 
 
 VI. Simple and Compound Labor 219 
 
 VII. Capital and Surplus Value 223 
 
 VIII. Capital and Surplus Value (conclusion) . . 227 
 
 IX. Natural Economic Laws — Ground Rent . . 232 
 
 X. With Respect to the "Critical History" . . 235 
 
 PART III 
 
 Chapter IX 
 
 Socialism 236 
 
 Production 236 
 
 Distribution 245 
 
 The State, The Family, and Education .... 256 
 
 Appendix 261 
 
LANDMARKS OF 
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 translator's introduction 
 
 When Dr. Eugene Duehring, privat decent at Ber- 
 lin University, in 1875, proclaimed the fact that he had 
 become converted to Socialism, he was not content to 
 take the socialist movement as he found it, but set out 
 forthwith to promulgate a theory of his own. His was 
 a most elaborate and self-conscious mission. He stood 
 forth as the propagandist not only of certain specific and 
 peculiar views of socialism but as the originator of a new 
 philosophy, and the propounder of strange and wonder- 
 ful theories with regard to the universe in general. The 
 taunt as to his all-comprehensiveness of intellect, with 
 which Engels pursues him somewhat too closely and 
 much too bitterly, could not have affected Herr Duehring 
 very greatly. He had his own convictions with respect 
 to that comprehensive intellect of his and few will be 
 found to deny that he had the courage of his convic- 
 tions. 
 
 Thirty years have gone since Duehring published the 
 fact of his conversion to socialism. The word " con- 
 version" contains in itself the distinction between the 
 socialism of thirty years ago and that of to-day. What 
 was then a peculiar creed has now become a very wide- 
 spread notion. Men are not now individually converted 
 
 7 
 
8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 to socialism but whole groups and classes are driven into 
 the socialist ranks by the pressure of circumstances. 
 The movement springs up continually in new and unex- 
 pected places. Here it may languish apparently, there 
 it gives every indication of strong, new and vigorous 
 life. 
 
 The proletariat of the various countries race as it were 
 towards the socialist goal and, as they change in their 
 respective positions, the economic and political fields on 
 which they operate furnish all the surprises and fasci- 
 nations of a race course. In 1892 Engels wrote that the 
 German Empire would in all probability be the scene of 
 the first great victory of the European proletariat. But 
 thirteen years have sufficed to bog the German movement 
 in the swamps of Parliamentarianism. Great Britain, 
 whose Chartist movement was expected to provide the 
 British proletariat with a tradition, has furnished few ex- 
 amples of skill in the management of proletarian poli- 
 tics, but existing society in Great Britain has none the 
 less been thoroughly undermined. The year before that 
 in which Herr Duehring made his statement of con- 
 version, the British Liberals had suffered a defeat which, 
 in spite of an apparent recuperation in 1880, proved the 
 downfall of modern Liberalism in Great Britain, and 
 showed that the Liberal Party could no longer claim to 
 be the party of the working class. Not only that, but 
 the British philosophic outlook has become completely 
 changed. The nonconformist conscience grows less and 
 less the final court , of appeal in matters political. A 
 temporary but fierce attack of militant imperialism coupled 
 with the very general acceptance of an empiric collectiv- 
 ism has sufficed to destroy old ideas and to make the 
 road to victory easier for a determined and relentless 
 working class movement. 
 
translator's introduction 9 
 
 But if thirty j'ears iiave worked wonders in Europe, 
 and disintegration Can be plainly detected in the social 
 fabric, the course of social and political development in 
 the United States has been still more remarkable. In 
 1875 the country was still a farming community living on 
 the edge of a vast wilderness through which the rail- 
 road was just beginning to open a path. Thirty years 
 have been sufficient to convert it into the greatest of 
 manufacturing and commercial states. The occupation 
 t)f the public- lands, the establishment of industry on an 
 hitherto undreamed of scale, the marvellous, almost 
 overnight creation of enormous cities, all these have re- 
 sulted in the production of a proletariat, cosmopolitan in 
 its character, and with no traditions of other than cash 
 relations with the class which employs it. The purity 
 of the economic fact i; unobscured. Hence a socialistic 
 agitation has arisen in the United States, the enthusiasm 
 of which vies with that in any of the European countries 
 and the practical results of which bid fair to be even 
 more striking. This movement has arisen almost spon- 
 taneously as the result of economic conditions. It is a 
 natural growth not t"ie result of the preaching of ab- 
 stract doctrines or the picturing of an ideal state. The 
 modern American proletariat is, as a matter of fact, given 
 neither to philosophic speculation nor to the imagination 
 which is necessary to idealism. Such socialism as it 
 has adopted it has taken up because it has felt impelled 
 thereto by economic pressure. 
 
 Hence, apart from all socialistic propaganda, a dis- 
 tinct disintegration-process has been proceeding in mod- 
 ern society. Each epoch carries withia itself the seeds 
 pf_,its „own dissolution. Things have just this much 
 value, they are transitory, says Engels in his paraphrase 
 
lO LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 of Hegel, and this is in fact the central idea of his 
 dialectic philosophy. 
 
 He criticises the work of Duehring from this stand- 
 point. He labors not so much to show that Duehring. 
 is mistaken in certain conclusions as to prove that the 
 whole method of his argument is wrong. His diatribes, 
 though the subject matter of his argument requires him 
 to attack the Berlin tutor, are directed chiefly against all 
 absolute theories. " Eternal truth," in the realm of 
 science, equally with that of philosophy, he scouts as 
 absurd. To interpret the history of the time in terms 
 of the spirit of the time, to discover the actual beneath 
 the crust of the conventional, to analyse the content of 
 the formulae which the majority are always ready to 
 take on trust, and to face the fact with a mind clear of 
 preconceived notions is what Engels set out to do. It 
 cannot be said that he altogether succeeded. No man 
 can succeed in such a task. The prejudices and ani- 
 mosities created by incessant controversy warped his 
 judgment in some respects, and tended on more than 
 one occasion to destroy his love of fair play. The spirit 
 which is occasionally shown in his controversial writing 
 is to be deplored but it may be said in extenuation that 
 all controversies of that time were disfigured in the same 
 way. He pays the penalty for the fault. 
 
 Much of the work is valueless to-day because of Eng- 
 els' eagerness to score a point off his adversary rather 
 than to state his own case. But where the philosopher 
 lays the controversialist on one side for a brief period, 
 and takes the trouble to elucidate his own ideas we dis- 
 cover what has been lost by these defects of tempera- 
 ment. He possesses in a marked degree the gift of 
 clear analysis and of keen and subtle statement. 
 
 The socialist movement everywhere arrives some time 
 
TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION II 
 
 or Other at what may be called the Duehring stage of 
 controversy. There are two very distinct impulses to- 
 wards socialism. The individuals who are influenced 
 by these impulses must sooner or later come into col- 
 lision, and as a result of the impact the movement is for 
 a time divided into hostile parties and a war of pam- 
 phleteering and oratory supervenes. This period has just 
 ended in France. For the last few years the French 
 movement has been divided upon the question of the 
 philosophical foundation of the movement, and the par- 
 ties to the controversy may be divided into those who 
 sought to justify the movement upon ethical grounds 
 and those who have regarded it as a modern political 
 phenomenon dependent alone upon economic conditions. 
 The former of these parties based its claims to the suf- 
 frages of the French people upon the justice of the so- 
 cialistic demands. It proclaimed socialism to be the 
 logical result of the Revolution, the necessary conclusion 
 from the teachings of the revolutionary philosophers. 
 Justice was the word in Which they summed up the claims 
 of socialism, that and Equality, for ^ich latter term 
 as Engels points out in the present work, the French 
 have a fondness which amounts almost to a mania. 
 Hence one party of the French socialist movement chose 
 as a platform those very " eternal truths " which Engels 
 ridicules and which it is the sole purpose of the present 
 work to attack. 
 
 To kill " eternal truths " is however by no means an 
 easy matter. Years of habit have made them part of the 
 mental structure of the citizens of the modern dem- 
 ocratic or semi-democratic states. Not only in France 
 but to an even greater degree in the English speaking 
 countries these " eternal truths " persist, they form the 
 stock in trade of the clergyman and the ordinary poli- 
 
12 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 tician. Bernard Shaw directs the shafts of his ridicule 
 against these " eternal truths" and smites with a sarcasm 
 which is more fatal than all the solemn German philos- 
 ophy which lEngels has at his command. But Shaw 
 is not appreciated by the British' socialist. The latter 
 cannot imagine that the writer is really poking fun at 
 things so exceedingly serious and so essential to any well 
 constituted man, to a well-constituted Briton in par- 
 ticular. The British socialist is as much in love with 
 " eternal truths " as is the stiffest and most unregenerate 
 of his bourgeois opponents. He therefore toploftily de- 
 clares that Mr. Shaw is an unbalanced person, a licensed 
 jester. Precisely the same results would attend the 
 efforts of an American iconoclast who would venture to 
 ridicule the " eternal truths which have been handed down 
 to us in documents of unimpeachable respectability, like 
 the Declaration of Independence, and by Fourth of July 
 orators, portly of person and of phrase. 
 
 The " eternal truth " phase of socialist controversy 
 seems to be as eternal as the truth, and must necessarily 
 be so as long as the movement is recruited by men who 
 bring into it the ideas which they have derived from the 
 ordinary training of the American citizen. 
 
 The other side of the controversy to which reference 
 has been made derived its philosophy from the experience 
 of the proletariat. This modern proletariat, trained to 
 the machine, is a distinct product of the occupation by 
 which it lives. The organisation of industry in the 
 grasp of which the workman is held during all his work- 
 ing hours and manufacture by the machine-process, the 
 motions of which he is compelled to follow have pro- 
 duced in him a mental condition which does not readily 
 respond to any sentimental stimulus. The incessant pro- 
 cess from cause to effect endows hjm with a sort of 
 
tka'/slator's iniroduction 13 
 
 logical sense in r.<.*cordance with which he works out the 
 problems of life independent of the preconceptions and 
 prejudices wh*:h have so great a hold upon the reason 
 of his fellow citizens who are not of the industrial 
 proletariat. Without knowing why he arrives by dint 
 of the experience of his daily toil at the same conclusions 
 as Engels attained as the result of philosophic training 
 and much erudition. The Church is well aware of this 
 fact to her sorrow for the industrial proletarian seldom 
 darkens her portals. He has no hatred of religion, as 
 the atheistic radical bourgeois had, but with a good- 
 natured " non possumus" says by his actions what Engels 
 says by his philosophy. 
 
 Revolution is an every day occurrence with the in- 
 dustrial proletarian. He sees processes transformed in 
 the twinkling of an eye. He wakes up one morning to 
 find that +he trade which he has learned laboriously has 
 overnight become a drug on the market. He is used 
 to seeing the machine whose energy has enchained him 
 flung on the scrap heap and contemptuously disowned, 
 in favor of a more competent successor whose motions 
 he must learn to follow or be himself flung on the scrap 
 heap also. This constant revolution in the industrial 
 process enters into his blood. He becomes a revolution- 
 ist by force of habit. There is no need to preach the 
 dialectic to him. It is continually preached. The tran- 
 sitoriness of phenomena is impressed upon him by the 
 changes in industrial combinations, by the constant sub- 
 stitution of new modes of production for those to which 
 he has been accustomed, substitutions which may make 
 " an aristocrat of labor " of him to-day, and send him 
 tramping to-morrow. 
 
 The industrial proletarian therefore knows practically 
 what Engels has taught philosophically. So that when 
 
14 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 in the course of his poHtical peregrinations he strays 
 into the socialist movement and there finds those who 
 profess a socialism based upon abstract conceptions and 
 " eternal truths " his contempt is as outspoken as that 
 of a Friedrich Engels who chances upon a certain Eugen 
 Duehring spouting paraphrases of Rousseau by the so- 
 cialistic wayside. Engels simply anticipated by the way 
 of books the point of view reached by the industrial pro- 
 letarian of to-day by the way of experience, and by the 
 American machine-made proletarian in particular. This 
 is a matter of no mean importance. In the following 
 pages we can detect if we can look beyond and beneath 
 the mere criticism of Duehring, an attitude of mind, not 
 of one controversialist to another merely but of an en- 
 tire class, the class upon which modern society is driven 
 more and more to rely, to the class which relies upon it. 
 For their popular support classes and governments 
 rely upon formulae. When the cry of " Down with the 
 Tsar " takes- the place of the humbly spoken " Little 
 Father " what becomes of the Tsardom ? When the 
 terms " Liberty " and " Equality " become the jest of 
 the workshop, upon what basis can a modern democratic 
 state depend? This criticism of "eternal truths" is 
 destructive criticism, and destructive of much more than 
 the " truths." It is more destructive than sedition it- 
 self. Sedition may be suppressed cheaply in these days 
 of quick-firing guns and open streetsr But society 
 crumbles away almost insensibly beneath the mordant 
 acid of contemptuous analysis. So to-day goaded on 
 the one side by the gibes of the machine-made proletariat, 
 and on the other, by the raillery of the philosophic 
 jester, society staggers along like a wounded giant and 
 is only too glad to creep into its cave and to forget its 
 sorrows in drink. 
 
translator's introduction 15 
 
 As for 1875, " Many things have happened since then " 
 as Beaconsfield used to say, but of all that has happened 
 nothing could have given more cynical pleasure to the 
 " Old Jew " than the lack of faith in its own shibboleths 
 which has seized the cocksure pompous society in which 
 he disported himself. The rhetoric of a Gladstone based 
 upon the " eternal truths " which constituted always the 
 foundations of his political appeals would fail to affect 
 the masses to-day with any other feeling than that of 
 ridicule. We have already arrived at the " Twilight of 
 the Idols " at least so far as " eternal truths " are con- 
 cerned. They still, find however an insecure roosting 
 place in the pulpits of the protestant sects. 
 
 If blows have been showered upon the political 
 " eternal truths " in the name of which the present epoch 
 came into existence social and ethical ideals have by no 
 means escaped attack. Revolt has been the watchword 
 of artist and theologian alike. The pre-Rafaelite 
 school, a not altogether unworthy child of the Chartist 
 movement, raised the cry of artistic revolt against ab- 
 solutism and the revolt spread in ever widening circles 
 until it has exhausted itself in the sickly egotism of the 
 " art nouveau." Even Engels, with all his independence 
 and glorification of change as a philosophy, can find an 
 opportunity to fling a sneer at Wagner and the " music 
 of the future." The remnants of early Victorianism 
 cling persistently to Engels. He cannot release him- 
 self altogether from the bonds of the bourgeois doctrine 
 which he is so anxious to despise. He is in many re- 
 spects the revolutionist of '48, a bourgeois politician 
 possessed at intervals by a proletarian ghost, such as he 
 says himself ever haunts the bourgeois. The younger 
 generation without any claims to revolutionism has gone 
 further than he in the denunciation of authority and with- 
 
l6 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 out the same self consciousness, "ihe scorn of Bernard 
 Shaw for the moguls of the academies and for social 
 ideals is greater than the scorn of Engels for " eternal 
 truths." Says Mr. Shaw, " The great musician accepted 
 by his unskilled listener is vilified by his fellow musician. 
 It was the musical culture of Europe that pronounced 
 Wagner the inferior of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. 
 The great artist finds his foes among the painters and 
 not among the men in the street. It is the Royal 
 Academy that places Mr. Marcus Stone above Mr. Burne 
 Jones. It is not rational that it should be so but it is 
 so for all that. The realist at last loses patience with 
 ideals altogether and finds in them only something to 
 blind us, something to numb us, something to murder 
 self in us. Something whereby instead of resisting death 
 we disarm it by committing suicide." Here is a note of 
 modernity which Engels was hardly modern enough to 
 appreciate and yet it was written before he died. 
 
 Nietzsche, Tolstoy and a host of minor writers have 
 all had their fling at " eternal truths " and modern ideals. 
 The battle has long since rolled away from the ground 
 on which Engels fought. His arguments on the dia- 
 lectic are commonplaces to-day which it would be a work 
 of supererogation to explain to anyone except the per- 
 sistent victim of Little Bethel. The world has come to 
 accept them with the equanimity with which it always 
 accepts long disputed truths. 
 
 The sacred right of nationality for which men con- 
 tended in Engels' youth, as a direct consequence of po- 
 litical " eternal truths " has been ruthlessly brushed aside. 
 The philosopher talks of the shameful spoliation of the 
 smaller by the larger nations, a moral view of commercial 
 progress, which an age, grown more impatient of 
 " eternal truths " than EngeJs himself simply ignores. 
 
TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION XJ 
 
 and moves on without a qualm to the destruction of free 
 governments in South Africa. Backward and unpro- 
 gressive peoples jeer, it is true, and thereby show their 
 political ineptitude, for even the American Republic, hav- 
 ing freed the negro under the banner of " eternal truth " 
 annexes the Philippines and raids Panama in defian9e 
 of it. 
 
 And so since the days of 1875 the world has come to 
 accept the general correctness of Engels' point of view. 
 
 The enemy which Engels was most anxious to dis- 
 lodge was " mechanical socialism," a naive invention of 
 a perfect system capable of withstanding the ravages of 
 time, because founded upon eternal principles of truth 
 and justice. That enemy has now obeyed the law of the 
 dialectic and passed away. Nobody builds such systems, 
 nowadays. They have ceased their building however not 
 in obedience to the commands of Friedrich Engels but 
 because the lapse of time and the change in conditions 
 have proved the dialectic to the revolutionist. With the 
 annihilation of " eternal truths," system building ceased 
 to be even an amusing pastime. The revolutionist has 
 been revolutionized. He no longer fancies that he can 
 make revolutions. He knows better. He is content to 
 see that the road is kept clear so that revolutions may de- 
 velop themselves. Your real revolutionist, for example, 
 puts no obstacle in the path of the Trust, he is much too 
 wise. He leaves that to the corrosion of time and the 
 development of his pet dialectic. He sees the contradic- 
 tion concealed in the system which apparently triumphs, 
 and in the triumph of the system he sees also the triumph 
 of the contradiction. He waits until that shadowy pro- 
 letariat which haunts the system takes on itself flesh and 
 blood and shakes the system with which it has grown 
 up. But this waiting for the development of the in- 
 
l8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 evitable is weary work to those who want to realise 
 forthwith, so they, unable to confound the logic of Eng- 
 els, attack the " abstractions " on which his theory is 
 founded. They still oppose their " eternal truths " to 
 the dialectic. 
 
 Thus in England, where the strife between the two 
 parties in the socialist movement has lately been waged 
 with a somewhat amusing ferocity, Engels is charged 
 with a wholesale borrowing from Hegel. In any other 
 country than England this would not be laid up against 
 a writer, but the Englishman is so averse to philosophy 
 that the association of one's name with that of a phil- 
 osopher, and a German philosopher in particular, is tanta- 
 mount to an accusation of keeping bad company. But 
 a glance at the following pages should tend to dispose 
 of so romantic a statement which could, in fact, only 
 have been made by those who know neither Hegel nor 
 Engels. 
 
 That Hegel furnished the original philosophic impetus 
 to both Marx and Engels is true beyond question, but 
 the impetus once given, the course of the founders of 
 modern socialism tended ever further from the opin- 
 ions of the idealistic philosopher. In fact Engels says 
 somewhat self consciously, not to say boasts, that he and 
 his followers were pioneers in applying the dialectic to 
 materialism. Whatever accusation may be made against 
 Engels, this much is certain that he was no Hegelian. 
 In fact both in the present work and in " Feuerbach " 
 he is at great pains to show the relation of the socialist 
 philosophy as conceived by himself and Marx to that of 
 the great man for whom he always kept a somewhat 
 exaggerated respect, but from whom he differed funda- 
 mentally. Engels' attack upon the philosophy of Dueh- 
 ring is based upon dislike of its idealism, the funda- 
 
translator's introduction 19 
 
 mental thesis upon which the work depends being entirely 
 speculative. Duehring insisted that his philosophy was 
 a realist philosophy and Engels' serious arguments, apart 
 from the elaborate ridicule with which he covers his op- 
 ponent and which is by no means a recommendation to 
 the book, is directed to show that it is not realist, that it 
 depends upon certain preconceived notions. Of these 
 notions, some are axiomatic, as Duehring claims, that is 
 they are propositions which are self evident to Herr 
 Duehring but which will not stand investigation. Others 
 again are untrue and are preconceptions so far as they 
 are out of harmony with established facts. 
 
 Much of Engels' work is out of date judged by recent 
 biological and other discoveries, but the essential arigu- 
 ment respecting the interdependence of all departments 
 of knowledge, and the impossibility of making rigid 
 classifications holds good to-day in a wider sense than 
 when Engels wrote. Scientific truths which have been 
 considered absolute, theories which have produced ap- 
 proximately correct results, have all been discredited. 
 The dogmas of science against which the dogmatic ec- 
 clesiastics have directed their scornful contempt have 
 shared the same fate as the ecclesiastical dogmas. Noth- 
 ing remains certain save the certainty of change. There 
 are no ultimates. Even the atom is suspect and the 
 claims of the elements to be elementary are rejected 
 wholesale with something as closely resembling scorn 
 as the scientist is ever able to attain. A scientific writer 
 has recently said "What is undeniable is that the Dal- 
 tonian atom has within a century of its acceptance as a 
 fundamental reality suffered disruption. Its proper 
 place in nature is not that formerly assigned to it. No 
 longer ' in seipso totus, teres, atque rotundus ' its repu- 
 tation for inviolability and indestructibility is gone for 
 
20 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC /SOCIALISM 
 
 ever. Each of these supposed ' ultimates ' is now known 
 to be the scene of indescribable activities, a complex piece 
 of mechanism composed of thousands" of parts, a star- 
 cluster in miniature, subject to all kinds of dynamical 
 vicissitudes, to perturbations, accelerations, internal fric- 
 tion, total or partial disruption. And to each is ap- 
 pointed a fixed term of existence. Sooner or later the 
 balance of equilibrium is tilted, disturbance eventuates in 
 overthrow; the tiny exquisite system finally breaks up. 
 Of atoms, as of men, it may be said with truth ' Quisque 
 suos patitur manes." 
 
 The discovery of radium was in itself sufficient to 
 revolutionise the heretofore existing scientific theories 
 and the revolution thereby effected has been enough to 
 cause Sir William Crookes to say, " There has been a 
 vivid new start, our physicists have remodelled their 
 views as to the constitution of matter." In his address 
 to the physicists at Berlin the same scientist said, "This 
 fatal quality of atomic dissociation appears to be uni- 
 versal, and operates whenever we brush a piece of glass 
 with silk ; it works in the sunshine and raindrops in 
 lightnings and flame ; it prevails in the waterfall and the 
 stormy, sea " and a writer in the Edinburgh Review (De- 
 cember, 1903) remarks in this connection " Matter he 
 (Sir William Crookes) consequently regards as doomed 
 to destruction. Sooner or later it will have dissolved 
 into the ' formless mist ' of protyle and ' the hour hand 
 of eternity will have completed one revolution.' The 
 ' dissipation of energy ' has then found its correlative in 
 the ' dissolution of Matter.' " 
 
 The scope of this revolution may only be gauged by 
 the fact that one writer (" The Alchemy of the Sea," 
 London " Outlook," Feb. ir, 1905^ has ventured to say, 
 and this is but one voice in a general chorus : " To-day 
 
TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 no one believes in the existence of elements; no one 
 questions the possibility of a new alchemy ; and the actual 
 evolution* of one element from another has been ob- 
 served in the laboratory — observed by Sir WiUiam 
 Ramsey in London, and confirmed by a chemist in St. 
 Petersburg." Helium being an evolution of radium and 
 it is expected furthermore that -radium will prove to be 
 an evolution of uranium and so there is a constant pro- 
 cess as the writer points out of what was formerly called 
 alchemy the transmutation of one metal into another. 
 
 It is clear that in face of these facts the arguments 
 of Engels possess even greater forc;e at the present day 
 than when they were enunciated and that the old hard 
 and fast method of arguing from absolute truths is dead 
 and done for. 
 
 Only statesmen see fit to still harp on the same phrases 
 which have become as it were a part of the popular 
 mental structure and by constant appeals to the old 
 watchwords to obscure the fact of change. Were one 
 not acquainted with the essential stupidity of the po- 
 litical mind and the lapk of grasp which is the character- 
 istic of statesmen, it might be imagined that all this was 
 done with malice aforethought and that there was a 
 sort of tacit conspiracy on the part of the politicians to 
 delude the people. But experience of the inexcusable 
 blunders and the inexplicable errors into which states- 
 men are continually driven forces the conclusion that 
 they are in reality no whit in advance of the electorate 
 and that only now and then a Beaconsfield appears who 
 can understand the drift of events. Such a man is the 
 " revolutionist " which Beaconsfield claimed himself to 
 be. But what shall we say of the President of the 
 country that has attained the highest place in industrial 
 progress among the nations, whose whole history is a 
 
22 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 verification of the truth of the dialectic and who can still 
 appeal to " individualism " as i guiding principle of 
 political action? It is a wanton flying in the face of the' 
 experience of the last quarter of a century and such rash- 
 ness will require its penalty. " Back to Kant " appears 
 to be the hope of reactionary politicians as well as of re- 
 actionary philosophers. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 I 
 
 PREFACES 
 
 \ 
 
 The following work is by no means the fruit of some 
 " inward compulsion," quite the contrary. 
 
 When three years ago, Herr Duehring suddenly chal- 
 lenged the world, as a scholar and reformer of socialism, 
 friends in Germany frequently expressed the wish that I 
 should throw a critical light upon these new socialist 
 doctrines, in the central organ of the Social Democratic 
 Party, at that time the "Volkstaat." They held it as 
 very necessary that new opportunity for division and 
 confusion should not be afforded in a party s6 young 
 and so recently definitely united. They were in a better 
 condition than myself to comprehend the condition of 
 affairs in Germany, so that I was compelled to trust to 
 their judgment. It appeared furthermore that the prose- 
 lyte was welcomed by a certain portion of the socialist 
 press, with a warmth, which meant nothing more than 
 kindliness to Herr Duehring, but it was seen by a por- 
 tion of the party press that a result of this kindly feeling 
 towards Herr Duehring was the introduction unper- 
 ceived of the Duehring doctrine. People were found 
 who were soon ready to spread his doctrine in a popular 
 form among the workingmen, and finally Herr Duehring 
 and his little sect employed all the arts of advertisement 
 and intrigue to compel the " Volksblatt " to change its 
 attitude respecting the new teachings which put forth 
 such tremendous claims. 
 
 23 
 
24 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 However, a year elapsed before I could make up my 
 mind to engage in so disagreeable a business to the 
 neglect of my other labors. It was the sort of thing 
 one had to get through as quickly as possible, once it 
 was begun. And it was not only unpleasant but quite a 
 task. The new socialist theory appeared as the last 
 practical result of a new philosophic system. It there- 
 fore involved an investigation of it in connection with 
 this system and therefore of the system itself. It was 
 necessary to follow Herr Duehring over a wide expanse 
 of country where he had dealt with everything under 
 the sun, yea, and more also. So there came into ex- 
 istence a series of articles which appeared from the be- 
 ginning of 1877 in the successor of the " Volkstaat," the 
 " Vorwaerts " of Leipsic, and are collected here. 
 
 It was my object which extended the criticism to a 
 length out of all proportion to the scientific value of the 
 matter and, therefore, of Herr Duehring's writings. 
 There are two further reasons in extenuation of this 
 lengthiness. In the first place it gave me an opportunity 
 of developing my views, in a positive fashion, with re- 
 spect to matters which are connected with this, though 
 very different, and which are of more general scientific 
 and practical interest to-day. I have taken the oppor- 
 tunity to do so in every chapter, and, as this book cannot 
 undertake to set up a system in opposition to that of Herr 
 Duehring, it is to be hoped that the reader will not over- 
 look the real significance of the views which I have set 
 forth. I have already had sufficient proof that my la- 
 bors have not been altogether in vain in this regard. 
 
 On the other hand the " system-shaping " Herr Dueh- 
 ring is by no means an exceptional phenomenon in Ger- 
 many these days. Nowadays in Germany systems 
 of cosmogony, of natural philosophy in particular, of 
 
PREFACES 25 
 
 politics, of economics, etc., are in the habit of shooting 
 up over night like mushrooms. The most insignificant 
 Doctor of Philosophy, nay, even the student, has no 
 further use for a complete " system." In the modern 
 state, it is predicated that every citizen is able to pass 
 judgment on all the questions upon which he is called 
 upon to vote; in political economy it is assumed that 
 every consumer is thoroughly acquainted with all com- 
 modities, which he has occasion to buy to maintain him- 
 self withal, and the same idea is also held as regards 
 knowledge. Freedom of knowledge demands that a per- 
 son write of that which he has not learned and pro- 
 claim this as the only sound scientific method. But Herr 
 Duehring is one of the most conspicuous types of those 
 absurd pseudo-scientists, who to-day occupy so conspicu- 
 ous a place in Germany and drown everything with their 
 noisy nonsense. Noisy nonsense in poetry, in philosophy, 
 in political economy, in writing history: noisy non- 
 sense in the professor's chair and tribune; noisy non- 
 sense too in the claims to superiority and intellectuality 
 above the vulgar noisy nonsense of other nations, noisy 
 nonsense the most characteristic and mightiest product 
 of German intellectual activity, cheap and bad, like other 
 German products, along with which, Iregret to say, they 
 were not exhibited at Philadelphia. 
 
 So, German socialism, particularly since Herr Dueh- 
 ring set the example, beats the drum, and produces here 
 and there one who prides himself upon a " science " of 
 which he knows nothing. It is this, a sort of child's 
 disease which marks the first conversion of the German 
 university man to social democracy and is inseparable 
 from him, but it will soon be thrust aside by the re- 
 markable sound sense of our working class. 
 
 It is not my fault that I am obliged to follow Herr 
 
26 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 Duehring into a realm in which I can at the very most 
 only claim to be a dilettante. On such occasions I have 
 for the most part limited myself to placing the plain 
 incontrovertible facts in contrast with the false or 
 crooked assertions of my opponent, as in relation to 
 jurisprudence and many instances with regard to natural 
 science. In other places he indulges in universal views 
 on the subject of natural science theories and therefore 
 on a field where the professional naturalist must range 
 out of his own particular specialty to neighboring re- 
 gions. Where he, according to Herr Virchow's confessions 
 is just as good a " half-knower " as the rest of us. For 
 slight deficiencies and unavoidable errors in the publi- 
 cation I hope that the same indulgence will be extended 
 to me as "has been shown the other side of 'the contro- 
 vcrsy. 
 
 Just as I was completing this preface I received the 
 publishers' notice of a new important book by Herr 
 Duehring. " New Foundations for rational Physics and 
 Chemistry." Although I am very well aware of my de- 
 ficiencies in physics and chemistry I still believe that I 
 know my Duehring well enough, without having read 
 the book, to venture to say that the laws ot physics and 
 chemistry there set forth are worthy of being placed 
 alongside of Herr Duehring's former discoveries and 
 the laws of economics, scheme of the universe, etc., ex- 
 amined in my writings and proved to be misunderstood 
 of commonplace, and that the rhigometer, an instru- 
 ment constructed by Herr Duehring for measuring tem- 
 perature will be found to serve not only as a measure 
 for high or low temperature but of the ignorance and 
 arrogance of Herr Duehring. London, li June, 18/8. 
 
II 
 
 It came to me as quite a surprise that a new edition 
 of this work was called for. The special" views which 
 it criticised are practically forgotten to-day. The work 
 itself has not only been placed before many thousands 
 of readers by its serial publication in " Vorwaerts " of 
 Leipsic in 1877 and 1878, but it has also been published 
 in large editions in its entirety. How then can there 
 be any further interest in what I have to say about Herr 
 Duehring ? 
 
 \ In the first place, I fancy, -that it is owing to the fact 
 that this book, as indeed, all my writings at that time, 
 was prohibited in Germany soon after the pijblication 
 of. the anti-Sociaiist laAvs. Whosoever was not fettered 
 by the inherited officialdom of the countries of the Holy 
 Alliance should have clearly seen the effect of this 
 measure — the double and treble sale of the prohibited 
 books, and the advertisement of the impotence of the 
 gentlemen in Berlin, who issued injunctions and could 
 not make them effective. Indeed the amiability of the 
 Government was the cause of the publication of several 
 new editions of my shorter writings, as I am. able to 
 affirm. I have no time for a proper revision of the text 
 and so allow it to go to press, just as it is. 
 
 But there is still an additional circumstance. The 
 " system " of Herr Duehring here criticised spreads over 
 a very extensive theoretical ground and I was compelled 
 to pursue him all over it and to place my ideas in an- 
 tagonism to his. Negative criticism thereupon became 
 
 27 
 
28 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 positive; the polemic developed into a more or less con- 
 nected exposition of dialectic methods and the socialist 
 philosophy, of which Marx and myself are representa- 
 tive, and this in quite a number of places. These our 
 philosophic ideas have had an incubation period of about 
 twenty years since they were first given to the world in 
 Marx's " Misere de la Philosophic " and the Communist 
 Manifesto until they obtained a wider and wider in- 
 fluence through the publication of " Capital " and now 
 find recognition and support far beyond the limits of 
 Europe in all lands where a proletariat exists together 
 with progressive scientific thinkers. It seems that there 
 is also a public whose interests in this matter are suffi- 
 cient to induce them to purchase the polemic against 
 Duehring's opinions, in spite of the fact that it is now 
 without an object, and who evidently derive pleasure 
 from the positive development. 
 
 I must call attention to the fact, by the way, that the 
 views here set out were, for by far the most part, de- 
 veloped and established by Marx, and only to a very 
 slight degree by myself, so that it is understood that I 
 have not represented them without his knowledge. I 
 read the entire manuscript to him before sending it to 
 press and the tenth chapter of the section on Political 
 Economy was written by Marx and unfortunately had 
 to be somewhat abbreviated by me. 
 
 It was our wont to mutually assist each other in 
 special branches of work. 
 
 The present edition is with the exception of one chap- 
 ter an unchanged edition of the former. I had no time 
 ■for revision although there was much in the mode of 
 presentation which I wanted altered. But there is in- 
 cumbent upon me the duty of preparing for publication 
 the manuscripts which Marx left, and this is much more 
 
PREFACES 29 
 
 imoortant than anything else. Then my conscience re- 
 bels against making any changes. The book is contro- 
 versial and I have an idea that it is unfair to my an- 
 tagonist for me to alter anything when he cannot do 
 so. I could only claim the right to reply to Herr 
 Duehring's answer. But what Herr Duehring has writ- 
 ten with respect to my attack I have not read and shall 
 not do so, unless obliged. I am theoretically done with 
 him. Besides I must observe the rules of literary war- 
 fare all the more closely as a despicable wrong has since 
 been inflicted upon him by the University of Berlin. 
 It has been chastised for this, indeed. A university 
 which so/iegrades itself as to refuse permission to Herr 
 Duehring to teach under the known circumstances should 
 not be surprised if a Herr Schwenninger is forced upon 
 it under circumstances just as well known. 
 
 The one chapter in which I have permitted myself 
 any explanations is the Second of the Third Section 
 " Theory." Here where the sole concern is the presen- 
 tation of a most important part of the philosophy which 
 I represent, my antagonist cannot complain if I put my- 
 self to some trouble to speak popularly and to generalise. 
 This was undoubtedly a special occasion. I had made 
 a French translation of three chapters of the book (the 
 First of the Introduction and the First and Second of 
 the Third Section) into a separate pamphlet for my 
 friend Lafargue, and the French edition afterwards 
 served as a basis for one in Italian and one in Polish. 
 A German edition was provided under the title " The 
 Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science." 
 The latter has exhausted three editions in a few months 
 and has also made its appearance translated into Russian 
 and Danish. In all these publications only the chapter 
 in question was added to and it would have been pedantic 
 
30 LANDMARKS OF, SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISil 
 
 in me if I had confined myself to the actual wording of 
 the original in the new edition in spite of the later and 
 international form which it had assumed. ' 
 
 Where I wished to make changes had particular refer- 
 ence to twQ points. ' In the first pl^ce with regard to 
 primitive history, as far as known, to which Morgan 
 was the first to give us the key in 1877. In my book 
 " The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the 
 State," Zurich, 1884, I have since had an opportunity 
 of working up material more lately accessible which I 
 employed in this later work. In the second place, as. far 
 as that portion which is concerned with theoretical 
 science is concerned, the presentation of the subject is 
 very defective and a much more definite one could now be 
 given. If I did not allow myself the right of improving 
 it now, I should be in duty bound to pass criticism on 
 myself instead of the other. 
 
 Marx and I were probably the first to import the 
 well known dialectic of the German idealistic philosophy 
 into the materialistic view of nature and history. But 
 to a dialectical and at the same time materialistic view 
 of nature there pertains an acquaintance with mathemat- 
 ics and natural science. Marx was a sound mathema- 
 tician but the sciences we only knew in part, by fits and 
 starts, sporadically. After I retired from mercantile 
 pursuits and went to London and had time, I made as 
 far as possible a complete mathematical and scientific 
 " molting," as Liebig calls it, and spent the best part of 
 eight years on it. I was occupied with this molting 
 process when it chanced that I was called upon to busy 
 myself with Herr Duehring's so-called philosophy. If, 
 therefore, I often fail to find the correct technical ex- 
 pression, and am a little awkward in the field of natural 
 science it is onlv too natural. On the other hand the 
 
PREFACES 31 
 
 consciousness of insecurity which I have not yet got 
 over has made me cautious. Actual blunders respecting 
 facts up to the present known, and incorrect presenta- 
 tions of theories thus far recognised cannot be proved 
 against me. In this relation just one great mathema- 
 tician, who is laboring under a mistake, has complained 
 to Marx in a letter that I have made a mischievous at- 
 tack upon the honor of the square root of minus one. 
 As regards my review of mathematics and the natural 
 science it was necessary for me to reassure myself on 
 some special points — since I had no doubts about the 
 truth of the general proposition — that in nature the 
 same dialectic laws of progress fulfill themselves amid 
 all the apparent confusion of innumerable changes as 
 dominate the apparently accidental in nature; the same 
 laws whose threads traverse the progressive history 
 of human thought, and little by little come to the con- 
 sciousness of thinking men. These were first developed 
 by Hegel in a comprehensive fashion but in a mystical 
 form. Our efforts wer,e directed towards stripping 
 away this mystical form and making them evident in 
 their full simplicity and universal reality. It was self 
 evident that the old philosophies of nature — in spite of 
 all their actual value and fruitful suggestiveness — 
 could be of no value to us. There was an error in the 
 Hegelian form, as shown in this book, in that it recog- 
 nised no progression of nature in time, no " one after an- 
 other " (Nacheinander) but merely "one besides an- 
 other," (Nebeneinander). This was due on the one 
 hand to the Hegelian system itself which ascribed to 
 the Spirit (Geist) alone u progressive historical de- 
 velopment, but on the other hand, the general attitude 
 of the natural sciences was responsilile. So Hegel fell 
 far behind Kant in this respect for the latter had al- 
 
32 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ready by his nebular hypothesis proclaimed the origin 
 and, by his discovery of the stoppage of the rotation of 
 the earth through the tides, the destruction of the solar 
 system. And finally, I could not undertake to construct 
 the dialectical laws of nature but to discover them in it 
 and to develop them from it. 
 
 To do this entirely and in each separate division is a 
 colossal task. Not only is the ground to be covered al- 
 most immeasurable but on this entire ground natural 
 science is involved in such tremendous changes that even 
 those who have all their time to give can hardly" keep 
 up with it. Since the death of Marx however my mind 
 has been occupied by more pressing duties and so I had 
 to interrupt my work. -I must, for the moment, confine 
 myself to the hints in the work before uS and wait for a 
 later opportunity to correct and publish the results ob- 
 tained, probably together with the most important manu- 
 scripts on mathematics left behind by Marx. 
 
 But the advance ofHheoretical science makes my work 
 in all probability, in a great measure, or altogether, super- 
 fluous. Since the revolution which overturned theoret- 
 ical science the necessity of arranging the accumulation 
 of purely empirical discoveries has caused the opposing 
 empiricists to pay more and more attention to the dia- 
 lectical character -of the operations of nature. The old 
 stiff antagonisms, the sharp impassable frontier lines are 
 becoming more and more abolished. Since the last 
 " true " gases have been liquefied, since the proof that a 
 body can be put in a condition in which liquid and 
 gaseous forms cannot be differentiated, aggregate con- 
 ditions have to the last remnant lost their earlier absolute 
 character. With the statement of the kinetic theory of 
 gases that, in gases, the squares of the speeds with which 
 the separate gas molecules move are in inverse ratio 
 
PREFACES 33 
 
 to the molecular weights, under the same temperature, 
 heat takes its place directly in the series of such measur- 
 able forms of motion. Ten years ago the newly dis- 
 covered great fundamental law of motion was still un- 
 derstood as a mere law of the conservation of energy, 
 as a mere expression of the indestructibility and un- 
 creatibility of motion, and therefore merely on its quan- 
 titative side. That narrow negative expression has been 
 more and more subordinated to the transformation of 
 energy, in which the qualitative content of the process is 
 duly recognised and the last notion of an extramundane 
 Creator is destroyed. That the quantity of motion (of 
 energy, so called) is not changed when it is transformed 
 into kinetic energy (mechanical force, so called), into 
 electricity, heat, potential static energy need not now be 
 preached any longer as something new, it served as the 
 foundation, once attained, of many valuable investiga- 
 -tions of the process of transformation itself, of the great 
 fundamental process, in tJhe knowledge of which is 
 comprehended the knowledge of all nature. And since 
 biology has been treated in the light of the theory of 
 evolution it has aboli,shed one stiflf line of classification 
 after another in the realm of organic nature. The en- 
 tirely unclassified intermediate conditions increase in 
 number every day. Later investigations throw organ- 
 isms out of one class into another, and marks of distinc- 
 tion which have become articles of faith lose their in- 
 dividual reality. We have now mammals which lay 
 eggs and, if the news is established, birds also which 
 go on all fours. It was already observed, before the 
 time of Virchow, as a conclusion of the discovery of 
 the cell, that the identity of the individual creature is 
 lost, scientifically and dialectically speaking, in a federa- 
 tion of cells, so the idea of animal (and therefore human) 
 
34 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 individuality is still further complicated by the discovery 
 of the amoeba in the bodies of the higher animals con- 
 stituting the white blood corpuscles. And these are just 
 the things which were considered polar opposites, ir- 
 reconcilable and insoluble, the fixed boundaries and 
 differences of classification, which have given modern 
 theoretical science its limited and metaphysical character. 
 The knowledge that these distinctions and antagonisms 
 actually do occur in nature, but only relatively, and that 
 on the other hand that fixity and absoluteness are the 
 products of our own minds — this knowledge constitutes 
 the kernel of the dialectic view of nature. The view is 
 reached under the compulsion of the mass of scientific 
 facts, and one reaches it the more easily by bringing to 
 the dialectic character of these facts a consciousness of 
 the laws of dialectic thought. At all events, the scope 
 of science is now so great that it no longer escapes the 
 dialectic comprehension. But it will simplify the pro- 
 cess if it is remembered that the \results in which, these 
 discoveries are comprehended are ideas, that the art of 
 operating with ideas is not inborn, moreover, and is not 
 vouchsafed every day to the ordinary mind, but requires 
 actual thought, and this thought has a long history 
 crammed with experiences, neither more nor less than 
 the accumulated experiences of investigation into nature. 
 By these means, then, it learns how to appropriate the 
 results of fifteen hundred years development of philos- 
 ophy, it gets rid of any separate natural philosophy 
 which stands above or alongside of it and the limited 
 method of thought brought over from English empiri- 
 cism. 
 London, ssnd September, 1885. 
 
Ill 
 
 The following new edition is, with the exception of a 
 very few changes in form of expression, a reproduction 
 of the former. Only in one chapter, namely in the Xth. 
 qf the Second Section (that on Critical History) I 
 have allowed some important emendations, for the fol- 
 lowing reasons. As has been stated already in the pref- 
 ace to the second edition, this chapter is in all its es- 
 sentials, the work of Marx. . In its first form, which was 
 intended as an article in a review, I was compelled to 
 abbreviate the manuscript of Marx very much, par- 
 ticularly in those points in which the criticism of Herr 
 Duehring's propositions is subordinate to the particular 
 development of the history of economics. But these are 
 just the portions of the manuscript which constitute the 
 greatest and most important of, as regards its permanent 
 interest, part of the work. The places in which Marx 
 gives their appropriate place in the genesis of political 
 economy to such writers as Petty, North, Locke and 
 Hume, I consider myself obliged to give as literally and 
 completely as possible, and still more so, his explanation 
 of the " economic tableaux " by Quesnay, the insoluble 
 riddle of the sphinx to all economists. I have omitted 
 however that part which dealt solely with the writings 
 of Herr Duehring as far as the connection permitted. 
 For the rest, I am perfectly well satisfied with the ex- 
 tent to which the views represented in this work, have 
 made their way into the minds of the working class and 
 the scientists throughout the world since the publication 
 of the former edition. 
 
 F. Engels. 
 
 London, 23d May, 1894. 
 
 35 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 /. In General 
 
 Modern socialism is in its essence the product of the 
 existence on the one hand of the class antagonisms which 
 are dominant in modern society, between the property 
 possessors and those who have no property and between 
 the wage workers and the bourgeois ; and, on the other, 
 of the anarchy which is prevalent in modern produc- 
 tion. In its theoretical form however it appears as a ~ 
 development of the fundamental ideas of the great 
 French philosophers of the eighteenth century. Like 
 every new theory it was obliged to attach ilself to the 
 existing philosophy however deeply its roots were em- 
 bedded m the economic fact. 
 
 The great men in France who cleared the minds of 
 the people for the coming revolution were themselves 
 uncompromisingly revolutionary. They did . not recog- 
 nise outside authority of any kind whatsoever. Re- 
 ligicn, natural science, society, the state, all were sub- 
 jected to the most unsparing criticism, and everything 
 was compelled to justify its existence before the judg- 
 ment seat of reason or perish. Reason was established 
 as the one and universal measure. It was the time when, 
 as Hegel said, the world was turned upside down, first 
 in the sense that the human mind and the principles ar- 
 rived at by process of thought were claimed as the foun- 
 dations of all human actions and social relations, but 
 later also, in the wider sense, that the reality which con- 
 
 36 
 
INTRODUCXrON 37 
 
 tradicted these theories had indeed to be turned upside 
 down. All forms of society and the state existent here- 
 tofore, all survivals of old notions, were thrown into the 
 lumber room as unreasonable. Up to that time the 
 world had only allowed itself to be led by prejudice. 
 All that had been done deserved merely pity and con-' 
 tempt. Now for the first time day broke: from now 
 on, superstition, injustice, tyranny and privilege should 
 be replaced by eternal truth, eternal justice, equality 
 founded on natural rights and the inalienable rights of 
 man.- 
 
 We now know that the rule of reason was nothing 
 more than the rule of the bourgeoisie idealised, that 
 eternal right found its realisation in bourgeois justice, 
 that equality was materialised in bourgeois equality be- 
 fore the law, that when the rights of man were pro- 
 claimed bourgeois rights of property were proclaimed at 
 one and the same time, and that the state of reason, Rous- 
 seau's Social Contract, could only come into existence as 
 the bourgeois democratic republic. To such a slight 
 extent could the great thinkers of the eighteenth century, 
 just as their predecessors, prevail over the limits which" 
 their own epoch had placed upon them. 
 
 But besides the antagonism between feudal baron and 
 bourgeois there existed the general antagonism between 
 the, robbers and the robbed, between the rich idlers and 
 the toiling poor. It was just this antagonism which 
 made it possible for the leaders of the bourgeoisie to 
 pose as the representatives not merely of a special class 
 but of the whole of suffering humanity. Furthermore 
 the bourgeoisie was saddled with an antithesis right from 
 the start. Capitalists cannot exist without laborers, and, 
 in proportion, as the members of the gilds in the Middle 
 Ages developed into the modern bourgeois, the journey- 
 
38 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 men of the gilds and the day laborers, on their part, de- 
 veloped into the proletariat. And though the bourgeois, 
 as a general rule, might claim to represent also the in- 
 terests of the different working classes of the period, 
 still, independent movements of the latter classes broke 
 out in connection with each great movement on the part 
 of the bourgeoisie; such working classes being the more 
 or less developed predecessors of the modern proletariat. 
 Thus there came into being at the time of the German 
 Reformation and the Peasant War, the party of Thomas 
 Munzer, in the great English Revolution the Levellers, 
 and in thcj great French Revolution, Baboeuf. 
 
 Besides these revolutionary demonstrations of a class 
 still undeveloped, occurred certain theoretical manifesta- 
 tions of a corresponding nature. Thus in the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, Utopian pictures of an ideal 
 social condition, in the eighteenth century, absolutely 
 communistic theories (Morelly and Mably). The de- 
 mand for equality was confined no longer to politicg.1 
 rights, it had to be extended to the social condition of 
 individuals; the demand was made for the abolition not 
 merely of class privileges but of class distinctions also. 
 An ascetic communism patterned on that of Sparta was 
 the first form which the new teachings assumed. Then 
 came the three great Utopians — Saint Simon, in whose 
 eyes bourgeois aims possessed a certain merit as well as 
 those of the proletariat : then Fourier and Owen, who, in 
 the land of the most highly developed capitalistic pro- 
 duction, and under the influence of the antagonisms 
 which arise therefrom, developed in direct relation to 
 French materialism their proposals which tended to the 
 abolition of class distinctions. 
 
 One common feature pertaining to all the three is the 
 fact that they did not appear as the representatives of 
 
INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 the interests of the proletariat which had been in the 
 meantime developed through the historical process. Like 
 the philosophers, their ambition is not to free a par- 
 ticular class but the whole world. Like them they wish 
 to introduce the government of reason and eternal justice. 
 But there is a world of difference between their govern- 
 ment and that of the philosophers. According to the 
 philosophers, the bourgeois world as it exists is unreason- 
 able and jmjust an<f is destined- for the rubbish heap, 
 just as feudalism and all other earlier forms of society. 
 The reason that true justice and reason have not domi- 
 nated the world is because up to the present man has not 
 properly comprehended them. That a man of genius 
 has appeared and that the truth concerning these things 
 should have now been made clear are not results arising 
 from a combination of historical progress and necessity, 
 but a mere piece of luck. He might just as well have 
 been born five hundred years earlier and saved mankind 
 the mistakes, conflicts and sorrows of five hundred 
 years. 
 
 This is actually the idea of all English and French 
 socialists and of the earlier German socialists, Weitling 
 included. According to this view, socialism is the ex- 
 pression of absolute truth, reason, and justice, and only 
 has to be perceived in order to vanquish the world by 
 reason of its truth. Hence, absolute truth, reason, and 
 justice vary according to each founder of a school, and 
 therefore with each one, the variety of absolute truth, 
 reason and justice is dependent, in turn, upon the sub- 
 jective temperament of that founder, his conditions of 
 life, the extent of his knowledge and mental discipline, 
 so that in this conflict of absolute truths there is no 
 possible solution save that they rub each other smooth 
 by mutual contact. Hence nothing could result from 
 
40 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 it except a sort of eclectic, average socialism, which is, as 
 a matter of fact, up to the present, the prevailing no- 
 tion in the minds of the great majority of socialist agi- 
 tators in France and England — a mixture admitting of 
 manifold shades, of a few notable critical utterances, 
 economic teachings and pictures of a future state of so- 
 ciety by leaders of different sects, a mixture which flows 
 all the easier in proportion as the sharp precise corners 
 are rubbed off the separate notions in the stream of de- 
 bates, just as pebbles become round in a brook. 
 
 In order that a science can be made out of socialism 
 it is first necessary that it be placed on a sound basis. 
 
 Meanwhile, close to and just after the French phi- 
 losophy of the eighteenth century, the new German phi- 
 losophy arose and culminated in Hegel. Its greatest 
 service was the restoration of the dialectic as the highest 
 form of thought. The old Greek philosophers were all 
 natural dialecticians, and the most universal intellect 
 among them, Aristotle, was already the discoverer of the 
 essential forms. of dialectic thought. On the other hand, 
 subsequent philosophy although in it there were brilliant 
 exponents of the dialectic (e. g. Descartes and Spinoza), 
 was more and more involved in the socalled metaphysical 
 mode of thought, chiefly owing to English influence 
 which completely mastered the French philosophers, at 
 least of the eighteenth century. Outside of the strict 
 frontiers of philosophy, masterpieces of the dialectic 
 might be found occasionally of which I can only recall 
 " Rameau's Nephew " by Diderot, and the treatise upon 
 the origin of human inequality by Rousseau. 
 
 We now give briefly the essential features of the two 
 modes of thought: we will return to them more fully 
 later. 
 
 If we examine nature, the history of man or our own 
 
INTRODUCTION 4I 
 
 intellectual activities, we have presented to us an endless 
 coil of interrelations and changes in which nothing is 
 constant whatever be its nature, time or position, but 
 every thing is in motion, suffers change, and passes away. 
 This original, naive and very nearly correct philosophy 
 of the world is -that of the old Greek philosophers and 
 was first put in a very clear form by Heraclitus. Every- 
 thing is and yet is not, since everything is in a state of 
 flux, is comprehended as undergoing constant modifica- 
 tion, as eternally existing and disappearing. But this 
 philosophy, correct as it is as regards phenomena in 
 general, viewed as a picture, is insufficient to explain the 
 individual phenomena of which the picture, of the uni- 
 verse is composed, and as long as we cannot do that we 
 are not clear about the general picture. In order to 
 study these individual phenomena we are obliged to 
 take them out of their natural or social connection, and 
 examine each of them by itself according to its own form 
 and its particular origin and development. This is the 
 task of natural science and historical investigation, 
 branches of discovery to which the Greeks of classical 
 times assigned a subordinate place for very good reasons, 
 since they, first of all, had to collect the material. The 
 beginning of an exact observation of nature was made 
 first by the Greeks of the Alexandrine period, and was 
 later developed further by the Arabs in the Middle Ages. 
 True natural science hence dates from the second half 
 of the fifteenth century, and from then on has advanced 
 at a constantly growing rate. The dissection of nature 
 into its separate parts; the separation of different natural 
 events and natural conditions into certain classes, the 
 examination of- the interiors of organic bodies with re- 
 spect to their manifold anatomical forms, furnished the 
 fundamental reasons for the progress in a knowledge of 
 
42 LANDMARKS OF SCiENTIFIC SOCIALISM' 
 
 nature which the last four hundred years have brought 
 in their train. But it has caused us occasionally to drop 
 into the habit of regarding natural phenomena and events 
 as entities, apart from the great' universal interrelations, 
 and therefore not as moving but quiescent, not as change- 
 able in their essence but fixed and constant, not in their 
 life but in their death. And hence, just as happened 
 with Bacon and Locke, this point of view has been car- 
 ried over from science into philosophy, and has con- 
 stituted the specially narrow view of the last century, 
 the metaphysical mode of thought. 
 
 For the metaphysician, things and their pictures in 
 the minds, concepts, are separate entities, one following 
 the other without any regard to each other, stable, rigid, 
 eternally fixed objects of investigation. The metaphy- 
 sician thinks in antitheses. His conversation is " Yea, 
 yea ; Nay, nay " and whatsoever is more than these 
 cometh of evil. For him a thing exists or it does not 
 exist, a thing can never be itself and something else at 
 the same time; positive and negative are mutually ex- 
 clusive, cause and effect stand in stiff antagonism to 
 each other. This method of thought seems at the first 
 glance to be quite plausible because it is in accordance 
 with sound common sense. But sound common sense, 
 respectable fellow though he may be in his own home 
 surrounded by his four walls, meets with strange ad- 
 ventures when he betakes himself into the wide world 
 of investigation ; and the metaphysical way of looking 
 at things, sound and useful as it is, under given con- 
 ditions, runs sooner or^later into a stone wall, beyond 
 which it is one-sided, stupid and abstract, and loses it- 
 self in insoluble contradictions. Because it omits to 
 notice the interrelations of the individual phenomena, 
 their existence, their coming and their going, their static 
 
INTRODUCTION 43 
 
 and mobile conditions, and so to speak (Joes not see the 
 forest for trees. We know for example, with sufficient 
 certainty for every day affairs, whether an animal is alive 
 or dead, but, on closer examination, we find that this is 
 sometimes no easy matter to decide, as jurists know 
 very well and have gone indeed to great pains to dis- 
 cover a rational border line beyond which -the killing of 
 a child in the womb of its mother is murder. It is just 
 as impossible too to fix the precise moment of death, for 
 physiology shows that death is not a single and sudden 
 event but a very slow process. Just so is every or- 
 ganic being at the same moment itself and not itself. 
 Every moment it takes up matter coming to it from the 
 outside and throws off other matter, every moment its 
 body-cells die and are recreated. Indeed after a longer 
 of shorter period the whole material of the body is 
 renewed through the taking up of other particles of • 
 matter so that each organic being is at the same time 
 itself and something else. We find also if we look at 
 the matter more closely that the two poles of an antith- 
 esis, positive and negative, are just as inseparable as 
 they are antagonistic, and that they, in spite of all their 
 fixed antagonisms permeate each other, also that the 
 cause and effect are concepts which can only realise 
 themselves in relation' to a particular case. However 
 when we come to examine the separate case in its gen- 
 eral relation to the world at large they come together 
 and dissolve themselves in face of the working out of 
 the universal problem, for, here, cause and effect ex- 
 change places, what was at one time and place effect 
 becoming cause and vice versa. 
 
 All these phenomena and thought-concepts do not fit 
 into the frame of metaphysical philosophy. According 
 to the dialectic method of thinking which regards things 
 
44 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 and their concepts in relation to their connection with 
 each other, their concatenation, their coming into being 
 and passing away, phenomena, Hke the preceding, are so 
 many confirmations of its own philosophy. Nature is 
 the proof of the dialectic, and we must give to modern 
 science the credit of having furnished an extraordinary 
 wealth and daily increasing store of material towards 
 this proof, and thereby showing in the last instance 
 things proceed dialectically and not in accordance with 
 metaphysical notions. But as the scientists who have 
 learned to think dialectically may be still easily counted, 
 the chaos arising from the confusion between actual re- 
 sults and an antiquated mode of thought is thus ex- 
 plained, and this confusion is to-day dominant in 
 theoretical science, and drives teachers and pupils, writ- 
 ers and readers to despair. _ 
 
 A correct notion of the universe, of the human race, 
 as well as of the reflection of this progress in the human 
 mind can only be had by means of the dialectic method, 
 together with a steady observation of the change and 
 interchange which goes on in the universe, the coming 
 into existence and passing away, progressive and retro- 
 gressive modification. 
 
 And the later German philosophy has proceeded from 
 this standpoint. Kant began his career in this way by 
 abolishing Newton's conception of a stable solar sys- 
 tem which persisted after receiving its first impulse, in 
 favor of a historical process, to wit, the origin of the 
 sun and all the planets from a rotating mass of nebulae. 
 From this concept he drew the conclusion that, granted 
 this origin, the future dissolution of the solar system 
 is inevitable. His theory was mathematically proved 
 by Laplace half a century later, and half a century later 
 still the spectroscope discovered the existence of such 
 
INTRODUCTION 45 
 
 glowing masses of gas in space in different stages of 
 condensation. 
 
 This later German philosophy found its conclusion in 
 the philosophy of Hegel where for the first time, and 
 this is his greatest service, the entire natural, historical 
 and spiritual universe was regarded as a process, that is, 
 as in constant progress, change, transformation and de- 
 velopment, and the attempt was made to show the more 
 subtle relations of this process and development. From 
 this historical point of view the history of mankind no 
 longer appeared as a barren confusion of mindless forces, 
 all alike subject to rejection before the judgment seat 
 of the most recently ripened philosophy, and which, at 
 the very best, man puts out of his mind as soon as pos- 
 sible, but as the development-process of humanity itself, 
 to follow the process of which, little by little, through 
 all its ramifications, and to establish the essential laws 
 of which, in spite of all apparent accidents, is now the 
 task of philosophic thought. 
 
 It is immaterial at this place that Hegel did not solve 
 this problem^ His epoch-making service was to have 
 proposed it. It is a problem, moreover, which no indi- 
 vidual can solve. Though Hegel, next to Saint Simon, 
 was the most universal intellect of his time he was still 
 limited, in the first place, through the necessarily narrow 
 grasp of his own knowledge and in addition through the 
 limitations of the contemporary conditions of knowl- 
 edge. There was a third reason, too. Hegel was an 
 idealist, that is he regarded thought not as a mere ab- 
 stract representation of real phenomena, but, on the con- 
 trary, phenomena and their development appeared to him 
 as the representations of the Idea which existed before 
 the world. The result was an inversion of everything, 
 the actual interrelations of the universe were turned 
 
46 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 completely upside down, and though of these interrela- 
 tions, many single ones were set out justly and correctly 
 by Hegel, much of the detail is patched, labored, made 
 up, in short, incorrect. The Hegelian system was, to 
 speak briefly, a colossal miscarriage, and the last of its 
 kind. It rested on an incurable contradiction ; on the 
 other hand, it actually proclaimed the historical concep- 
 tion according to which human history is a process of 
 development, which, in its very nature, cannot find its 
 intellectual conclusion in the discovery of a so-called 
 absolute truth, on the other hand it declared itself to be 
 the central idea of just such an absolute truth. An all 
 embracing and determined knowledge of nature and his- 
 tory is in absolute contradiction with the foundations of 
 dialectic thought, but it is not denied, on the contrary, it 
 is strongly affirmed, that the systematic knowledge of 
 the entire external world may from age to age make 
 giant strides. 
 
 The total perversion of modern German idealism of 
 necessity drove men to materialism, but not, and this is 
 well worth noting, to the mere metaphysical mechanical 
 materialism of the eighteenth century. In contradiction 
 to the naively simple revolutionary pushing on one side of 
 all parlier history, modern materialism sees in history the 
 process of the development of society, to discover the laws 
 of whose development is its task. In contradistinction 
 to the conception of nature which prevailed among the 
 French philosophers, as well as with Hegel, as something 
 moving in a narrow circle with an eternal and unchange- 
 able substantial form, as Newton conceived it, and with 
 invariable species of organic beings, as Linnaeus thought, 
 materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of nat- 
 ural science, according to which nature has also a his- 
 tory in time. For the , forms of the worlds, like the 
 
INTRODUCTION 47 
 
 species of organisms by which they are inhabited under 
 suitable conditions, come into being and pass away, and 
 the cycles of their progress, in so far as it is permissible 
 to use the term, take on eternally more magnificent di- 
 mensions. In either case it is entirely dialectic and no 
 longer forces a static philosophy upon the other sciences. 
 As soon as the demand is made upon each separate 
 branch of science that it make clear its relation to things 
 in general, and science as a whole, the individual science 
 thereupon becomes superfluous. Of all philosophy up 
 to the present time the only peculiar property which 
 remains as its characteristic is the study of thought and 
 the formal laws of thought — logic and the dialectic. 
 All else belongs to the positive sciences of nature and 
 history. 
 
 While the revolution in natural science was only able 
 to be completely carried out in proportion as investiga- 
 tion furnished the necessary positive material, there were 
 known a multitude of earlier historical facts which gave 
 a distinct bias to the philosophy of history. In 1831 in 
 Lyons the first purely working class revolt occurred. 
 The first national working class movement, that of the 
 English, Chartists, reached its height between 1838 and 
 1842. The class war between the proletariat and the 
 bourgeoisie proceeded historically in the most advanced 
 European countries just in proportion as the newly de- 
 veloped greater industry has progressed, on the one 
 hand, and the political power of the bourgeoisie on the 
 other. The teachings of the bourgeois economists with 
 respect to the identity of the interests of capital and 
 labor and with respect to the universal peace and well 
 being which would follow as a matter of course from 
 the adoption of free trade were more and more contra- 
 dicted by facts. All these things could be as little ig- 
 
48 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 nored as the French and EngHsh socialism which was 
 their theoretical though very insufficient expression. 
 But the old idealistic philosophy of history which was 
 as yet by no means laid aside knew nothing of class 
 wars dependent upon material interests, and nothing of 
 material interests, specially. Production, like all eco- 
 nomic phenomena only occupied a subordinate position 
 as a secondary element of the histdry of civilisation." 
 The new facts, moreover rendered necessary a new in- 
 vestigation of all preceding history and then it became 
 evident that all history up to then had been a history 
 of class struggles and that these mutually conflicting 
 classes are the results of a given method of production 
 and distribution at a given period, in a word, of the 
 economic conditions of that epoch. Hence, that the 
 economic structure of society at a given time furnishes 
 the real foundations upon which the entire superstructure 
 of political and juristic institutions as well as the re- 
 ligious, philosophical and other abstract notions of a 
 given period are to be explained in the last instance. 
 Idealism was thereupon driven from its last refuge, the 
 philosophy of history; a materialistic philosophy of his- 
 tory was set up, and the path was discovered by which 
 the consciousness of man could be shown as springing 
 from his existence rather than his existence from his 
 consciousness. 
 
 But the socialism which had existed so far was just 
 as incompatible with the materialistic conception of his- 
 tory as was the naturalistic French materialism with the 
 dialectic and the modern discoveries in natural science. 
 The then existing socialism criticised the prevailing 
 capitalistic methods of production and their results but 
 it could not explain them and thus could not match itself 
 against them, it could only brush them on one side as 
 
INTRODUCTION 49 
 
 being bad. But it was necessary to show, on the one 
 hand, the capitalistic methods of production in their his- 
 torical connection, and their necessity at a given his- 
 torical epoch and therefore the necessity of their ulti- 
 mate disappearance. On the other hand their inner 
 character had to be explained and this was all the more 
 concealed for criticism had up to then been chiefly en- 
 gaged in pointing out the evil results flowing from them 
 rather than in destroying the thing itself. This was 
 made clear by the discovery of surplus value. 
 
 It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labor 
 is the basis of the capitalistic mode of production 
 and the robbery of the worker is carried out by its 
 means; that the capitalist, although he buys the labor- 
 force of the worker at the full value which it possesses 
 in the market as a commodity, yet derives more from it 
 than he has paid for it, and that in the last instance this 
 surplus creates the total amount of value from which 
 the capital steadily increasing in the hands of the capi- 
 talistic class is amassed. The phenomenon not only of 
 capitalistic production but of the creation of capital has 
 thus been explained. 
 
 For these two great discoveries, the materialistic con- 
 ception of history and the disclosure of the mystery of 
 capitalistic production we must thank Marx. Granted 
 these, socialism became a science, which thereupon had 
 to busy itself in the working out of these ideas in their 
 individual aspects and connections. 
 
 Thus matters stood in the realm of theoretical social- 
 ism and the dead philosophy (of metaphysics Ed.) when 
 Herr Eugene Duehring, with no slight impressement 
 sprang up before the public and announced that he had 
 accomplished a complete revolution in political economy 
 and socialism. 
 
 Let us now see what Herr Duehring promises and — 
 how he keeps his promia 
 
//. What Herr Duehring Has to Say 
 
 Up to now, the notable writings of Herr Duehring 
 are his " Course of Philosophy," his " Course of Polit- 
 ical and Social Science " and his " Critical History of 
 Political Economy and Socialism." The first work is the 
 one which particularly claims our attention. 
 
 Right on the first page Herr Duehring announces 
 himself as " one who claims to represent this power (of 
 philosophy) at the present tirtie and its unfolding in the 
 undiscoverable future." He discovers himself,- there- 
 fore, as the one true philosopher for the present and 
 the hidden future. Whoso differs from him differs 
 from truth. Many people even before Herr Duehring, 
 have thought this about themselves or something like 
 it, but, with the exception of Richard Wagner, he is 
 the first who has allowed himself to say it right out. 
 And, as a matter of fact, the truth, as it is handled by 
 him is " a final truth of the last instance." Herr Duehr- 
 ing's philosophy is " the natural system, or the philoso- 
 phy of reality. . . . Reality is so understood as to 
 exclude every sudden impulse towards an unreal and 
 subjectively limited comprehension of the universe." 
 The philosophy is therefore so shaped as to exclude 
 Herr Duehring himself from the somewhat obvious 
 limitations of his own personal, subjective narrowness. 
 It is quite necessary to explain how this miracle is 
 worked, if he is in a position to lay down unquestionable 
 
 50 
 
INTRODUCTION 5I 
 
 truths of the last instance, though, for our part, we 
 cannot discover any particular merit in them. This 
 '"' natural system of valuable knowledge " has " with 
 great profundity established the foundation forms of ex- 
 istence." Out of his, real critical attitude proceed the 
 elements of a real critical philosophy, based on the reali- 
 ties of nature and life, which does not allow of any 
 merely imaginary horizon but in its mighty revolution- 
 ary progress opens up the earth and heaven of, external 
 and inner nature ; it " is a " new method of thought " 
 and its results are " from the bottom up, peculiar re- 
 sults and philosophies . . . system-shaping ideas 
 . . . fixed truths." We have in it before us " a work 
 which must seek its force in the concentrated initiative," 
 whatever that may mean ; an " investigation reaching 
 to the roots ... a rooted science . . . a se- 
 verely scientific conception of things and men . . . 
 a comprehensive thorough effort of the mind ... a 
 creative sketch of suppositions and conclusions from 
 overmastering ideas . . . the absolute funda- 
 mental." In the realm of political economy he gives 
 us not only " historical and systematic comprehensive 
 efforts " of which the historical are moreover distin- 
 guished by " my presentation of history in the grand 
 style " and those in political economy have produced 
 " creative movements," but closes with a special com- 
 pletely elaborated scientific scheme for a future society 
 which is " the actual fruit of a clear and basic theory," 
 and is therefore just as free from the possibility of error 
 and as individual as Duehring's philosophy ... for 
 " only in that socialistic structure which I have disclosed 
 in my " Course of Political and Social Science " can a 
 true ownership arise in place of the present apparent 
 
52. LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 private property which rests on force such an owner- 
 ship as must be recognised in the future." 
 
 These flowers of rhetoric from the praises of Herr 
 Duehring by Herr Duehring might be increased tenfold 
 with ease. They must cause a doubt to arise in the 
 mind of the reader whether he is reading the words 
 of a philosopher or of a — but we must ask him to 
 withhold his judgment until he shall have learnt the 
 aforesaid grasp of the root of things by a closer ac- 
 quaintance. We only quote the foregoing flowery re- 
 marks to show that we have to do with no ordinary 
 philosopher and socialist who simply speaks what he 
 thinks and leaves the future to decide with respect to 
 their value, but with an extraordinary personality like 
 the Pope whose individual teachings must be received 
 if the damnable sin of heresy is to be avoided. We 
 have not by any means to deal with the kind of work 
 which abounds in all the socialist writings, and the later 
 German ones, in particular, works in which people of 
 varying calibre seek to explain in the most naive fashion 
 their notions of things in general and for an answer 
 to whom there is more or less material available. But 
 whatever may be the Uterary or scientific deficiencies 
 of these works their goodwill towards socialism is al- 
 ways manifest. On the other hand, Herr Duehring 
 presents us with statements which he declares to be final 
 truths of the last instance, exclusive truths, according 
 to which any other opinion is absolutely false. Thus 
 he owns the only scientific methods of investigation, and 
 all others are unscientific in comparison. Either he is 
 right and we are face to face with the greatest genius 
 of our time, the first superhuman, because infallible, 
 man; or he is wrong, and then, since our judgment may 
 always be at fault, benevolent regard for his possible 
 
INTRODUCTION 53 
 
 good intentions would be the deadliest insult to Herr 
 Duehring. 
 
 When one is in possession of final truths of the last 
 instance and the only absolutely scientific knowledge one 
 must have a certain contempt for the rest of erring and 
 unscientific humanity. We cannot therefore be surprised 
 that Herr Duehring employs very abusive terms with 
 regard to his predecessors, and that only a few excep- 
 tional people, recognised by him as great men, find 
 favor in face of his comprehension of fundamental truths. 
 
 (Then follows a list of the epithets applied by Dileh- 
 ring to philosophers, naturalists, Darwin, in particular, 
 and to the socialist writers. This list has been omitted 
 as it contributes nothing of value to the general discus- 
 sion and is only useful for the particular controversial 
 matter in hand. Ed.) 
 
 And so on — and this is only a hastily gathered bou- 
 quet of flowers from Herr Duehring's rose garden. It 
 will be understood that if these amiable insults which 
 should be forbidden Herr Duehring on any grounds of 
 politeness, are found somewhat disreputable and unpleas- 
 ant, they are, still, final truths of the last instance. Even 
 now we shall guard against any doubt of his profundity 
 because we might otherwise be forbidden to discover the 
 particular category of idiots to which we belong. We 
 have but considered it our duty on the one hand to give 
 what Herr Duehring calls " The quintessence of a modest 
 mode of expression," and on the other hand, to 
 show that in Herr Duehring's eyes the objectionableness 
 of his predecessors is no less firmly established than his 
 own infallibility. Accordingly if all this is actually true 
 we bow in reverence humbly before the mighty genius 
 of modem times. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Apriorism 
 
 Philosophy is, according to Herr Duehring, the de- 
 velopment of the highest forms of consciousness of the 
 world and life, and embraces, in a wider sense, the prin- 
 ciples of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series 
 of perceptions, or motives or a group of forms of life 
 becomes a matter of consideration in the human mind 
 the principles which underly these forms, of necessity, 
 become an object of philosophy. These principles are 
 single, or, up to the present, have been considered as 
 single ingredients out of which are composed the com- 
 plexities of knowledge and volition. Like the chemical 
 composition of material bodies, the entire uniyerse may 
 be also resolved into fundamental forms and elements. 
 These elementary constituents and principles serve, when 
 once discovered, not only for the known tangible world 
 but for that also, which is unknown and inaccessible. 
 Philosophical principles therefore constitute the last com- 
 plement required by the sciences in order that they may 
 become a uniform system by means of which nature and 
 human life are explained. In addition to the examina- 
 tion of the fundamental forms of all existence, philoso- 
 phy has only two particular objects of investigation, 
 Nature and Humanity. Hence our material may be clas- 
 sified into three main groups, — a general schenje of the 
 universe, the teaching of the principles of nature and 
 finally the principles which regulate Humanity. This 
 
 54 
 
PHILOSOPHY 55 
 
 arrangement at the same time comprises an inner logical 
 order, for the formal principles which are true for all 
 existence take precedence, and the concrete realms in 
 which these principles display themselves follow in the 
 gradation of their successive arrangements. So far, this 
 is Herr Duehring's conception of things given almost 
 in his very words. 
 
 He is therefore engaged with principles, formal con- 
 ceptions, which are subjective and not derived from the 
 knowledge of external phenomena, but which are applied 
 to Nature and Humanity, as the principles according to 
 which Nature and Humanity must regulate themselves. 
 But how are these subjective principles derived? From 
 thought itself ? No, for Herr Duehring himself says : 
 the purely ideal realm is limited to logical arrangements 
 and mathematical conceptions (which latter as we shall 
 later see is false). Logical arrangements can only be 
 referred to forms of thought, but we are engaged here 
 only with forms of existence, the external world, and 
 these forms can never be created by thought nor derived 
 from it but only from the external world. Hereupon 
 the entire matter undergoes a change. We see that 
 principles are not the starting point of investigation but 
 the conclusion of it, they are not to be applied to nature 
 and history but are derived from them. Nature and 
 Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles 
 are, on the other hand, only correct so far as they corre- 
 spond with nature and history. That is just the ma- 
 terialistic conception of the matter, and the opposite, that 
 of Herr Duehring is the idealistic conception, it turns 
 things upside down and constructs a real world out of 
 the world of thought, arrangements, plans and categories 
 existing from everlasting before the world, just like 
 Hegelianism. 
 
56 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ' As a matter of fact, we prefer Hegel's " Encyclope- 
 dia," with all its fever phantoms, to the " final truths 
 of the last instance " of Herr Duehring. In the first 
 place, according to Herr Duehring we have the general 
 scheme of the universe which by Hegel is called " logic." 
 Then according to both of them we have the application 
 of this scheme to nature by means of the logical catego- 
 ries, the philosophy of nature, and finally their ajDplica- 
 tion to Humanity, by what Hegel calls " the Philosophy 
 of the Spirit." " The inner logical arrangement " of 
 Duehring's scheme brings us therefore logically back to 
 Hegel's " Encyclopedia " from which it is taken with a 
 fidelity which would move that Wandering Jew of the 
 Hegelian school. Professor Michelet of Berlin, to tears. 
 
 Such a result follows if one takes it for granted that 
 " consciousness," " thought," is something which has 
 existed from the beginning in contradistinction to na- 
 ture. It would then be of the greatest importance to 
 bring consciousness and Nature, thought and existence, 
 into harmony, to harmonise the laws of thought and the 
 laws of Nature. But one enquires further what are 
 thought and consciousness and whence do they origi- 
 nate. It is consequently discovered that they are prod- 
 ucts of the brain of man, and that Humanity is itself a 
 product of nature which has developed in and along 
 with its environment ; wherefore it becomes self-apparent 
 that the products of the brain of man being" themselves, 
 in the last instance, natural products, do not contradict 
 all the rest of Nature but correspond with it. 
 
 But Herr Duehring cannot allow so simple a treatment 
 of the subject. He thinks not only in the name of Hu- 
 manity which would be quite a large affair, but in the 
 name of the conscious and thinking beings of the whole 
 universe. Indeed, it would be " a degradation of the 
 
PHILOSOPHY 57 
 
 / 
 
 foundation concepts of knowledge and consciousness if 
 one should wish to exclude or even to throw suspicion 
 upon their sovereign value and undoubted claims to 
 truth by means of the epithet ' human.' " In order that 
 there may be no suspicion that upon some heavenly body 
 or other twice two may make five, Herr Duehring does 
 not venture to call thought a human attribute, and there- 
 fore he is obliged to separate it from the only true foun- 
 dation on which it rests, as far as we are concerned, 
 namely, from man and nature, and thereby falls, without 
 any possibility of getting out, into an " ideology " which 
 causes him to play baby to Hegel„, It is self-evident 
 that one cannot build materialistic doctrines on founda^- 
 tions so ideological. We shall see later that Herr 
 Duehring is compelled to push nature to the front as 
 a conscious agent and, therefore, i as that, which people 
 in plain English call God. 
 
 Indeed, our philosopher had othtr motives in shifting 
 the foundation of reality from the material world to 
 that of thought. The knowledge of this general scheme 
 of the universe, of these formal principles of being is 
 jiist the foundation of Herr Duehring's philosophy. If 
 we derive the scheme of the universe not from our own 
 brain, but merely by .means of our own brain, from the 
 material world, we need no philosophy, but simply 
 knowledge of the world and what occurs in it, and the 
 results of this knowledge likewise do not constitute a 
 philosophy, but positive science. In such a case, how- 
 ever, Herr Duehring's entire book would have been 
 love's labor lost. 
 
 Further, if no philosophy, as such, is longer required 
 there is no longer the necessity of any philosophy of 
 nature even. The view that all the phenomena of nature 
 stand in systematic mutual relations compels science to 
 
58 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 prove this systematic interconnection in all respects, in 
 single cases as ' well as in the entirety. But an appro- 
 priate creative, scientific representation of this mutual 
 connection in such a way as to show the composition 
 of an exact thought-picture of the system of the universe 
 in ^ which we live remains not only for us but for all 
 time an impossibility. Should such a final conclusive 
 system of the interconnection of the various activities of 
 the universe, physical, as well as intellectual and his- 
 torical, ever be brought to completion at any point of 
 time in the history of the human race, human knowledge 
 would forthwith come to an end and future historical 
 progress would be cut off from the very moment in 
 which society was directed in accordance with the sys- 
 tem, which would be an absurdity, mere nonsense. 
 
 Man is therefore confronted by a contradiction, on the 
 one hand he is obliged to study the interconnections of 
 the world-system exhaustively, and, on the other hand, 
 he is unable to fully accomplish the task either as re- 
 gards himself or as regards the system of nature. This 
 contradiction, however, does not consist solely in the 
 nature of the two factors World and Man ; it is the 
 main lever also of universal intellectual progress and is 
 solved every day and for ever in an endless progressive 
 development of humanity, just as mathematical prob- 
 lems find their solution in an endless progression of a 
 recurring decimal. As a matter of fact also every con- 
 cept of the universe is subject to objective limitations 
 owing to the conditions of historical knowledge, and 
 subjectively in addition owing to the physical and mental 
 make up of the author of the concept. But Herr Dueh- 
 ring exhibits a mdde of thought which is confined in its 
 application to a limited and subjective idea of the uni- 
 verse. We saw earlier that he was omnipresent, in all 
 
PHILOSOPHY 59 
 
 possible forms of the universe, now we see that he is 
 omniscient. He has solved the final problems of science 
 and has nailed up tight all future knowledge. 
 
 Herr Duehring considers that he can, as with the fun- 
 damental forms of existence, produce aprioristically by 
 means of his own cogitations the whole of pure mathe- 
 matics without making any use of the experience which 
 is afforded us in the objective world. In pure mathe- 
 matics the understanding is engaged " in its own free 
 creations and imaginations " ; the concepts of number 
 and form are " self-sufficient objects proceeding from 
 themselves " and so have " a value independent of in- 
 dividual experience and actual objective reality." 
 
 That pure mathematics has a significance independent 
 of particular individual experience is quite true ■ as 
 are also the established facts of all the sciences and 
 indeed of all facts. The magnetic poles, the formation 
 of water from oxygen and hydrc^en, the fact that Hegel 
 is dead and that Herr Duehring is alive, are facts inde- 
 pendent of my experience or that of any other single 
 individual, and will be independent of that of Herr 
 Duehring himself, as soon as he shall sleep the sleep 
 of the just. But in pure mathematics the mind is not 
 by any means engaged with its own creations and im- 
 aginings. The concepts of number and form have only 
 come to us by the way of the real world. The ten 
 fingers on which men count and thereby performed the 
 first arithmetical calculations are anything but a free 
 creation of the mind. To count not only requires ob- 
 jects capable of being counted but the ability, when these 
 objects are regarded, of subtracting all qualities from 
 them except number and this ability is the product of 
 long historical development of actual experience. The 
 concept form is, like that of number, derived exclusively 
 
6o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 from the external world and is not a purely mental 
 product. To it things possessed of shape were neces- 
 sary and these shapes men compared until the concept 
 form was arrived at. Pure mathematics considers the 
 shapes and quantities of things in the actual world, very 
 real objects. The fact that these objects appear in a 
 very abstract form only superficially, conceals their 
 origin in the world of external nature. In order to un- 
 derstand these forms and qualities in their' pui:ity it is 
 necessary to separate them from their content and thus 
 one gets the point, without dimensions, the line, without 
 breadth and thickness, a and b, x and y, constants and 
 variables, and we finally first arrive at independent crea- 
 tions of the imagination and intellect, imaginary mag- 
 nitudes. Also the apparent derivation of mathematical 
 magnitudes from each other does not prove their aprioi;- 
 istic origin, but only their rational interconnection. Be- 
 fore one attained the concept that the form of a cylinder 
 was derived from the revolution of a rectangle round 
 one of its sides, he must have examined a number of 
 rectangles and cylinders even if of imperfect form. 
 Like all sciences, mathematics has sprung from the ne- 
 cessities of men, from the measurement of land and the 
 content of vessels, from the calculation of time and me- 
 chanics. But, as in every department of thought, at a 
 certain stage of development, laws are abstracted from 
 the actual phenomena, are separated from them and set 
 over against them, as something independent of them, 
 as Jaws, which apparently come from the outside, in 
 accordance with which the material world must neces- 
 sarily conduct itself. So, it has happened, in society and 
 the state, so, and not otherwise, pure mathematics though 
 borrowed from the world is applied to the world, and 
 
PHILOSOPHY 6l 
 
 though it only shows a portion of its component factors 
 is all the better applicable on that account. 
 
 But as Herr Duehring imagines that the whole of 
 pure mathematics can be derived from the mathematical 
 axioms, " which according to purely logical concepts are 
 neither capable of proof nor in need of any, and without 
 empirical ingredients anywhere and that these can be 
 applied to the universe, he likewise imagines, in the first 
 place, the foundation forms of being, the single ingredi- 
 ents of all knowledge, the axioms of philosophy, to be 
 produced by the intellect of man; he imagines also that 
 he can derive the whole of philosophy or plan of the 
 imiverse from these, and that his sublime genius can 
 compel us to accept this, his conception of nature and 
 humanity. Unfortunately nature and humanity are not 
 constituted like the Prussians of the Manteuffel regime 
 of 1850. 
 
 The axioms of mathematics are expressions of the 
 most elementary ideas which mathematics must borrow 
 from logic. They may be reduced to two. 
 
 (i) The whole is greater than its part; this state- 
 ment is mere tautology, since the quantitatively limited 
 concept, " part," necessarily refers to the concept, 
 " whole," — in that " part " signifies no more than that 
 the quantitative " whole " is made up of quantitative 
 " parts." Since the so-called axiom merely asserts this 
 much we are not a step further. This can be shown to 
 be a tautology if we say " The whole is that which con- 
 sists of several parts — a part is that several of which 
 make up a whole, therefore the part is less than the 
 whole." Where the barrenness of the repetition shows 
 the lack of content all the more strongly. 
 
 (2) If two magnitudes are equal to a third they are 
 equal to one another ; this statement is, as Hegel has 
 
62 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 t 
 
 shown, a conclusion, upon the correctness of which all 
 logic depends, and which is demonstrated therefore out- 
 side of pure mathematics. The remaining axioms with 
 regard to equality and inequality are merely logical ex- 
 tensions of this conclusion. Such barren statements are 
 not enticing either in mathematics or anywhere else. 
 To proceed we must have realities, conditions and forms 
 taken from real material things ; representations of lines, 
 planes, angles, polygons, spheres, etc., are all borrowed 
 from reality, and it is just naive ideology to believe the 
 mathematicians, who assert that the first line was made 
 by causing a point to progress through" space, the first 
 plane by means of the movement of a line, and the first 
 solid by revolving a plane, etc. Even speech rebels 
 against this idea. A mathematical figure of three di- 
 mensions is called a solid - — corpus solidum — and hence, 
 according to the Latin, a body capable of being handled. 
 It has a name derived, therefore, by no means from 
 the independent play of imagination but from solid real- 
 ity. 
 
 But to what purpose is all this prolixity ? After Herr 
 Duehring has enthusiastically proclaimed the independ- 
 ence of pure mathematics of the world of experience, 
 their apriorism, their connection with free creation and 
 imagination, he says " it will be readily seen that these 
 mathematical elements (number, magnitude, time, space, 
 geometric progression), are therefore ideal forms with 
 relation to absolute magnitudes and therefore something 
 quite empiric, no matter to what species they belong." 
 But " mathematical general notions are, apart from ex- 
 perience, nevertheless capable of sufficient characteriza- 
 tion," which latter proceeds, more or less, from each 
 abstraction, but does not by any means prove that it is 
 not deprived from the actual. In the scheme of the 
 
PHILOSOPHY 63 
 
 universe of our author pure mathematics originated in 
 pure thought, in his philosophy of nature it is derived 
 from the external world and then set apart from it. 
 Wliat are we then to beheve? 
 
 The Scheme of the Universe. 
 
 " All-comprehending existence is sole. It is sufficient 
 to itself and has nothing above or below it. To asso- 
 ciate a second existence with it would be to make it just 
 what it is not, a part of a constituent or all-embracing 
 whole. When we conceive of our idea of soleness as a 
 frame there is nothing which can enter into this, nothing 
 which retains twofoldness can enter into this concept 
 of unity. But nothing can alienate itself from this con- 
 cept of unity. The essence of all thought consists in 
 uniting the elements of consciousness in a unity. The 
 indivisible concept of the universe has arisen by com- 
 prehending everything, and the universe, as the word 
 signifies, is recognised as something in which everything 
 is united into one unity." 
 
 So far Herr Duehring is quoted. The mathematical 
 method, " Everything must be decided on simple axio- 
 matic foundation principles, just as if it were concerned 
 with the simple principles of mathematics," this method 
 is for the first time here applied. 
 
 " The all-embracing existence is sole." If tautology, 
 simple repetition in the predicate of what has been 
 stated in the subject, if this constitutes an axiom, then 
 we have a splendid specimen. In the subject Herr 
 Duehring tells us that existence comprehends everything, 
 in the predicate he explains intrepidly that there is 
 nothing outside' it. What a system-shaping thought. 
 It is indeed system-shaping until we find six line.' fur- 
 ther down that Herr Duehring has transformed the sole- 
 
64 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ness of being by means of our idea of unity into its 
 one-ness. As the work of all thought consists in the 
 bringing together of all thought into a unity so is exist- 
 ence, as soon as it is conceived, thought of as a unity, 
 an indivisible concept of the universe, and because ex- 
 istence so conceived is the sole universal concept, so is 
 real existence, the real universe, just as much an indi- 
 visible unity, and consequently " the beings in the be- 
 yond have no further place as soon as the mind has 
 learned to comprehend existence in the homogeneous 
 universality." 
 
 That is a campaign with which in comparison Auster- 
 litz and Jena, Koeniggratz and Sedan sink in insignifi- 
 cance. In a couple of expressions after we have set the 
 first axiom moving we have abolished, put away, and 
 destroyed all the inhabitants of the spirit-world, God, 
 the heavenly hierarchies, heaven, hell and purgatory as 
 well as the immortality of the soul. 
 
 How do we arrive at the idea of the unity of existence 
 from that of its soleness? As a matter of fact, we 
 generally conceive it. As we spread out our idea of 
 unity as a frame around it the concept of existence be- 
 comes the concept of unity., for the existence of all 
 thought consists in the bringing of elements of conscious- 
 ness into unity. 
 
 This last statement is simply false. In the first place 
 thought consists in tlje decomposition of objects of con- 
 sciousness into their elements as well as in the uniting 
 of mutually connected elements into a unity. There 
 can be no synthesis withoiit analysis. In the second 
 place, thought can, without error, only bring those ele- 
 ments of consciousness into a unity in which or in the 
 actual prototypes of which this unity already existed 
 beforehand. If I comprehend a shoebrush under the 
 
PHILOSOPHY 65 
 
 class mammal, it does not thereupon 'become a milk-giver. 
 The unity of existence is therefore just the thing which 
 had to be proved in order to justify his concept of 
 thought as a unity, and if Herr Duehring assures us 
 that he regards existence as a unity and not as twofold 
 he tells us nothing more than that he himself personally 
 thinks so. 
 
 To give a clear explanation of his method of reason- 
 ing, it is as follows, " I begin with existence. There- 
 fore I think of existence. The iclea of existence is an 
 idea of unity. Thought and existence must therefore be- 
 long together, they answer one another, they mutually 
 cover each other. Therefore existence is in reality a 
 unity and there are no beings beyond." But if Herr 
 Duehring had spoken thus plainly instead of entertaining 
 us with oracular statements, the ideology of his argument 
 would have been completely exposed. To attempt to un- 
 dertake to prove from the identity of''thought and exist- 
 ence the reality of the result of thought, that indeed were 
 one of the fever-phantoms of a Hegel. 
 
 If his entire method of proof were really correct Herr 
 Duehring would not have gained a single point over 
 the spiritists. The spiritists would curtly reply, " The 
 universe is simple from our standpoint also. The divi- 
 sion into the hither and the beyond only exists from 
 our special earthly original sin standpoint. In its es- 
 sence, that is God, the entire universe is a unity." And 
 they will take Herr Duehring with them to his beloved 
 heavenly bodies, and will show him one or more where 
 no original sin can be found, and where there is there- 
 fore no antagonism between the hither and the beyond, 
 and the oneness of the universe is a demand of faith. 
 
 The most comical thing about the matter is that Herr 
 Duehring in order to prove the non-existence of God 
 
66 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 from his concept of existence, furnishes the ontological 
 proof of God's existence. This runs as follows — If 
 we think of God we think of Him as the concept of 
 complete perfection. To the idea of perfection existence 
 is a first essential, since a non-existent being is of neces- 
 sity imperfect. We must therefore add existence to the 
 perfections of God. Therefore God must exist. Thus 
 Herr Duehring reasons exactly. If we think of exist- 
 ence we think of it as a concept. What is united into a 
 concept is a unity, therefore existence would not cor- 
 respond with its concept if it were not a unity. There- 
 fore it must be a unity, therefore there is no God, etc. 
 
 If we speak of existence and merely of existence, the 
 unity can only consist in this that all objects with which 
 it is concerned are — exist. They are comprised under 
 the unity of this common existence, and no other, and 
 the general dictum that they all exist cannot give them 
 any further qualities, common or not common, but ex- 
 cludes all such from consideration in advance. For as 
 soon as we take a step beyond the simple fact that exist- 
 ence is common to all things, the distinctions between 
 these separate things engage our attention, and if -these 
 differences consist in this that some are black, some 
 white, some alive, others not alive, some hither and 
 some beyond, we cannot conclude therefrom that mere 
 existence can be imputed to all of them alike. 
 
 The unity of the universe does not consist in its exist- 
 ence, although its existence is a presumption of its 
 unity, since it must first exist before it can be a unit. 
 Existence beyond the boundary line of our horizon is an 
 open question. The real unity of the universe consists 
 in its materiality, and this is established, not by a pair 
 of juggling phrases but by means of a long and difficult 
 development of philosophy and natural science. 
 
PHILOSOPHY 67 
 
 With respect to the subject in hand; the existence 
 which Herr Duehring presents to us is " not that pure 
 existence which is self sufficient and without any other 
 quaHties, in fact, only representing the antithesis of 
 no-idea or absence-of-idea." Now we shall very soon 
 see that the universe of Herr Duehring has its origin 
 simultaneously with an existence which is without essen- 
 tial differentiation, progress or change, and is therefore 
 merely in fact a contradiction of absence of thought, 
 therefore really nothing. From this non-existence is 
 developed the present differentiated, changeable universe 
 which represents progressive growth ; and when we grasp 
 this idea, only by virtue of this eternal change do we 
 arrive at " the concept of the self sufficing, universal 
 existence." We have therefore now the concept of ex- 
 istence on a higher plane where it comprises within itself 
 stability as well as change, being as well as development. 
 Arrived at this point we find that " species and genera 
 in fact the special and the general, are the simplest forms 
 of differentiation, without which the constitution of 
 things cannot be grasped." 
 
 But this is a means of distinguishing quality and after 
 a discussion of this part of the subject we proceed " Over 
 against the idea of species stands the idea of the whole, 
 a homogeneity, as it were, in which no differentiation of 
 species can longer be found," so we pass from quality 
 to quantity and this is always " capable of measure- 
 ment." 
 
 Let us compare this " clear analysis of the actual, uni- 
 versal scheme of things " and its " real, critical stand- 
 point " with the fever-phantasies of a Hegel. We find 
 that Hegel's " Logic " begins with existence as does that 
 of Herr Duehring; that existence displays itself as noth- 
 ing, as with Herr Duehring; that out of this not-be- 
 
68 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ing, a leap is made into being, and that existence is the 
 result of this, that is a more complete and higher form 
 of being, as with Herr Duehring. Being leads to qual- 
 ity, quality to quantity, just as with Herr Duehring. 
 And in order that no essential shall be lacking Herr 
 Duehring tells us elsewhere " from the realm of absence 
 of sensation man leaps to that of sensation in spite of all 
 the quantitative steps with but one qualitative leap . . . 
 from which we can show that he is entirely differentiated 
 from the mere gradation of one and the same quality." 
 This is just the Hegelian standard of measurement ac- 
 cording to which mere quantitative expansion or con- 
 traction causes a sudden qualitative change at a given 
 point, as for example with heated or cooled water, there 
 are points where the spring into a new set of conditions 
 is fulfilled under normal circumstances, and where there- 
 fore quantity suddenly changes into quality. 
 
 Our investigation has likewise sought to penetrate to 
 the deepest roots, and discovers the rooted Duehring 
 foundations to be the " fever-phantasies " of a Hegel, 
 the categories of the Hegelian logic, in the first place, 
 teachings in regard to existence after the antique Hegel- 
 ian method, and an ineffective cloak of plagiarism. 
 
 And not content with purloining the whole scheme of 
 existence from his despised predecessors, Herr Duehring 
 after giving the above example of a change of quantity 
 into quality has the coolness to say of Mafx, " Is it not 
 comical, this appeal (of Marx) to Hegelian confusion 
 and mistiness, that quantity changes into quality." Con- 
 fused mixture, who changes his ground, who is a comical 
 fellow Herr Duehring? 
 
 All these pretty little statements are not only not 
 " axiomatic utterances " according to label, but are simply 
 taken from foreign sources, that is, from Hegel's 
 
PHILOSOPHY 69 
 
 " Logic." Of a truth there is not revealed in the whole 
 chapter the shadow of any " inner connection," except 
 so far as it is borrowed from Hegel, and the whole talk 
 about stability and change finally runs out into mere 
 garrulity on the subject of time and space. 
 
 From existence Hegel comes to substance, to the 
 dialectic. Here he treats of reflex-movements, antag- 
 onisms and contradictions, positive and negative for^ex- 
 ample, and thence proceeds to causality, or the conditions 
 of cause and effect and closes with necessity. Herr 
 Duehring does not vary this method. What Hegel calls 
 the " doctrines of existence " Herr Duehring has trans- 
 lated into " logical properties of existence." These exist, 
 above all else in the antagonism of forces, in antithesis, 
 Herr Duehring denies the antithesis in toto, but we shall 
 return to this matter later. Then he proceeds to caus- 
 ality and thence to necessity. If Herr Duehring says of 
 himself, " I do not philosophise from a cage," he must 
 mean that he philosophises in a cage, the cage of the 
 Hegelian arrangement of categories. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NATURAL I'HILOSOPHV 
 
 Time and Space 
 
 We now come to natural philosophy. Here again 
 Herr Duehring takes it upon himself to be dissatisfied 
 w^th his predecessors. He says " Natural philosophy 
 sank so low that it became barren dregs of poetry and 
 had fallen into the degraded rubbish of the sham phi- 
 losophy of a Schelling and the hke, grubbing in priest- 
 craft and mystifying the public." Disgust has rid us of 
 these deformities, but up to the present it has been suc- 
 ceeded by instability, and " what is of concern to the 
 public at large is that the disappearance of a particularly 
 great charlatan merely gives an opportunity to a smaller^ 
 but more expert successor who repeats the production in 
 another form." Naturalists have little desire for " a 
 flight into the kingdom of the universe-comprehending 
 ideas," and therefore indulge too freely in speculations 
 which " go to pieces." Thus complete salvation must be 
 found, and, fortunately, Herr Duehring is at hand. 
 
 In order to comprehend aright the following con- 
 clusions respecting the unfolding of the universe in time 
 and its limitation in space, we must again turn our at- 
 tention to certain portions of the " scheme of the uni- 
 verse." 
 
 Eternity is ascribed to existence, in agreement with 
 Hegel, what Hegel calls "tiresome (schlecht) eternity," 
 
 70 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 7I 
 
 and this eternity is now iijvestigated. " The plainest 
 form of an incontrovertible idea of eternity is the piling 
 up of numbers unlimitedly in arithmetical progression. 
 Just as we can give a complete unity to each number 
 without the possibility of repetition, so at every stage of 
 its being it progresses still further and eternity consists 
 in the unlimited manifestation of this condition. This suf- 
 ficiently conceived eternity has but one single beginning 
 with one single direction. Although it is not material to 
 our concept to imagine a direction opposite to that in 
 which the progression piles up, this notion of a backward 
 moving eternity is only a hasty picture drawn by the 
 imagination. Since it must necessarily run in a contrary 
 direction, it would have behind it in each instance an 
 endless succession of numbers. But this would be in- 
 admissible as constituting the contradiction of a cal- 
 culated infinity of numbers, and so it seems absurd to 
 imagine a second direction of eternity," 
 
 The first conclusion to be drawn from this conception 
 of eternity is that the chain of cause and effect in the 
 universe must once have had a beginning: an endless 
 number of causes which have followed one another end- 
 lessly is therefore unthinkable, "because innumerability 
 is thus considered as enumerated," therefore a final cause 
 is proved. 
 
 The second conclusion is " the law of the definite num- 
 ber: the accumulation of identical independent objects of 
 an actual species is only thinkable as being made up of 
 a definite number of these individual objects." Not only 
 must t^e actual number of the heavenly bodies be definite 
 at a given time, but the total number of all existent ob- 
 jects, the smallest independent particles of matter. This 
 last necessity constitutes the real reason why no com- 
 posite body is thinkable except as made up of atoms. All 
 
^2 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 actual division has a fixed limit and must have it, if the 
 contradiction of a numerated innumerability is to be 
 avoided. On the same grounds not only must the revo- 
 lutions of the sun and earth be fixed as they have oc- 
 curred up to the present, even if they cannot be indicated, 
 but all the periodical processes of nature must have had 
 a beginning somewhere, and all the distinctions and 
 complexities of nature which succeed each other must 
 similarly have had an origin. This must indisputably 
 have existed from eternity, but such an idea would 
 be excluded if time consisted of real parts and 
 was not arbitrarily divided to accommodate the possi- 
 bilities of our understanding. It is different with time, 
 self regarded, but the facts and phenomena of which 
 time is made up being capable of differentiation can be 
 enumerated. Let us conceive of a condition in which 
 no change occurs and which undergoes no alteration in 
 its stable identity; the time concept then becomes trans- 
 formed into the general notion of existence. What is 
 the result of piling up an empty duration of time is not 
 discoverable. So far, Herr Duehring writes and he is 
 not a little edified concerning the significance of these 
 discoveries. He hopes that " it is perceived as a not 
 insignificant truth," and later on says, " One should note 
 the very simple phrases by which we have helped the 
 concept of immortality and the criticism of it to a point 
 at present unknown, through the sharpening and deep- 
 ening of the simple elements of the universal conception 
 of time and space." 
 
 We have helped ! This deepening and sharpening ! 
 Who are we ? In what are we manifest ? Who deepens 
 and who sharpens? 
 
 " Thesis — the world has a beginning in time and is 
 bounded by space. Proof — If one suppose that the 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 73 
 
 world has no beginning in time he is bound to grant 
 infinity to each point of time, and so an infinite succession 
 of things has passed away in the universe. But infinity 
 of a series consists in the impossibility of its completion 
 by successive syntheses. Therefore an eternal progres- 
 sion of the world is impossible. Hence a beginning of 
 the world is a necessary condition of its existence, 
 which was to be proved. Let us take the other concept. 
 The world now appears as an eternal given whole con- 
 sisting of things which have a simultaneous existence. 
 Now we can conceive of the mass of a quantity, which 
 can only be regarded under certain conditions, in no 
 other way than by means of the synthesis of its parts, 
 and we conceive the totality of the quantity by means of 
 the completed synthesis or repeated additions of the unity 
 to itself. Thus, in order to conceive of the universe as 
 a whole which fills all space, the successive syntheses of 
 the parts of an infinite universe must be regarded as 
 being completed, that is an eternity of time must in cal- 
 culating all coexisting things, be regarded as having ex- 
 isted, but this is impossible. Therefore an unending 
 aggregate of actual things cannot be regarded as a given 
 whole -and therefore also not as coexistent. A world 
 is therefore extension in space which is not unlimited 
 and which has therefore bounds. And this was the sec- 
 ond thing to be proved." 
 
 These statements are copied from a well-known book 
 which made its appearance in 1781 and is entitled " The 
 Critique of Pure Reason," by Immanuel Kant. They 
 can be read there in Part I, Division 2, second section, 
 second part. " First Antinomy of Pure Reason." To 
 Herr Duehring alone remains the name ind fame of hav- 
 ing pasted the law of fixed numbers on one of the pub- 
 lished thoughts of Kant and of having made the discoy- 
 
74 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 cry that there was once a time when time did not exist 
 but only a universe. For the rest, therefore, when we 
 come across anything sensible in HerrTDuehringV exposi- 
 tion " We " means Immanuel Kant, and the " present " 
 is only ninety-five years old. Quite simple indeed, and 
 unknown until now! But Kant does not establish the 
 above statement by his proof. On the other hand, he 
 shows the reverse, namely, that the universe has no be- 
 ginning in time and no end in space, and he fixes his 
 antinomy in this, the unsolvable contradiction that the 
 one is just as capable of proof as the other. People of 
 small calibre might be inclined to think that here Kant 
 had found an insuperable difficulty, not so our bold au- 
 thor of fundamental results " especially his own." He 
 copies all that he can use of Kant's antinomy and throws 
 the rest away. 
 
 The matter solves itself very simply. Eternity in 
 time and endlessness in space signify from the very 
 wojds that there is no end in either direction, forwards 
 or backwards, over or under, right or left. This infinity 
 is quite different from an endless progression, since the 
 latter always has some beginning, a first step. The in- 
 applicability of this progression idea to our object is evi- 
 dent directly we apply it to space. Jnfinite progression 
 translated in terms of space is a line produced continu- 
 ously in a given direction. Is infinity in space expressed 
 in this way, even remotely? On the contrary it requires 
 six of these lines drawn from this point in three opposite 
 directions to express the dimensions of space and we 
 should have accordingly six of these dimensions. Kant 
 saw this so plainly that he employed his progression 
 merely indirectly in a round about way to express the 
 extent of the universe. Herr Duehring on the contrary 
 forces us to accept his six dimensions of space and at 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 75 
 
 the same time has no words in which to express his 
 contempt of the mathematical mysticism of Gauss who 
 would not content himself with the three dimensions of 
 space. 
 
 Applied to time, the series or row of objects, infinite 
 at both extremities, has a certain figurative significance. 
 But let us picture time as proceeding from unity or a line 
 proceeding from a fixed point. We can say then that 
 time Jias had a beginning. We assume just what we 
 wanted to prove. We give a one-sided half-character to 
 infinity of time. But a one-sided eternity split in halves 
 is a contradiction in itself, the exact opposite of a hypo- 
 thetical infinity, incapable of contradiction. We can only 
 overcome this contradiction by assuming that the unity 
 which we began to count the progression from, the point 
 from which we measure the line, is a unity taken at pleas- 
 ure in the series, a point taken at pleasure in the line. 
 Hence as far as the line or series is concerned it is im- 
 material where we put it. 
 
 But as for the contradiction of the " counted endless 
 progression " we shall be in a position to examine it 
 more closely as soon as Herr Duehring has taught us 
 the trick of reckoning it. If he has accomplished the 
 feat of counting from minus infinity to zero, we shall 
 be glad to hear from him again. It is clear that wherever 
 he begins to count he leaves behind him an endless pro- 
 gression, and with it the problem which he had to solve. 
 Let him only take his own infinite progression i -f- 2 -|- 
 3 -j- 4 etc. and try to reckon back to i again from the 
 infinite end. He evidently does not comprehend the re- 
 quirements of the problem. And furthermore, if he 
 affirms that the infinite progression of past time is cap- 
 able of calculation he must affirm that time has a begin- 
 ning for otherwise he could not begin to calculate: 
 
76 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 Therefore he again substitutes a supposition for what 
 he had to prove. The idea of the calculated infinite 
 series, in other words Duehring's all-embracing law of 
 the fixed number, is therefore a contradiction iri adjecto, 
 is a self contradiction, and an absurd one, moreover. 
 
 It is clear that an infinity which has an end but no 
 beginning is neither more nor less than an infinity which 
 has a beginning but no end. The least logical insight 
 would have compelled Herr Duehring to the statement 
 that beginning and end are mutually necessary to each 
 other, like North Pole and South Pole, and that if one 
 omit the end the beginning becomes the end, the one 
 end which the series has and vice versa. 
 
 The entire fallacy would not be possible if it were not 
 for the mathematical practice of operating with an in- 
 finite series. Because in mathematics one must proceed 
 from the given and finite to that which is not given and 
 infinite, all mathematical series whether positive or nega- 
 tive, begin with a fixed point otherwise one cannot cal- 
 culate. The ideal necessities of the mathematician how- 
 ever are very far from being a law compulsory upon the 
 universe. 
 
 Besides Herr Duehring will never succeed in imagin- 
 ing an infinity without contradiction. In the first place, 
 infinity is a contradiction and full of contradictions. 
 For example it is a contradiction that infinity should be 
 made up of finite things and yet such is the case. The 
 notion of a limited universe leads to contradictions just 
 as much as the notion of its unlimitedness, and each at- 
 tempt to abolish these contradictions leads, as we have 
 seen, to new and worse contradictions. But just be- 
 cause infinity is a contradiction, it is without end, end- 
 lessly developing itself in time and space. The aboli- 
 tion of "the contradiction would be the end of infinity. 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY "J"] 
 
 Hegel saw that very clearly, and covers the people who 
 entered upon intricate arguments about this contradic- 
 tion with merited scorn. 
 
 Let us proceed. Now, time has had a beginning. 
 What was before this beginning? The unchangeable 
 universe incomparable with anything else. And as no 
 changes occur in this condition the particular concept 
 time is transformed into the general concept existence. 
 In the first place we have nothing to do with the trans- 
 formation which goes on in the brain of Herr Duehring. 
 We are not engaged with a concept of time, but with 
 actual time of which Herr Duehring cannot so easily 
 dispose. In the second place no matter how much the 
 concept of time is transformed into the general con- 
 cept existence it does not bring us one step nearer the 
 goal. For the fundamental forms of all existence are 
 space and time, and a thing existing outside of time is as 
 silly an idea as that of a being outside of space. The 
 Hegelian " past existence in which there was no time " 
 and the neo-Schelling "being beyond the scope of 
 thought " are rational conceptions compared with this be- 
 ing outside of time. For this reason Herr Duehring goes 
 to work very cautiously " intrinsically it may be called 
 time, but one cannot really call it time, as time does not 
 consist in itself of real parts but is merely divided by us 
 into parts to suit our own convenience," only a rea^ fill- 
 ing up of time with distinct facts makes it capable of cal- 
 culation. It is impossible to see the significance of piling 
 up an empty duration. But it does not matter anyway. 
 The question is whether the universe in this presupposed 
 condition continues, that is persists, through a period of 
 time. We have long known that it is useless to try and 
 measure such empty space and to calculate without plan 
 or aim and just because of the tiresomeness of such a 
 
78 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 proceeding Hegel calls this infinity "' miserable." Ac- 
 cording to Herr Duehring time exists only by virtue 
 of change, not change in and through time. Because 
 time is different from change and independent of it, we 
 can measure it by the changes, because in order to meas- 
 ure we need something different from that which is to 
 be measured. And the time in which no recognisible 
 changes take place is very far from being no time, on 
 the other hand since it is free from other ingredients, it 
 is pure, that is to say, true time. Indeed if we want to 
 contemplate, time as a pure concept separated from all 
 foreign admixture, we are obliged to eliminate all the 
 various events which occur in time, either successively or 
 simultaneously, and thus imagine a time in which noth- 
 ing occurs. By this means we have not permitted the 
 concept time to be overcome by the general concept of 
 existence, but we have thereby arrived at a pure time 
 concept. All these contradictions and impossibilities are 
 mere child's play compared with the confusion into which 
 he plunges the universe with its self-sufficient commence- 
 ment. If the universe was in a condition in which no 
 change occurred in it, how did it ever manage to get 
 from that state to one of change ? Moreover, an abso- 
 lute condition of absence of change existing from ^eter- 
 nity cannot possibly get out of that state unaided so as 
 to pass over to a condition of progress and change. A 
 first cause of motion must therefore have come from the 
 outside, from beyond the universe, which caused the 
 movement. This first cause of motion is clearly only an- 
 other term for God, The God and the Beyond of which 
 Herr Duehring fancied that he had so nicely settled in 
 his scheme of the universe, return sharpened and deep- 
 ened in his natural philosophy. 
 
 Further Herr Duehring says : " Where a fixed ele- 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 79 
 
 ment of existence is capable of measurement, it will re- 
 main in unalterable stability. This is evident from ma- 
 terial and mechanical force." The former quotation 
 gives, it may be incidentally mentioned, a good example 
 of Herr Duehring's axiomatic grandiloquence. Fixed 
 quantities remain exactly the same, the quantity of me- 
 chanical force, once in the universe, is always the same. 
 We will not dwell'on this, so far as it is true, Descartes 
 knew and said it three hundred years ago as regards 
 philosophy, while in mechanical science the doctrine of 
 the conservation of energy has been preached for the 
 last twenty years. Herr Duehring has not improved 
 upon it in so far as he limits it to mechanical energy. 
 But where was mechanical energy at the period of un- 
 changeableness ? To this question Herr Duehring stub- 
 bornly refuses an answer. 
 
 Where was the unchangeable mechanical force then, 
 Herr Duehring, and what was it busy about? Answer: 
 " The original state of the universe, or, better, the exist- 
 ence of unchangeable matter, not allowing of any 
 changes in time, is a question which no mind can pass 
 except one which sees the acme of wisdom in the de- 
 struction of its own powers." Therefore you must 
 either take my original condition with your eyes shut, or 
 I, the lusty Eugene Duehring, brand you as an intel- 
 lectual eunuch. Some people might be quite alarmed 
 about this, but we who have seen a few examples of 
 Herr Duehring's powers, can let the elegant abuse pass 
 and reiterate the question, " But how about that me- 
 chanical energy, Herr Duehring, if you please ? " 
 
 Herr Duehring is staggered at once. In fact, he 
 stammers, " There is no proof of the actual existence of 
 that original condition. Let us remember that this is 
 also the case with each new step in the series with which 
 
8o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 we are acquainted. He therefore who will make diffi- 
 culties in the foregoing case may see that he does not 
 avoid them in the smaller apparent cases. Besides, the 
 possibility exists that there are successively graduated 
 intermediate states inserted, and thus there is a stable 
 bridge by the means of which we can work backwards 
 to the solution of the problem. As a matter of fact 
 this notion of stability does not assist the main thought, 
 but it is for us the fundamental form of regular progres- 
 sion, and of each transition known so far, so that we 
 have a right to consider it as intermediate between the 
 first original state and its disturbance. But if we con- 
 sider the independent condition of equipoise from the 
 point of view of mathematical concepts as, admittedly, 
 without independent existence, there is no need of indi- 
 cating the mode in which matter came into a dynamic 
 condition." Outside of the mechanics of matter a 
 change in movement of matter depends upon a change 
 in the movement of the most insignificant particles. 
 " Up to the present we have no universal principle of 
 knowledge and we must therefore not be surprised if 
 we are somewhat in the dark as to these matters." 
 
 That is all that Herr Duehring has to say, and we 
 should seek the very pinnacle of wisdom not alone in a 
 mutilation of the creative faculty, but in blind supersti- 
 tion, if we were to let the matter pass with these foolish 
 evasions and statements. Absolute stability has no 
 power of change in itself, Herr Duehring admits this. 
 The absolute condition of equipoise possesses no means 
 by which it can pass into a dynamic state. What have 
 we then? Just three false and foolish phrases. 
 
 In the first place, Herr Duehring says that to show 
 the transition from each most insignificant step in the 
 chain of things with which we are acquainted to the next 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 8l 
 
 presents the same difficulty. He seems to think that his 
 readers are infants. The proof of the transitions and 
 interrelations of the most insignificant links in the chain 
 of existence is just what constitutes the subject matter of 
 natural science. If there is an impediment anywhere, 
 nobody, not even Herr Duehring, thinks to explain the 
 development as proceeding from nothing, but on the 
 other hand as only proceeding from transition, change, 
 and forward movement from a completed evolutionary 
 stage. Here, however, he undertakes to show with ref- 
 erence to matter that it proceeds from absence of move- 
 ment and therefore from nothing. 
 
 In the second place, we have the " stable bridge." 
 This does not help us appreciably over the difficulty, but 
 we have a right to use it as a bridge between rigid sta- 
 bility and motion. Unfortunately stability consists in 
 absence of motion, and the question as to the generation 
 of motion remains as dark a secret as before. And if 
 Herr Duehring shifts his no-movement at all to uni- 
 versal movement in infinitely small particles and ascribes 
 to this ever so long a duration of time, we are still not 
 the thousand part of an inch further from the place 
 whence we started. Without a creative act we can get 
 nothing from nothing, not even anything as small as a 
 mathematical differential. The bridge of stability is 
 therefore not even a pons asinorum. Herr Duehring is 
 the only person able to cross it. 
 
 Thirdly, as long as the present theories of mechanics 
 prevail, this constitutes one of Herr Duehring's most re- 
 liable props, we cannot indicate how anything passes 
 from a state of quiescence to one of motion. But the 
 mechanical theory of heat teaches us that the movement 
 of the mass depends upon the movements of the mole- 
 cules, (so that even in this case movement proceeds from 
 
82 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 Other movement and not from lack of movement) and 
 this Herr Duehring shyly points out might serve as a 
 bridge between the entirely static (the state of equipoise) 
 and the dynamic (self-movement). But here Herr 
 Duehring leaves us entirely in the dark. All his deepen- 
 ing and sharpening has dug a pit of folly and we are 
 brought up necessarily in " darkness." But Herr Dueh- 
 ring troubles himself very little about that. He says 
 right on the next page, with considerable audacity that 
 he has been able to endow the self contained stability 
 with real significance by means of the properties of 
 matter and the mechanical forces. 
 
 In spite of all these errors and confused statements we 
 have still an inspiring faith remaining that " The mathe- 
 matics of the inhabitants of other planets cannot rest 
 on any axioms other than our own." 
 
 Cosmogony, Physics, and Chemistry. 
 
 Proceeding we come to theories respecting the mode 
 by which the world, as it is to-day, came into being. A 
 universal separation of matter from one element was the 
 notion of the Ionic philosophers, but, since Kant, the con- 
 ception of an original nebulous state has played a new 
 role and according to this gravitation and heat expan- 
 sion have built up the worlds, little by little and one by 
 one. The mechanical theory of heat of our time has 
 fixed the origin of the earlier condition of the universe 
 with much greater precision. 
 
 In spite of all this " the universal condition of the 
 gaseous form can only be a point of departure for se- 
 rious conclusions if one can define the mechanical sys- 
 tem of it more precisely beforehand. If not, the idea 
 becomes not only very cloudy, but the original nebula 
 becomes really in the progress of those conclusions 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 83 
 
 denser and more impenetrable." . . . For the pres- 
 ent everything remains in the vagueness and formless- 
 ness of an indefinite idea, and so with regard to the 
 gaseous universe we have only an insubstantial concep- 
 tion." 
 
 The theory of Kant that all existing worlds were cre- 
 ated from a mass of rotating vapor was the greatest 
 advance made by astronomy since the days of Copernicus. 
 The idea that nature had no history in time was then 
 shaken for the first time. Up to then the worlds were 
 fixed in bounds and conditions from their very beginning, 
 and though the individual organisms on the separate 
 worlds were transient, the species remained unalterable. 
 Nature was conceived as an apparently limited move- 
 ment and its motion seemed to be the repetition of the 
 same movements perpetually. It was in this conception 
 which is entire accord with the metaphysical mode of 
 thought that Kant made the first breach and so scientifi- 
 cally that most of his grounds of proof stand good to- 
 day. Really the theory of Kant is a mere hypothesis 
 even to-day. The Copernican theory of the universe 
 has no longer any weight and since the spectroscope dis- 
 covered such glowing gaseous matter in space all objec- 
 tions have been disposed of and scientific opposition to 
 Kant's theory has been silenced. Even Her'r Duehritig 
 cannot produce his universe without the nebulous state 
 and he takes his revenge by asking to be shown the me- 
 chanical system of this nebulous state and because this 
 cannot be done he inflicts all sorts of contemptuous re- 
 marks upon this nebulous state. Unfortunately modern 
 science cannot show this system and please Herr Dueh- 
 ring. But there are many other questions which it can- 
 not answer. For example regarding the question whv 
 toads have no tails it can onlv answer so far " Because 
 
84 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 they have lost them." But if people get angry and say 
 that this is all vague and formless, a mere fanciful idea, 
 incapable of being made definite and a very poor notion, 
 such views would not carry us a step further, scientifi- 
 cally. Such insults and exaggerations are sufficiently 
 numerous. What is there to hinder Herr Duehring him- 
 self from discovering the mechanical system of the orig- 
 inal nebular, state ? 
 
 Fortunately we are informed that the nebular hypothe- 
 sis of Kant " is far from showing a fully distinct con- 
 dition of the world-medium or of explaining how matter 
 arrived at a similar state." This is really very fortunate 
 for Kant who is to be congratulated on having been able 
 to trace the existing celestial bodies to the nebular con- 
 dition, and who yet does not allow himself to dream of 
 the self-contained unchanged condition of matter. It is 
 to be remarked by the way that although the nebular con- 
 dition of Kant is supposed to be the original vapor-form 
 of matter, this is to be understood merely relatively. 
 It is to be understood on the one hand as the original 
 vapor form of the heavenly bodies, as they are at pres- 
 ent, and on the other hand as the earliest form of matter 
 to which we have been able to trace our way backwards. 
 The fact that matter passed through an endless series of 
 other forms before arriving at the nebular state is not 
 excluded from this conception but is on the other hand 
 rather included in it. 
 
 Herr Duehring is at an advantage here, ^hereas 
 science comes to a halt at the existence of the nebulous 
 state his quack science carries him back to that " Con- 
 dition of the development of the world which cannot be 
 called actually static in the present sense of the word 
 but most emphatically cannot be called dynamic. The 
 unity of matter and mechanical force which we call the 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 85 
 
 world is, so to speak, a formula of pure logic, to signify 
 the self-contained condition of matter as the point of 
 departure of all enumerable stages of material prog- 
 ress." 
 
 We have obviously not yet got away from the original 
 self-contained condition of matter. Here it is explained 
 as consisting of mechanical force and matter, and this 
 as a formula of pure logic, etc. As soon then as the 
 unity of matter and mechanical force is at an end evolu- 
 tion proceeds. 
 
 The formula of pure logic is nothing but a lame at- 
 tempt to make the Hegelian categories " an Sich and 
 fuer Sich" of use in a philosophy of realism. In "an 
 Sich " according to Hegel the original unity of a thing 
 consists ; in " fuer Sich " begins the differentiation and 
 movement of the concealed elements, the active anti- 
 thesis. We shall therefore depict the original condition 
 as one in which there is a unity of matter and mechanical 
 force and the transition to movement as the separation 
 and antithesis of these two elements. But we have not 
 thereby established the proof of the real existence of the 
 fantastic original condition but only this much that it 
 exists according to the Hegelian category " an Sich " 
 and just as fantastically disappears according to the 
 Hegelian category " fuer Sich." 
 
 Matter, says Duehring, implies all that is real, there- 
 fore there is no mechanical force outside of matter. 
 Mechanical force is furthermore a condition of matter. 
 In the original condition where no change occurred mat- 
 ter and its mechanical force were a unity. Afterwards 
 when 'the change commenced there was a differentiation 
 from matter.' Thus we are obliged to be satisfied with 
 these mystical phrases and with the assurance that 
 the self contained original state was neither static nor 
 
86 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 dynamic, neither in a state of rest nor of motion. We 
 are still without information with regard to the where- 
 abouts of mechanical force at that period and how we 
 arrived at a condition of motion from one of rest with- 
 out a push from the outside, that is without God. 
 
 Before the time of Herr Duehring materialists- were 
 wont to speak of matter and motion-. He reduces mo- 
 ,tion to mechanical force as its necessary original form 
 and so renders incomprehensible the real connection be- 
 tween matter and motion which was also not evident to 
 the earlier materialists. Yet the thing is easy enough. 
 Matter has neverr existed without motion, neither can it. 
 Motion in space, the mechanical motion of smaller parti- 
 cles to single worlds, the motion of molecules as in the 
 case of heat, or as electric or magnetic currents, chem- 
 ical analysis or synthesis, organic life, each single each 
 single atom of the matter of the world — they all dis- 
 cover themselves in one or other of the forms of motion 
 or in several of them together at any given moment. 
 All quiescence, all rest, is only significant in relation to 
 this or that given form of motion. A body for example 
 may be upon the ground in mechanical quiescence, in 
 mechanical rest. This does not prevent its participation 
 in the movements of the earth and of the whole solar 
 system, just as little does it prevent its smallest component 
 parts from completing the movements conditioned by 
 the temperature or its atoms from going through a 
 chemical process. Matter without motion is just as un- 
 thinkable as motion without matter. Motion is just as 
 uncreatable or indestructible as matter itself, the older 
 philosophy of Descartes proclaimed precisely that the 
 quantity of motion in the world has been fixed from the 
 beginning. Motion cannot be generated therefore it can 
 only be transferred. If motion is transferred from one 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 87 
 
 body to another, one may as far as it is regarded as 
 transferring itself, as active, consider it as the original 
 cause of motion, but so far as it is transferred, as passive. 
 This active motion we call force ; the passive, expression 
 of force. It is therefore just as clear as noon that force 
 is just as great as its expression because the same niotion 
 fulfils itself in both. 
 
 A motionless condition of matter is therefore one of 
 the hollowest and most absurd notions, a mere delirium. 
 In order to arrive at it one is obliged to cbnsider the 
 relative absence of motion in the case of a body lying 
 on the ground, as absolute rest, and then to transfer this 
 idea to the entire universe. This is made easier by the 
 reduction of motion in general to mere mechanical force. 
 By the limitation of motion to mere mechanical force we 
 can conceive of a force as at rest, as confined, as mo- 
 mentarily ineffective. If for example in the transference 
 of motion which transference is very frequently a some- 
 what complicated process in the carrying out of which 
 various intermediate steps are necessary, one may stay 
 the actual transference at a chosen point and stop the 
 process, as for example if one loads a gun and de- 
 lays the moment when the charge shall be set at liberty 
 by the pull of the trigger, through the firing of powder. 
 Therefore one may conceive of matter as being loaded 
 with force in the unprogressive static period, and this 
 Herr Duehring appears to mean by his Unity of matter 
 and force if indeed he means anything at all. This 
 notion is absurd, since it pictures as absolute for the 
 entire universe a condition which is by nature only rela- 
 tive and to which therefore only a portion of matter can 
 be subjected at one and the same time. Let us look at 
 it from this point of view and we do not escape the diffi- 
 culty of explaining first how the universe came to Lie 
 
88 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 loaded and in the second place, whose finger drew the 
 trigger. We may revolve all we please but under the 
 guidance of Herr Duehring we always come back over 
 and over again to the finger of God. 
 
 From astronomy our realist philosopher passes on to, 
 mechanics and physics and complains that the mechanical 
 theory of heat has brought us no further in the course 
 of a generation than the point which Robert Mayer 
 reached by his own efiforts. Moreover the whole thing 
 is very obscure. We must " always remember that with 
 conditions of the movement of matter statical conditions 
 are also given and that these last are not measured in 
 mechanical work. If we have ea;-lier typified nature as a 
 great workwoman, and we still hold to the statement, we 
 must now add that the static condition, the condition of 
 rest, does not imply any mechanical labor. We are 
 again without the bridge from the static to the dynamic 
 and if latent heat, so called, is up to the present a 
 stumbling block to the theory we can recognise a lack 
 which may be denied in the' cosmic process." 
 
 This whole oracular utterance is again merely an out- 
 pouring of bad science which very clearly perceives that 
 it has got itself into a place from which it cannot be 
 saved by creating motion from a state of absolute free- 
 dom from motion, and is ashamed to call upon its only 
 saviour, the Creator of heaven and earth. If in mechan- 
 ics, heat included, there is no bridge to be, found from 
 statics to dynamics, from equipoise to motion, why should 
 Herr Duehring be obliged to find a bridge 'from his con- 
 dition of absence of motion to motion? Thus he would 
 have the luck to escape from his dilemma. 
 
 In ordinary mechanics the bridge from statics to dy- 
 namics is — the push from the outside. If a stone of the 
 weight of a hundred grammes be lifted ten meters high 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 89 
 
 and then flung free so that it should remain hanging in 
 a self contained condition and in a state of rest, you 
 would have to appeal to a public of sucking infants to 
 declare that the existing condition of that body represents 
 no mechanical labor and that its removal from its earlier 
 condition has no measure in mechanical work. Any 
 passerby would tell Herr Duehring that the stone did not 
 come on the string by its own efforts and the first good 
 hand book in 'mechanics would inform him that if he let 
 the stone fall again, the latter in its fall does just as 
 much mechanical work as is necessary to lift it to the 
 height of ten meters. The very simple fact that the 
 stone is suspended represents mechanical force in itself, 
 since if it remain long enough, the string breaks, as soon 
 as it, as a result of its chemical constitution, is no longer 
 strong enough to hold the stone. All mechanical phe- 
 nomena, may, we must inform Herr Duehring, be re- 
 duced to just such simple fundamental forms, and the 
 engineer is still unborn who cannot discover the bridge 
 from statics to dynamics as long as he has sufficient 
 initial force at his disposal. 
 
 It is quite a hard nut and bitter pill for our metaphy- 
 sician that motion should find its measure in its opposite 
 rest. It is such a glaring contradiction, and every con- 
 tradiction is an absurdity in the eyes of Herr Duehring. 
 It is nevertheless true that the hanging stone by reason 
 of its weight and its distance from the ground represents 
 a means of mechanical movement sufficiently easily meas- 
 ured in different ways, as for example through gravity 
 direct, through glancing on an incline or through the 
 undulation of a wave — and it is just the same with a 
 loaded gun. The expression of motion in terms of its 
 opposite rest presents no difficulty at all to the dialectic 
 philosophy. The whole contradiction in its eyes is 
 
go LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 merely relative, for absolute rest, complete equipose does 
 not exist. The movement of the particles strives towards 
 equipose, the movement of the mass in turn destroys the 
 equipose, so that rest and equipose wher,e they occur are 
 the results of arrested motion, and it is evident that this 
 motion is capable of being measured in respect of its 
 results, of being expressed in itself and of being restored 
 in some form or other external to itself. But Herr 
 Duehring would never be satisfied with such a simple 
 explanation of the matter. Like a ,good metaphysician 
 he creates a yawning gulf between motion and equipose 
 which does not really exist and then wonders if he can 
 find no bridge across the self-created chasm. He might 
 just as well bestride his metaphysical Rosinante and hunt 
 the " Ding an Sich " of Kant since it is in the last analy- 
 sis nothing else than this which stands behind the undis- 
 coverable bridge. 
 
 But what about the mechanical theory of heat and of 
 latent heat which is a " stumbling block " in the path Of 
 the theory ? 
 
 If one convert a pound of ^ ice at freezing point under 
 normal atmospheric pressure into a pound of water^ of 
 the same temperature by means of heat there vanishes 
 a quantity of heat which could heat the same pound of 
 water from o" centigrade to 79° centigrade, or seventy- 
 nine pounds of water one degree centigrade. If one heat 
 this pound of water to boiling point, that is, to one hun- 
 dred degrees centigrade and change it into steam of the 
 heat of one hundred degrees centigrade there vanishes 
 up to the time when the last of the water is changed into 
 steam a seven fold greater quantity of heat, capable of 
 raising the temperature of 537.2 pounds of water one de- 
 gree. This dissipated heat is called latent. It is trans- 
 formed, by cooling the steam, into water again, and the 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 9I 
 
 water into ice, so the same mass of heat which was for- 
 merly latent, is again set free, that is, as heat capable of 
 being felt and measured. This setting free of heat by 
 the condensation of steam and the freezing of water is the 
 reason that steam if it is cooled off at ioo° trans- 
 forms itself little by little into water, and that a mass 
 of water at freezing point is but slowly transformed into 
 ice. These are the facts. The question is what becomes 
 of the heat while it is latent? 
 
 The mechanical theory of heat according to which the 
 heat of a body at a certain temperature is dependent upon 
 the greater or less vibration of the smallest physical 
 parts (molecules) a vibration which can, under certain 
 conditions, be transformed into some other form of mo- 
 tion, shows the whole thing completely, that the latent 
 heat has performed work, has been expended in work. ■ 
 By the melting of the ice the close connection of the 
 separate particles is broken asunder and changed into a 
 loose relationship ; by the conversion of water into steam 
 at boiling point a condition is entered where the separate 
 molecules exercise no noticeable influence upon each 
 other, and under the influence of heat fly from one 
 another in all directions. It is now evident that the sepa- 
 rate molecules of a body in the gaseous state are endowed 
 with much greater energy than in the fluid state, and 
 in the fluid state thanl in the solid. Latent heat is there- 
 fore not dissipated, it is merely transformed and has 
 taken on the form of molecular elasticity. 
 
 As soon as conditions are at an end under which the 
 molecules can exercise this relative freedom with regard 
 to each other as soon namely as the temperature falls 
 below one hundred degrees to zero, this elasticity be- 
 comes released and the molecules come together with the 
 same force with which they formerly flew apart, but 
 
92 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 only to appear again as heat, as exactly the same quan- 
 tity of heat as was latent before. This explanation is 
 of course a hypothesis, as is the whole mechanical theory 
 of heat, in so far as no one has yet seen a molecule, 
 much less a molecule in motion. Like all recent theories, 
 this hypothesis is full of flaws but it can at least offer 
 an explanation which does not conflict with the uncreat- 
 ability and indestructibility of motion and it is able to 
 give an account of the whereabouts of the heat in the 
 transformation. Latent heat is therefore by no means 
 an obstacle in the way of the mechanical theory of heat. 
 On the contrary this theory for the first time provides a 
 rational explanation of the subject and an obstacle arises 
 from the fact in particular that the physicists make use 
 of the old and ineffective expression " latent heat " to 
 signify the heat 1;ransformed into some other shape by 
 molecular energy. 
 
 The static conditions of the solid, liquid and gaseous 
 states therefore represent mechanical work in so far as 
 mechanical work is a measure of heat. Thus, the solidT 
 crust of the earth, like the water of the ocean, repre- 
 sents in its present form a certain quantity of heat set 
 free which implies the same quantity of mechanical force. 
 By the passing of the vaporous state which was the 
 original form of the earth into the fluid state and later 
 into a condition, for the most part solid, a certain quan- 
 tity of molecular energy was set free in space, the dif- 
 ficulty of which Herr Duehring whispers does not there- 
 fore exist. We are frequently brought to a stop in our 
 cosmic observations by lack of knowledge, but nowhere 
 by insuperable theoretical difficulties. The bridge .from 
 statics to dynamics is therefore the push from the out- 
 side caused by the cooling or heating occasioned by 
 other bodies which influence certain objects in equipoise. 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 93 
 
 The further we explore Herr Duehring's philosophy, the 
 more impossible appear all his attempts to explain rota- 
 tion from absence of rotation, or to discover the bridge 
 by which that which is purely static, self-contained, can 
 without disturbance come to be the dynamic, in motion. 
 
 We should here be glad to get rid of the whole self- 
 contained condition business. Herr Duehring, however, 
 goes to chemistry and gives us three permanent natural 
 laws established by the philosophy of realism as follows, 
 I. The constant amount of matter in the universe. 2. 
 The simple chemical elements, and 3. The mechanical 
 forces are unchangeable. 
 
 Therefore the impossibility of creating or destroying 
 matter, the simple forms of its existence as far as they 
 exist, and motion, these old, well known facts, inade- 
 quately expressed, that is 'the only positive thing which 
 Herr Duehring is in a position to offer us as a result of 
 his real philosophy of the inorganic world. All these 
 things we have long known. But what we have not 
 known is that they are permanent laws and as such nat- 
 ural properties of the system of things. It is just the 
 same thing over again as in the case of Kant. Herr 
 Duehring takes some universally known expressions, 
 pastes the Duehring label on them and calls them " funda- 
 mentally original results and views, system shaping 
 thoughts, profound science." 
 
 We have not long to hesitate on this account. What- 
 ever deficiencies the most profound science and the best 
 contrived social theories may have, for once Herr Dueh- 
 ring can say precisely " The quantity of gold in the uni- 
 verse must always remain the same and cannot be in- 
 creased or diminished any more than matter in general. 
 But unfortunately Herr Duehring does not tell us what 
 we may buy with this gold." 
 
94 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 The Organic World 
 
 " From mechanics in rest and motion to the relation of 
 sensation and thought there is a uniform progression of 
 interruptions." With this assurance Herr Duehring 
 spares himself from saying anything further about the 
 origin of life, though one might reasonably expect that 
 a thinker who has followed the development of the world 
 from its self-contained condition, and who is so much 
 at home with the other heavenly bodies would be here at 
 home also. Besides this assurance is only half trtie in 
 so far as it is not yet completed by means of the log line 
 of Hegel, of which mention has been made already. In 
 all its gradations the transition from one form of evolu- 
 tion to another remains a leap, a differentiating move- 
 ment. So in the transition from the mechanics of the 
 worlds to those of the smaller amounts of matter in 
 each single world, just so also in that from the mechanics 
 of the mass to that of the molecule — the motion which 
 we examine particularly in physics, so-called, heat, light, 
 electricity, magnetism, just in the same way also the 
 transition from the physics of the molecule to the physics 
 of the phemical atom is completed by a differentiating 
 leap, and it is just the same with the transition from 
 ordinary chemical action to the chemistry of albumen 
 which we call life. Within the sphere of life the changes 
 become less frequent and less remarkable. Therefore 
 Hegel must again correct Herr Duehring. 
 
 The idea of purpose furnishes Herr Duehring with his 
 conception of the transition to the organic world. This is 
 again borrowed from Hegel, who in his " logic " — teach- 
 ings of the concept — mingled with teachings of teleology 
 or of purpose, passes over from chemistry to life. 
 Whichever way we look we discover Herr Duehring to 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 95 
 
 be in possession of Hegelian lore which he gives forth 
 without any embarrassment as his own fundamental 
 philosophy. It would be too long a task to find out here 
 just how far the application of the ideas of purpose is 
 correctly stated and applied to the organic world. The 
 application of the Hegelian " inner purpose " at all events 
 is evident, that is, of a purpose which is imported into 
 nature not through a consciously acting third party, like 
 the wisdom of Providence, but which is inherent in mat- 
 ter itself, which among people who are not well versed 
 in philosophy proceeds to the unthinking supposition of a 
 conscious and all-wise agent; the same Herr Duehring 
 who breaks out into unmeasured moral indignation at the 
 least tendency towards spiritism on the part of other peo- 
 ple, tells us that " sex sensations are certainly mainly 
 directed towards the gratification which is bound up in 
 their exercise." He tells us moreover that " poor Na- 
 ture must always hold the objective world in order " 
 and it has besides to perform acts which require more 
 shbtlety from Nature than we usually attribute to her. 
 But nature knows not only why she does this and that. 
 She has not only her housemaid's duties to perform, she 
 has not only subtlety, which is a very pretty accomplish- 
 ment, in subjective conscious thought, she has also a will, 
 for " we must regard the additional natural desires which 
 occur, such as. feeding and propagation, not as directly 
 but as indirectly willed." We now arrive at a consciously 
 thinking and acting nature, and we therefore stand right 
 ,at the bridge, not indeed between the static and dynamic 
 but between pantheism and deism, or perhaps Herr 
 Duehring is pleased to indulge himself in a little " nat- 
 ural-philosophical half-poetry." 
 
 Impossible. All that the realistic philosophy has to 
 say on organic nature is limited to a war against this 
 
96 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 natural philosophical half-poesy against " Charlatanism 
 with its wanton superficialities and pseudo-scientific mys- 
 ticism, against the poetic features of Darwinism." 
 
 Darwin comes in for a share of blame chiefly because 
 he transferred the Malthusian theory of population from 
 political economy to natural science, because he is en- 
 tangled by his notions of breeding, so that his work is a 
 sort of unscientific half-poetic attack against design in 
 creation, and that the whole of Darwinism, after what 
 he has borrowed from Lamark has been deducted, is a 
 piece of brutality aimed against humanity. 
 
 Darwin had brought home with him as the result of 
 his scientific journeys the conclusion that species of plants 
 and animals are not fixed but are subject to variations. 
 In order to pursue this idea he entered upon experi- 
 ments in the breeding of plants and animals. Just for 
 this reason England has become a classic land. The 
 scientists of other countries, Germany, for example, have 
 nothing to offer comparable with England in this respecit. 
 Moreover, most of the conclusions belong to the last 
 century so that the establishment of the facts presented 
 few difficulties. Darwin found that this artificial breed- 
 ing produced differences in the species of plants and 
 animals greater than occur among those which are uni- 
 versally recognised as belonging to different species. 
 Therefore it was, up to a certain point, proved that spe- 
 cies can change and furthermore there was established 
 the possibility of a common ancestry for organisms 
 which partake of the characteristics of different species. 
 
 Darwin now examined the question whether there were 
 not in nature causes — which without the conscious in- 
 tention of the breeder — might in the course of time, bv 
 means of heredity, produce changes in the living animal 
 analogous to those produced by scientific breeding. 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 97 
 
 These causes he found in the disproportion between the 
 enormous number of germs made by nature and the small 
 number of beings which actually come to maturity. But 
 as the germ struggles for its own development there is 
 of necessity a consequent struggle for existence, which 
 not only shows itself directly in the wear and tear of the 
 body, but also as a struggle for space and light, as in 
 the case of plants. And it is evident that in 
 this fight those individuals have the best prospect of 
 coming to maturity and reproducing themselves which 
 possess certain qualities, perhaps insignificant, but ad- 
 vantageous in their fight for existence. There is a 
 tendency towards the inheritance of these individual 
 properties, and if they occur in several individuals of the 
 same species towards development in the direction once 
 taken, by virtue of the accumulated heredity, while the 
 individuals which are not possessed of these qualities 
 succumb more easily and little by little disappear in the 
 struggle for existence. . Thus a species naturally changes 
 by the survival of the fittest. 
 
 Against this theory of Darwin Herr Duehring urges 
 that the origin of the idea of the struggle for existence 
 is, as Darwin himself confessed, based on the views of 
 the political economist and theorist, Malthus, on the 
 population question, and he covers it with all the abuse 
 appropriate to the clerical Malthusian views on keeping 
 down the population. Now it happens, that Darwin 
 never said that the cause of the struggle for existence 
 theory was to be sought from Malthus. He only said 
 that his theories respecting the struggle for existence are 
 the theories of Malthus applied to the entire vegetable 
 and animal world. How great a blunder, Darwin made 
 when he sa naively accepted the teachings of Malthus 
 without examination may be seen from the fact that there 
 
98 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 is no need to employ the spectacles of Malthus in order 
 to detect the struggle for existence in nature, — the con- 
 tradiction between the innumerable mass of germs which 
 nature produces in such prodigality and the slight num- 
 ber which can manage to reach maturity, a contradiction 
 which resolves itself into an apparently grim fight for 
 existence. And with regard to the law of wages the 
 Malthusian doctrines are widely advertised and Ricardo 
 based his contentions upon them, — so the struggle for 
 existence in nature may find a standing even without the 
 Malthusian interpretation. Besides the organisms of 
 nature have their law of population, the establishment 
 of which would decide the theories of the development 
 of species. And who gave the decisive impetus in that 
 direction? Nobody but Darwin. 
 
 Herr Duehring is on his guard against entering upon 
 the positive side of this question. Instead he must again 
 find fault with the Struggle for existence. There can 
 be no argument about a struggle for existence between 
 plants and the genial eaters of plants " in a sufficiently 
 accurate sense the struggle for existence only occurs 
 within the sphere of brutality, in so far as nourishment 
 depends upon robbery and consumption." And after he 
 has reduced the concept struggle for existence to these 
 narrow limits he gives his wrath free play as regards 
 the brutality of this conception which he himself has 
 narrowed down to a brutal conception. But this moral 
 wrath simply reacts on Herr Duehring himself, the in- 
 ventor of this sort of struggle for existence. It is not 
 Darwin therefore who seeks among the lower animals 
 the " conditions of the operations of nature " (as a mat- 
 ter of fact Darwin would have included the whole of 
 organic nature in the struggle), but one of Herr Duehr- 
 ing's bugaboos. The expression " struggle for exist- 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 99 
 
 ence " in particular excites Herr Duehring's lofty moral 
 scorn. That this actually exists among plants every 
 meadow, every cornfield and every wood can show him. 
 We need not trouble about the name, whether one call it 
 " struggle for existence " or " lack of the conditions of 
 existence and want of mechanical realisation," but as to 
 how this fact operates as regards the maintenance or 
 transformation of species.. With regard to this Herr 
 Duehring persists in a characteristically stubborn silence. 
 We cannot trouble ourselves any more about natural se- 
 lection. 
 
 But " Darwinism produces its changes and differentia- 
 tions out of nothing." Darwin thoroughly understands 
 that he is engaged with the causes which have produced 
 changes in individuals and in the second place he is en- 
 gaged with the mode in which such individual differen- 
 tiations tend to mark off a race, a genus, or a species. 
 Darwin moreover was less occupied in discovering- these 
 causes, which up to the present are either entirely un- 
 known or on which there is only general information, 
 than in discovering a rational form in which to establish 
 their reality, to embrace their permanent significance. 
 But Darwin ascribed too wide a reach to his discovery 
 in this that he made it an exclusive means of variation 
 in species and neglected the causes of individual dif- 
 ferentiations from the general form. This mistake how- 
 ever is common to most people whp make a step for- 
 wards. Next, if Darwin produces his changes in in- 
 dividual types out of nothing and thereby excludes the 
 wisdom of the breeder, the breeder on his part must not 
 only display his wisdom but he must produce out of 
 nothing real changes in plant and animal forms. But 
 who has given the impetus to the investigation as to 
 
lOO LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 whence these variations and differentiations proceed? 
 It is again no one but Darwin. 
 
 Lately the conception of natural selection has been 
 broadened, by Haeckel, in. particular, and the variation 
 of species has been shown to be the result of actual 
 change owing to adaptation and inheritance, whereby 
 adaptation is considered as the source of variations and 
 heredity as the conserving element in the process. Even 
 this is not correct in Herr Duehring's eyes. " Peculiar 
 adaptation to the circumstances of life as they are of- 
 fered or withheld by nature supposes impulses and facts 
 which answer to the conception. Hence adaptation is 
 only apparent and actual causality does not elevate it- 
 self above the lowest steps of physical, chemical and 
 plant physiology." - It is again the name which provokes 
 Herr Duehring. But how does he deal with the matter ? 
 The question is if such changes do take place in the 
 species of organic beings or not. And again Herr Dueh- 
 ring has no reply. 
 
 " If a plant in the course of its growth takes a direc- 
 tion by which it gets the most light the result is nothing 
 but a combination of physical forces and chemical agents, 
 and if we are to call it an adaptation, not metaphorically 
 but strictly, confusion is certain to arise in the motion." 
 This man is so exacting with other people because he is 
 quite well acquainted with the intentions of nature and 
 speaks of the subtlety of nature, even of its will. There 
 is confusion, indeed, but with whom, with Haeckel or 
 with Herr Duehring? 
 
 And the confusion is not only spiritual but logical. 
 We have seen that Herr Duehring put forth all his ef- 
 forts to make the purpose idea in nature real. " The 
 relation of means and end does not by any means show 
 a conscious intention." But what is adaptation without 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 101 
 
 conscious intention, without any intrusion of design of 
 which he complains so loudly, but an unconscious tele- 
 ology ? 
 
 If the color of tree frogs and leaf eating insects is 
 as a rule green and that of beasts that inhabit the desert 
 sandy-yellow, and that of polar animals white, they have 
 certainly not come into possession of this coloring in- 
 tentionally or through any kind of mental process, on 
 the contrary the coloring can only be explained by 
 means of the operation of physical substances and chem- 
 ical agents. And yet it cannot be denied that by these 
 colors these animals are particularly adapted to the con- 
 ditions in which they are and it is certain that they are 
 by their means rendered less visible to their enemies. 
 Just of a similar nature are the organs by which certain 
 plants seize and consume certain insects (the means be- 
 ing on their under side, suited to this purpose and 
 adapted to this end). Now if Herr Duehring insists 
 that the adaptation must be realised through the opera- 
 tion of thought, he only says that the purpose must be 
 carried out through mental operation, must be conscious 
 and intentional. Thus again, just as in the philosophy 
 of realism we arrive at the Creator with a purpose, at 
 God. Formerly this kind of declaration was called 
 '' deism " and Herr Duehring says that we had not much 
 regard for it, but it now appears that- the world has 
 gone backwards in this respect also. 
 
 From adaptation we come to heredity and here ac- 
 cording to Herr Duehring Darwinism is quite out. The 
 whole organic world, Darwin explained, came from a 
 single germ, is^ so to speak, the brood of a single be- 
 ing. Independent similar, products of nature accord- 
 ing to Darwin do not exist without heredity and his 
 retrogressive philosophy must come to a full stop when 
 
I02 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 the end of the thread of ancestry is reached, or the orig- 
 inal vegetable form." 
 
 The statement that Darwin traced all existing organ- 
 isms from one original germ is to put it politely a piece 
 of pure imagination on the part of Herr Duehring. 
 Darwin says distinctly on the last page of the Origin 
 of Species, Sixth Edition, that he regards all living be- 
 ings not as separate creations but as the descendants in 
 a direct line from some fewer beings and Haeckel makes 
 a distinct advance on this ascribes " an entirely dis- 
 tinct source for plants and another for the animal king- 
 dom " and on and between both of them " a number of 
 original stems each of which has developed independ- 
 ently from one single primary monistic form." (His- 
 tory of Creation page 397.) This original form of life 
 Herr Duehring discovers solely to bring it into contempt 
 by paralleling it with the first man according to Jewish 
 tradition, Adam. Here, unfortunately for Herr Dueh- 
 ring, he does not know how this original Jew turns out, 
 according to Smith's Assyrian discoveries to have been 
 the original Semite, and that the entire Biblical story of 
 the Creation and the Flood has been shown to have been 
 taken from a legendary store common to the Jews, Baby- 
 lonians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. 
 
 It is brought forward as a severe and irrefutable re- 
 proach to Darwin that he is at an end where the thread 
 of descent fails him. Unfortunately the whole, of our 
 science deserves the same reproach. When the thread 
 of descent fails it it is " at an end." ^It has not yet come 
 to the point of creating organic beings without an an- 
 cestry, not even once has it been able to make simple 
 protoplasm or other albuminous bodily forms out of the 
 chemical elements. It can only say therefore with any 
 any certainty regarding the origin of life, that it must 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IO3 
 
 have come about by a chemical process. But perhat)s 
 the philosophy of realism can give us some assistance 
 here since it is engaged with independent organic natural 
 products, without any descent one from another. How 
 can these come into being? By original creation? But 
 up to the present not even the most audacious advocates 
 of spontaneous generation have claimed to create in this 
 way anything except bacteria, fungi, or other very ele- 
 mentary organisms, but not insects, birds, fish or mam- 
 mals. If these homogeneous products of nature — it 
 is understood for all this discussion that they are or- 
 ganic — are not related through descent, they or their 
 ancestors, then " where the thread of descent breaks " 
 they must have been placed in the world by a separate act 
 of creation, and this again requires a creator, what we 
 call " deism." 
 
 Herr Duehring further explains that it was a piece 
 of superficiality on the part of Darwin to make the mere 
 fact of the sex-composition of qualities the foundation 
 for the existence of these qualities." Here we have 
 again a piece of pure imagination on the part of our 
 profound philosopher. On the contrary Darwin says 
 that natural selection has to do ohly with the maintenance 
 of variations and not with their origin. This new sup- 
 position however of things which Darwin did not say 
 serves to assist us to this deep idea of Duehring. " If a 
 principle of individual variation had been sought in the 
 inner scheme of creation it would have been an en- 
 tirely rational idea. For it is natural to unite the idea 
 of universal generation with that of sex propagation, 
 and to regard the so-called original creation from the 
 higher point of view, not as absolutely antagonistic to 
 reproduction but even as reproduction itself." And the 
 
104 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 man who could write this is not ashamed to reproach 
 Hegel with writing jargon. 
 
 Let us call a halt to the vexatious and contradictory 
 babble with which Herr Duehring proclaims his wrath 
 against the advance given to science by the theory of 
 Darwin. Neither Darwin nor his followers among the 
 natural scientists have any idea of belittling Lamark's 
 tremendous services, in fact they are the very people 
 who first restored his fame. But we are unable to ig- 
 nore the fact that in the time of Lamark science was still 
 far from supplied with competent material to enable it 
 to answer the question of the origin of species other 
 than in a prophetic or, as it were anticipatory, manner. 
 In addition to the enormous amount of material in the 
 realm of general, as well as of that of anatomical, botany 
 and zoology, accumulated since that time, two entirely 
 new sciences have since come into existence — the in- 
 vestigation of the development of plant and animal 
 germs (embryology), and the investigation of the or- 
 ganic survivals in the earth's crust which still remain. 
 There is a distinct similarity between the steps in the. 
 development of the organic germ to mature organism, 
 and the successive steps by which plants and animals 
 succeed each other in the history of the world. It is 
 just this similarity which has placed the evolution theory 
 on its most secure foundations. The theory of evolution 
 is however still very young and it is beyond question 
 that upon further investigation the rigid Darwinian ideas 
 upon the origin of species will be considerably modified. 
 
 But what has the realist philosophy of a positive nature 
 to contribute with respect to the evolution of organic 
 life ? " The variation of species is an acceptable suppo- 
 sition, but there exists, in addition, the independent order 
 of the products of nature belonging to the same species, 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY I05 
 
 without any intervention of descent." According to this 
 we are to conclude that products of unlike species, that 
 is species which vary, are descended from one another, 
 but those of similar species not. But even this is not 
 altogether correct, for he ventures to say of tlie varying 
 species, " The part played by descent is on the contrary 
 a very secondary activity of nature." There is hered- 
 ity, then, but it is only to be reckoned as a factor of 
 the second class. Let us be glad that heredity of which 
 Herr Duehring has said so much that is evil and mys- 
 terious is at least let in by the back door. It is just the 
 same with natural selection, since after all his moral in- 
 dignation with respect to the struggle for existence by 
 means of which natural selection fulfils itself he sud- 
 denly exclaims, " The most important constituent is to 
 be found in the conditions of life and cosmic conditions, 
 while natural selection as set forth by Darwin may be 
 considered as secondary." Natural selection still exists, 
 even if a factor of the second class, like the struggle for 
 existence, and the clerical malthusian surplus-population 
 , theory. That is all, for the rest Herr Duehring refers 
 us to Lamark. 
 
 Finally, he warns against misuse of the terms meta- 
 morphosis and evolution. Metamorphosis, he says, is a 
 very obscure notion, and the concept of evolution is only 
 admissible in so far as a law of evolution can be really 
 proved. Instead of either of these expressions we should 
 employ the term " composition " and then everything 
 would be all right. It is the same old story over again, 
 Herr Duehring is satisfied if we change the names. If 
 we speak of the evolution of the chicken in the egg we 
 give rise to confusion because we have only an incom- 
 plete knowledge of the law of evolution. But if we 
 speak of its " composition " everything becomes clear. 
 
Io6 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 Wc must therefore say no longer " this child is grow- 
 ing nicely " but, " he composes himself splendidly," and 
 we congratulate Herr Duehring upon the fact that he is 
 not only a peer of the author of the Niebelungen Ring 
 in his opinion of himself but in his own particular capa- 
 city is also a composer of the future. 
 
Organic World (Conclusion) 
 
 " One reflects upon our natural philosophical portion 
 of positive knowledge in order to fix it relatively to all 
 one's scientific hypotheses. Next in importance come all 
 the actual acquisitions of mathematics as well as the 
 leading principles of exact science in mechanics, physics 
 and chemistry and particularly the scientific results in 
 physiology, zoology, and antiquarian investigation." 
 
 Herr Duehring speaks in this confident and decided 
 fashion with respect to the mathematical and scientific 
 scholarship of Herr Duehring. One cannot detect in 
 its meager shape and in its scanty and audacious results 
 the extent of positive knowledge which lies behind. 
 Every time the oracle is consulted for a definite state- 
 ment as regards physics or chemistry we get nothing as 
 regards physics but the equation which expresses the 
 mechanical equivalent of heat, and concerning chemistry 
 only this that all bodies are divisible into elements and 
 combinations of elements. He who can speak as Dueh- 
 ring does about " gravitating atoms " shows at once that 
 he is quite at a loss to understand the difference between 
 an atom and a molecule. Atoms, of course, exist, not 
 with respect to gravitation or any other physical or me- 
 chanical form of motion, but only as concerns chemical 
 action. And if the last chapter on organic nature is 
 read, the empty, self-contradictory, assertive, oracular, 
 stupid, circuitous absolute nothingness of the final result 
 
 107 
 
I08 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 lead one to the conclusion that Herr Duehring talks about 
 things of which he knows very little and this conclusion 
 becomes a certainty when we come to his proposal in the 
 course of his writing on organic life (biology) to use the 
 term " composition " instead of evolution. He who can 
 make such a suggestion as that gives evidence that he 
 is not acquainted with the building up of organic bodies. 
 All organic bodies, the very lowest excepted, devebp 
 from small cells by the increment of visible pieces of 
 albumen with a central cell. The cell generally develops 
 an outer skin and the contents are more or less fluid. 
 The lowest cell-bodies develop from one cell; the enor- 
 mous majority of organic beings are many-celled and 
 among -the lower forms these take on similar, and among 
 the higher forms greater variations of, groupings and 
 activities.' In the human body for example are bones, 
 muscles, nerves, sinews, ligaments, cartilage, skin, all 
 either made up of cells or originating in them. But for 
 all organic bodies, from the amoeba which is a simple 
 and for the most part unprotected piece of albumen with 
 a cell centre in the midst to man, and from the smallest 
 one-celled desmidian to the highest developed plant, the 
 mode is one and the same by which the cells propagate 
 themselves, that is by division. The cell centre is first 
 laced across its midst, the lacing which separates the 
 centre into two knobs becomes stronger and stronger 
 and at last they become separated and two cell centres 
 are formed. The same occurrence takes place in the cell 
 itself. Each of the cell centres becomes the middle point 
 of a collection of cell stufif which by knitting ever closer 
 becomes combined with the other,' and finally both of 
 them part and live on as separate cells. Through such 
 repeated cell divisions the full sized animal gradually de- 
 velops from the germ of the animal egg after fructifi- 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY ICQ 
 
 cation and the substitution of used up cells in the full 
 grown animal is brought about similarly. To call such 
 a process " composition " and to speak of the term 
 " evolution " as a purely imaginary term belongs to one 
 who does not know anything of the matter, hard as it is 
 to imagine such ignorance at this date. 
 
 We have still somewhat to say with respect to Herr 
 Duehring's views of life in general. Elsewhere he sets 
 forth the following statement with respect to life. 
 " Even the inorganic world is a self-regulated system 
 but one may undertake to speak of life in the proper 
 sense first when the organs and the circulation of matter 
 through special separate channels from a central point 
 to another germ collection of a minor formation begin." 
 
 If life begins where the separate organs begin then 
 we must hold all Haeckel's protozoa (Protistenreich) 
 and probably many others as dead ; all organisms at least 
 up to those composed of one cell and those included are 
 not capable of life. If the means of circulation of mat- 
 ter through dififerent channels is the distinguishing mark 
 of life we must place outside of this definition all the 
 upper classes of the colenterata entirely, with the ex- 
 ception of the medusae, and therefore all the polypi and 
 other plant animals are also to be considered as being 
 outside the class of living creatures. And if the cir- 
 culation of matter through different canals from an in- 
 ner point is the distinguishing characteristic of life we 
 must reckon all animals as dead which either have no 
 heart or several hearts. Besides these there belong also 
 to this category all worms, starfish and ringed creatures 
 (annuloids and annulous according to Huxley's defi- 
 nition) a portion of the shell fish, crabs, and finally a 
 vertebrate animal, the lancelet (amphioxus) and all 
 plants. 
 
no LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 When Herr Duehring therefore undertakes to dis- 
 tinguish life narrowly and strictly, he gives four mutually 
 contradictory modes of distinguishing life, one of which 
 condemns not only the whole of plant life but about half 
 the animal kingdom to eternal death. No one can ac- 
 cuse him of having deceived us when he promised us 
 peculiar results based on individual ideas. 
 
 In another place he says " There is a simple funda- 
 mental type irtv nature belonging to all organisms from 
 the lowest to the highest " and this type is to be met " in 
 the subordinate movements of the most undeveloped 
 plants. " This is again an absolutely false statement. 
 The simplest type in the whole of organic nature is the 
 cell, and it lies universally at the foundation of the 
 highest organisms. On the other hand there is a sub- 
 stance among the lowest organisms lower even than the 
 cell, the protomoeba, a single piece of undifferentiated 
 protoplasm, without any differentiation, a complete series 
 of monads and the entire class of siphoneae. All of 
 these are connected with the higher organisms only by 
 virtue of the fact that protoplasm is its substantial foun- 
 dation, and that they fulfill the functions of protoplasm, 
 that is they live and die. 
 
 Further Herr Duehring tells us " physiologically the 
 concept of existence consists in this, that it embraces a 
 single nerve apparatus. Sensation is therefore the char- 
 acteristic of all animal organisms that is the capacity of 
 conscious subjective recognition of circumstances. The 
 sharp line of differentiation between plants and animals 
 consists in the leap to sensation. This distinguishing line 
 cannot any more be abolished by known forms of tran- 
 sition than it can be brought into existence by the logical 
 necessity of externally distinguishable characteristics." 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY III 
 
 And further " Plants are totally and eternally without 
 sensation and are devoid of the faculty for it." 
 
 In the first place Hegel says that " sensation is the 
 specific differentiation, the distinguishing mark of the 
 animal." Thus one of Hegel's erudite statements be- 
 comes an indubitable truth of the last instance merely 
 by being copied into Herr Duehring's book. 
 
 In the second place we now arrive for the first time 
 at the forms of transition between animals and plants. 
 That these intermediate forms exist, that there are or- 
 ganisms concerning which we are unable to say "flatly 
 whether they are plants or animals, that we are therefore 
 unable to fix accurately the frontiers between plant and 
 animal life, all these things make Herr Duehring logically 
 anxious to fix a decisively distinguishing line, which in 
 the next breath he declares cannot be thoroughly relied 
 on. But there is no need for us to go to the doubtful 
 region; intermediate between plants and animals are 
 sensitive plants which at the least contact fold their 
 leaves or close their petals. Are insect eating plants ut- 
 terly without sensation? Even Herr Duehring cannot 
 make such an assertion without indulging in " unscien- 
 tific half-poetry." 
 
 In the third place Herr Duehring is again giving free 
 rein to his imagination when he says that sensation is 
 psychologically existent, even when the nerve apparatus 
 is exceedingly simple. This is found regularly among 
 reptiles yet Herr Duehring is the first to say that they 
 have no sensation because they have no nerves. Sen- 
 sation is not necessarily bound up with nerves but it 
 is bound up with some albuminous substance the true na- 
 ture of which has not yet been discovered. 
 
 In addition, the biological knowledge of Herr Dueh- 
 ring becomes exceedingly evident in that he is not 
 
112 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ashamed to fling at Darwin the question do animals de- 
 velop from plants? so that it is a question whether he 
 is more ignorant with regard to plants or animals. 
 
 Of life in general Herr Duehring can only tell us 
 " The change in the form of matter which fulfills itself 
 by plastic constructive arrangement remains a distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of the individual life-process.'" 
 
 That is all that we learn of life and with respect to 
 the plastic creative arrangemeiit we sink knee deep in the 
 nonsense of Duehring's jargon. If we want to learn 
 what lif^ is we shall have to look at the problem a little 
 more closely on our own account. 
 
 That organic change in matter is the most universal 
 and distinctive evidence of life has been declared by 
 physiological chemists and chemical physiologists times 
 without number during the last thirty years and. their 
 utterances are translated by Herr Duehring into his own 
 clear and elegant language. But to define life as an or- 
 ganic change of matter is simply to define life as life, for 
 organic change of matter, or change of matter with 
 plastic creative arrangement is a statement which must 
 itself be explained by life, and the explanation in its 
 turn by the difference between organic and inorganic, 
 that is between that which is alive and that which is not 
 alive. So that with this explanation we do not get at 
 the problem. 
 
 Organic change, as such, is frequently found where 
 life does not exist. There are whole series of processes 
 in chemistry, which by the proper combination of the 
 elements, produce again their own conditions, so that 
 thereby a certain body is the creator of a process. Thus 
 in the manufacture of sulphuric acid by the burning 
 of. sulphur, there is created in this process sulphuric 
 dioxide SOj, and if one add steam and nitric acid there- 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY II3 
 
 to, the sulphuric dioxide takes up the water and the oxy- 
 gen and becomes Hj SOi. Nitric acid gives off oxy- 
 gen and becomes nitric oxide, this nitric oxide simul- 
 taneously takes tip new oxygen from the atmosphere and 
 is transformed into a higher oxide of nitrogen and from 
 this acid sulphuric dioxide is again given off and made 
 by the same process, so that, theoretically, an infinitely 
 small amount of nitric acid should be effective to trans- 
 form an unlimited quantity of sulphuric dioxide, oxygen 
 and water into sulphuric acid. Change in matter regu- 
 larly occurs through the passing of fluids through dead 
 organic and inorganic membranes as in the artificial cells 
 of Traube. It therefore appears that there is no prog- 
 ress by the way of organic change for the quality of 
 organic change which was to explain life must itself be 
 explained by life. We must therefore seek it elsewhere. 
 
 Life is a mode of existence of protoplasm and con- 
 sists essentially in the constant renewal of the chemical 
 constituents of this substance. Protoplasm is here un- 
 derstood in the modern chemical sense and comprises 
 under this name all substances analogous to the white 
 of an egg, otherwise called proteiri substances. The 
 name is not satisfactory, for the ordinary White of egg 
 plays the least active role of all transformed substances, 
 sirv:e,.it only serves as mere nourishment for the yolk, for 
 the self-developing germ. As long however as so little 
 is known of the chemical constituents of protoplasm the 
 name is better tl?an any other because more inclusive. 
 
 Whenever we discqver life we also find it bound up 
 with protoplasm, and when we find a piece of protoplasm 
 not in solution there we find also life, without exception. 
 Doubtless the presence of other chemical constituents is 
 necessary to a living body, to produce the various dif- 
 ferentiations of these elements of life. They are nc/' 
 
114 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 necessary to life in itself, hence they enter as food and 
 become transformed into protoplasm. The lowest forms 
 of life with which we are acquainted are nothing but 
 simple pieces of protoplasm and yet they have all the 
 appearance of living objects. 
 
 But in what consist these signs of life which are com- 
 mon to all living objects? In this, that the protoplasm 
 takes from its surroundings other matter suitable to itself 
 and assimilates it while other former portions of the body 
 become decomposed and are thrown off. Other things, 
 not living bodies, decompose or make combinations, but 
 cease thereby to be what they were. The rock worn by 
 atmospheric action is no longer rock, the metal which 
 becomes oxidised goes oflf in rust. But what causes the 
 destruction of dead bodies is the essential of the exist- 
 ence of living protoplasm. From the very moment 
 when the unbroken interchange in the constituents of 
 protoplasm ceases, the continual interchange of receiv- 
 ing and throwing off, from that moment the protoplas- 
 mic substance itself ceases, becomes decomposed, that is, 
 dies. 
 
 Life, the mode of existence of protoplasmic substance, 
 therefore consists in this, that at one and the same mo- 
 ment it is itself and something else, and this is not the 
 result of a process to which it is compelled by external 
 agency, since this may happen also with objects which 
 are dead. On the contrary life, which is change of mat- 
 ter, is consequent upon nourishment and throwing off, 
 is a self-fulfilling process inherent in its medium, pro- 
 toplasm, without which it cannot exist. Hence, it fol- 
 lows that if chemistry should ever discover how to make 
 protoplasm artificially, this protoplasm must show some 
 signs of life, even if very insignificant. It is, of course, 
 
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 115 
 
 doubtful if chemistry will discover the proper food for 
 this protoplasm at the same time as the protoplasm. 
 
 Through the changes in matter produced by nourish- 
 ment and throwing off, as actual functions of the pro- 
 toplasm, and through its own plasticity, proceed all the 
 other most simple factors of life, sensibihty which con- 
 sists in the interchange between the protoplasm and its 
 food, contractibility which shows itself at a very low 
 stage in the consumption of food, possibility of growth 
 which is shown in the lowest stages of development by 
 splitting, and internal motion Vvfithout which neither the 
 consumption nor assimilation of food is possible. 
 
 Our definition of life is, of course, very incomplete 
 since in order to include all the widely differing mani- 
 festations of life it must confine itself to the most uni- 
 versal and simple. Definitions are of little scientific 
 worth. In order to determine what life is we must ex- 
 amine all forms of its manifestation from the lowest to 
 the highest. For ordinary use such definitions are very 
 convenient and in a certain sense indispensable, and they 
 can do no harrr? as long as their inevitable deficiencies 
 are not forgotten. 
 
 (The remainder pf this section simply teases Herr 
 Duehring.) 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MORALS AND LAW 
 
 Eternal Truths 
 
 We refrain from offering examples of the hodge 
 podge of stupidity and sham solemnity with which Herr 
 Duehring regales his readers for fifty full pages as 
 fundamental knowledge on the elements of conscious- 
 ness. We merely quote the following: "He who 
 merely conceives of thought through the medium of 
 speech has never understood what is signified by ab- 
 stract and true thought." Hence, animals are the most 
 abstract and true thinkers, for their thought is never 
 obscured by the importunate interference of speech. 
 With regard to Herr Duehring's thought in particular, it* 
 may be perceived that they are but little suited to speech 
 and that the German language in particular is quite in- 
 adequate to express them. 
 
 The fourth part of his book, however, possesses some 
 redeeming features, for here and there it offers us some 
 comprehensible notions on the subject' of morals and law 
 in spite of the tedious and involved rhetoric. Right at 
 the beginning we are invited to take a journey to the 
 other heavenly bodies. Thus, the elements of morality 
 are to be found among superhuman beings among whom 
 exist an understanding of things and a regular system 
 of the harmonious conduct of life. Our share m suchi 
 conclusions must then be small, but there always remains 
 a beneficent and enlarging idea in picturing that even in 
 other spheres individual and social life follows one pur- 
 
 ii6 
 
MORALS AND LAW 117 
 
 pose which cannot be escaped or evaded by any intelU- 
 gent living creature." 
 
 There is good reason for our altering the position of 
 the statement that Herr Duehring's truth is good for 
 all possible worlds from the close to the beginning of 
 the chapter. When once the correctness of Herr Dueh- 
 ring's notions of morals and law have been established 
 so as to apply to all world the beneficent notion may 
 easily be extended to all time. Here again, however, 
 we run across another final truth of last instance. The 
 moral universe has " just as well as that of universal 
 knowledge its general principles and simple elements." 
 Moral principles are beyond history and the national dis- 
 tinctions of to-day . . . the various truths from 
 which in thes) course of development the fuller moral 
 consciousness, and, so to speak, conscience itself is de- 
 rived, can, as far as their origin is investigated, claim 
 a similar acceptation and extent to that of mathematics 
 and its applications. Real truths are immutable and it 
 is folly to conceive of correct knowledge as liable to the 
 attacks o^ time or of change in material conditions. 
 " Hence the certainty of sound knowledge and the suf- 
 ficiency of general acceptation forbid to doubt the abso- 
 lute correctness of the fundamental principles of knowl- 
 edge. . . . Continual doubt is in itself an evidence 
 of weakness and is merely the expression of a barren 
 condition of confusion, which although conscious of pos- 
 sessing nothing still seeks to maintain the appearance 
 of holding on to something. Regarding morals, it de- 
 nies universal principles with respect to the manifold 
 variations in moral ideas owing to geographical and his- 
 torical conditions, and thinks that with the admission of 
 the unavoidable necessity of evil and wickedness there is 
 no need for it to acknowledge the truth and efficiency 
 
Il8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 of moral impulses. This mordant scepticism which is 
 not directed against any false doctrine in particular, but 
 against human capacity to recognise morality resolves 
 itself finally into nothingness, it is no more than mere 
 nihilism. It flatters itself that it can attain supremacy 
 and give free rein to unprincipled pleasures by destroy- 
 ing moral ideas and creating chaos. It is greatly, de- 
 ceived, how^ever, if merely pointing at the inevitable fate 
 of the intellect with respect to error and truth is suf- 
 ficient to show by analogy that natural liability to error 
 does not exclude the arriving at a correct decision but 
 rather tends to that end." 
 
 Up to now we have not commented upon Herr Dueh- 
 ring's pompous opinions on final truths of the last in- 
 stance, sovereignty of the will, absolute certainty of 
 knowledge, and so forth, until the matter could first be 
 brought to an issue. Up to this point the investigation 
 has been useful to show how far the separate assertions 
 of the philosophy of realism had " sovereign validity " 
 and " unrestricted claim to truth " but we now come to 
 the question if any and what product of human knowl- 
 edge can have in particular " sovereign validity " and 
 " unrestricted claims to truth." If I speak of human 
 knowledge I do not do so as an affront to the dwellers 
 in other worlds whom I have not the honor to know, but 
 only because animals have knowledge also, not sovereign, 
 however. The dog recognises a divinity in his master, 
 who may, however, be a great fool. 
 
 " Is human thought sovereign? " Before we can an- 
 .swer " yes " or " no " we must first examine what hu- 
 man thought is. Is it the thought of an individual man? 
 No. It exists only as the individual thoughts of many 
 millions of men, past, present and to come. If I 
 now say, having comprehended the thought of all men 
 
MORALS AND LAW II9 
 
 in the future also under my concept, that it is able to 
 understand the entire universe, if man only lasts long 
 enough, and the organs of perception are unlimited, and 
 the objects to be comprehended have no limits upon their 
 comprehensibility, my statement is banal and barren. 
 The most valuable result of such a conclusion would be 
 to cause in us a tremendous distrust of present day 
 knowledge. Because, to all appearance, we are just 
 standing at the threshold of human history and the gen- 
 erations which will correct us will be much more nu- 
 merous than those whose knowledge — often with little 
 enough regard, — we ourselves correct. Herr Duehring 
 himself explains the necessity of consciousness, knowl- 
 edge and perception only becoming apparent in a col- 
 lection of separate individuals. We can only apply the 
 word sovereignty to the thought of these individuals in 
 so far as we do not know of any force which can de- 
 feat thought. But we all know that there is no signifi- 
 cance to nor power of interpretation of the sovereign 
 power of the knowledge of the thought of each individ- 
 ual, and, according to our experience, there is much 
 more that requires improvement and correction in it than 
 not. 
 
 In other words, the sovereignty of thought is realised 
 in a number of highly unsovereign men capable of think- 
 ing, the knowledge which has unlimited pretensions to 
 truth is realised in a number of relative blunders ; neither 
 the one nor the other can be fully realised except through 
 an endless eternity of human existence. 
 
 We have here again the same contradiction as above 
 between the necessary, as an absolute conceived charac- 
 teristic of human thought, and its reality in the very 
 limited thinking single individual, a contradiction which 
 can only be solved in the endless progression of the 
 
I20 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 human race, that is endless as far as we are concerned. 
 In this sense human thought is just as sovereign as not 
 — sovereign, and its possibility of knowledge just as 
 unlimited as limited. It is sovereign and unlimited as 
 regards its nature, its significance, its possibilities, its 
 historical end, it is not sovereign and limited with re- 
 spect to individual expression and its actuality at any 
 particular time. 
 
 It is just the same with eternal truths. If mankind 
 only operated with eternal truths and with thought which 
 possessed a sovereign significance and unlimited claims 
 to truth, mankind would have arrived at a point where 
 the eternity of thought becomes realised in actuality and 
 possibility. Thus the famous miracle of the enumerated 
 innumerable would be realised. 
 
 But what about those truths which are so well estab- 
 lished that to doubt them is to be, as it were, crazy? 
 That twice two is four, that the three angles of a triangle 
 are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France, 
 that a man will die of hunger if he does not receive food, 
 etc? Do we not perceive then that there are eternal 
 truths, final truths of last instance? Quite so. We can 
 divide the entire field of knowledge in the old-fashioned 
 way into three great divisions. The first includes all the 
 sciences which are concerned i with inanimate nature and 
 which can be treated mathematically, more or less — 
 mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics and chemis- 
 try. If one like to use big words to express simple 
 things, it may be said that certain results of these sci- 
 ences are eternal truths, final truths 'of last instance, 
 whence they are called the exact sciences. But all the 
 results are by no means of this character. With the in- 
 troduction of variable quantities and the extension oi 
 the variability to the infinitely small and the infinitely 
 
MORALS AND LAW 121 
 
 large, mathematics, otherwise erect, meets with its fall, it 
 has eaten of the apple of knowledge and there has been 
 opened up to it the path of limitless progress as well 
 as that of error. The virgin condition of absolute pu- 
 rity, the undisturbable certainty of all mathematics has 
 vanished forever, a period of controversy has intervened, 
 and we have now arrived at the state of affairs in which 
 most people carry on the operations of multiplication and 
 division not because they really understand what they are 
 engaged in, but from mere belief because the operation 
 has so far always given correct results. Astronomy and 
 mechanics, physics and chemistry are in a still more con- 
 fused state, and hypotheses crowd one another thick- as a 
 swarm of bees. It cannot be otherwise. In physics 
 we investigate the movements of molecules, in chemistry 
 , the development of molecules from atoms, and if the 
 theory of light waves should not be correct we have no 
 absolute knowledge that we even see these interesting 
 things. The lapse of time produces a very thin crop of 
 final truths of last instajjce. In geology we are in a still 
 more embarrassing situation for we are here involved 
 in the study of preceding epochs in which, as a matter of 
 fact, neither we ourselves nor any other human being 
 ever existed. Here there is much labor spent in the har- 
 vesting of truths of last 'instance, and they are a scanty 
 crop withal. 
 
 The second division of knowledge is occupied in the 
 investigation of living organisms. In this field the 
 changes and causalities are so complex that not only does 
 the solution of each question bring about the rise of an 
 unlimited number of new questions, but the solution of 
 each of these, separate new questions depends upon 
 years, frequently centuries, of investigation, and can then 
 be only partially completed. So that the need of sys- 
 
122 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 tematic arrangement of the various interrelations contin- 
 ually surrounds the final truths of the last instance with 
 a prolific and spreading growth of hypotheses. Look at 
 the long succession of progressive steps from Galen to 
 Malpighi necessary to establish correctly so simple a 
 thing as the circulation of the blood of mammals, yet 
 how little we know of the origin of blood corptiscles and 
 how many mistakes we make in, for example, rationally 
 connecting the symptoms and cause of a disease. Be- 
 sides there are frequently discoveries like those of the 
 cell which compel us to entirely revise all hitherto firmly 
 established truth of thp last instance in biology, and to 
 lay numbers of such truths aside for good and all. He 
 who would therefore in this science undertake the procla- 
 mation of absolute and immutable truths must be con- 
 tent with such platitudes as the following : " All men 
 must die; all female maminals have mammary glands, 
 etc." He will not even be able to say that the greater 
 animals digest their food by means of the stomach and 
 bowels and not with the head because the centralised 
 system of nerves in the head is not adapted to digestion. 
 But things are worse with regard to final truths of 
 last instance in the third group of sciences — the his- 
 torical. These are concerned with the conditions of hu- 
 man life, social conditions, forms of law and the state 
 with their idealistic superstructure of philosophy, re- 
 ligion, art, etc., in their historic succession and in their 
 present day manifestations. In organic nature we have 
 at least to do with a succession of regular phenomena 
 which regularly repeat themselves as far as our imme- 
 diate observation goes, within very wide limits. Organic 
 species have remained on the whole unaltered since the 
 time of Aristotle. In social history, on the other hand, 
 repetitions of conditions are the exception, not the rule, 
 
MORALS AND LAW 123 
 
 directly we leave behind the prehistoric conditions of 
 humanity, the stone-age, so-called. Where such repeti- 
 tions do occur, moreover, they never recur under pre- 
 cisely similar conditions, as for example the occurrence 
 of early tribal communism among all peoples anterior 
 to civilisation and the form of its break up. As re- 
 gards human history, then, as far as science is concerned, 
 we are at a greater disadvantage than in biology. Fur- 
 thermore, when the intimate relations existing between 
 a social and political phenomenon come to be recognised 
 it is not, as a rule, perceived until the conditions are 
 actually on the way to decay. Knowledge is therefore 
 entirely relative, since it is limited to a given people and 
 a given epoch, and their nature under transitory social 
 and political forms, when it examines relations and forms 
 conclusions. He who therefore is after final truths of 
 last instance, pure and immutable, will only manage to 
 catch flat phrases and the most arrant commonplaces, 
 like these — man cannot, generally speaking, live with- 
 out working; up to the present men have for the most 
 part been divided into masters and servants; Napoleon 
 died on May 5th, 1821, and things of that sort. 
 
 It is worth noting that in. this department of knowl- 
 edge pretended final truths of last instance are met with 
 most frequently. Only the person who wishes to show 
 that there are eternal truth, eternal morality, and eternal 
 justice in human history, and that these are similar in 
 scope and application to those of mathematics, will pro- 
 claim that twice two is four and that birds have beaks 
 and the like to be eternal truths. We can also certainly 
 rely upon the same friend of humanity taking the oppor- 
 tunity to explain that all former inventors of eternal 
 [truths have been more or less asses or charlatans, that 
 they have been circumscribed by error and have made 
 
124 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 mistakes. Tlie fact of their error, however, is natural 
 and proves the existence of the truth, and that it can be 
 
 _ reached, and the newly arisen prophet has a ready-to- 
 hand stock of final truths of last instance, eternal law 
 and eternal justice. This has happened hundreds, nay, 
 thousands of times, so that it is a wonder that men are 
 still sufficiently credulous to believe it not only of others, 
 but 'even of themselves. Here we find a prophet clad 
 in the armour of righteousness who proclaims in the old- 
 fashioned way that whoever else may deny there is still 
 one left to declare final truths of last instance. Denial, 
 nay, doubt even, is a weakness, barren confusion, mole- 
 like scepticism, \vorse than blank nihilism, confusion 
 worse confounded and other little amiabilities of this 
 sort. As with all prophets, there is no scientific inves- 
 
 ) tigation, but merely off-hand condemnation. 
 
 We might have made mention of the sciences which 
 invfestigate the laws of human thought, logic and dialec- 
 tics. Here we are, however, no better off as regards 
 eternal truths. Herr Duehring explains that the dialectic 
 proper is pure nonsense, and the many books which 
 have been and are still being written on logic prove 
 clearly that final truths of last instance are more sparsely 
 distributed than many believe. 
 
 Moreover, we are not at all alarmed because the step 
 of science upon which we to-day stand is not a bit more 
 final than any of the preceding steps. Already it in- 
 cludes an immense amount of material for investigation 
 and offers a great chance for specialisation and study to 
 anyone who desires to become expert in any particular 
 branch. Whoever expects to find final and immutable' 
 truths in observations which in the very nature of things 
 must remain relative for successive generations, and can 
 only be completed piecemeal, as in cosmogony, geology 
 
MORALS AND LAW 125 
 
 ahd human history, which must always be incomplete 
 owing to the complexity of the historical material, shows 
 perverse ignorance even where he does liot, as in the 
 present case, set up claims of personal infallibility. 
 
 Truth and error, like all such mutually antagonistic 
 concepts, have only an absolute reality under very limited 
 conditions, as we have seen, and as even Herr Duehring 
 should know by a slight acquaintance with the first ele- 
 ments of dialectics, which show the insufficiency of all 
 polar antagonisms. As soon as we bring the antag- 
 onism of truth and error out of this limited field it be- 
 comes relative and is not serviceable for new scientific 
 statements. If we should seek to establish its reality be- 
 yond those limits we are at once confronted by a di- 
 lemma, both poles of the antagonism come into conflict 
 with their opposite ; truth becomes error and error be- 
 comes truth. Let us take, for example, the well-known 
 Boyle's law, according to which, the temperature remain- 
 ing the same, the volume of the gas varies as. the pressure 
 to which it is subjected. Regnault discovered that this 
 law does not apply in certain cases. If he had been a 
 realist-philosopher he would have been obliged to say, 
 " Boyle's law is mutable, ' therefore it does not possess 
 absolute truth, therefore it is untrue, therefore it is false." 
 He would thus have made a greater error than that which 
 was latent in Boyle's law, his little particle of truth 
 would have been drowned in a flood of error; he would 
 in tljis way have elaborated his correct result into an 
 error compared with which Boyle's law with its particle 
 of error fastened to it would have appeared as the truth. 
 Regnault, scientist as he was, did not trouble himself 
 with such childish performances. He investigated fur- 
 ther and found that Boyle's law is only approximately 
 correct, having no validity in the case of gases which 
 
126 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 can be made liquid by pressure when the pressure ap- 
 proaches the point where liquefaction sets in. Boyles law 
 therefore is shown only to be true within specific bounds. 
 But is it absolute, a final truth of last instance within spe- 
 cific bounds ? No physicist would say so. He would say 
 that it is correct for certain gases and within certain 
 limits of pressure and temperature, and even then within 
 these somewhat narrow liftiits he would not exclude the 
 possibility of a still narrower limitation or change in 
 application as the result of further investigation. This 
 is how final truths of last instance stand in physics, for 
 example. Really scientific works as a rule avoid such 
 dogitiatic expressions as truth and error, but they are 
 constantly cropping up in works like the Philosophy of 
 Reality, where mere loose talking vaunts itself the su- 
 preme result of sovereign thought. 
 
 But a naive reader may say, " Where has Herr Duehr- 
 ing expressly stated that the content of his philosophy 
 of reality is final truth of the last instance? " Well, for 
 example, in his dithyramb, on his system which we 
 quoted above, and again where he says " Moral truths as 
 far as they are known are as sound as those of mathe- 
 matics." Does not Herr Duehring explain tliat by rea- 
 son of his powers of criticism and searching investiga- 
 tions, the fundamental philosophy has been brought to 
 light and that he has thus bestowed upon us final truths 
 of last instance? But if Herr Duehring does not set up 
 such a claim either on his own behalf or that of his time, 
 if he says that some time in the misty future final truths 
 of last instance will be established, and that therefore his 
 own statements are merely accidental and confused, a 
 kind of " mole-like scepticism " and " barren confusion," 
 what is all the fuss about, and what useful purpose is 
 served by Herr Duehring? 
 
MORALS AND LAW \2'J 
 
 If we gain no ground in the matter of truth and 
 error we gain less in respect of good and evil. Here 
 we have an antagonism of ethical significance, and ethics 
 is a department of human history in which final truths 
 are but slight and few. From people to people, from 
 age to age, there have been such changes in the ideas 
 of good and evil that these concepts are contradictory 
 ;n different periods and among different peoples. But 
 some one may remark, " Good is still not evil and evil 
 is not good; if good and evil are confused all morality 
 is abolished, and each may do what he will." When the 
 rhetoric is stripped away this is the opinion of Herr 
 Duehring. Bpt the matter is not to be disposed of so 
 easily. If things were as easy as that there would be 
 no dispute about good and evil. Everybody would know 
 what was good and what was evil. How is it to-day, 
 however? What system of ethics is preached to us to- 
 day? There is first the Christian-feudal, a survival of 
 the early days of faith, which is as a matter of fact sub- 
 divided into Catholic and Protestant, of which there are 
 still further subdivisions, from the Jesuit-Catholic and 
 orthodox Protestant to loosely drawn ethical systems. 
 There figure also the modern or bourgeois, and still fur- 
 ther the proletarian future system of morality, so that 
 the progressive European countries alone present three 
 contemporaneous and coexistent actual theories of eth- 
 ics. Which is the true one ? No single one of them, re- 
 garded as a finality, but that system assuredly possesses 
 the most elements of truth which promises the longest 
 duration, which existent in the present is also involved in 
 the revolution of the future, the proletarian. 
 
 But if we now see that the three classes of modern 
 society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the 
 proletarian, have their distinctive ethical systems, we can 
 
128 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 only conclude therefrom that mankind consciously or 
 unconsciously shapes its moral views in accordance with 
 the material facts upon which in the last instance the 
 class existence is based ^ upon the ecotiomic conditions 
 under which production and exchange are carried on. 
 
 But in the three above mentioned systems of ethics 
 there is much which is common to all three of them, and 
 might not this at least constitute a portion of an eter- 
 nally stable system of ethics? These ethical theories 
 pass through three distinct steps in their historical de-* 
 velopment, they have therefore a common historical basis 
 and hence necessarily much in common. Further, for 
 approximately similar economic stages there must, neces- ' 
 sarily be a coincidence of similar stages of economic de- 
 velopment, and ethical theories must of necessity coincide 
 with a greater or less degree of closeness. From the 
 vety moment when private property in movables de- 
 veloped there had to be ethical sanctions of general ef- 
 fect in all communities in which private property pre- 
 vailed, thus: Thou shalt not steal. Is this command- 
 ment, then, an eternal commandment? By no means. 
 In a socitety in which the motive for theft did not exist 
 stealing would only be the practice of the weak-minded, 
 and the preacher of morals who proclaimed " Thou shalt 
 not steal " as an eternal commandment would only, be 
 laughed at for his pains. 
 
 We here call attention to the attempt to force a sort 
 of moral dogmatism upon us as eternal, final, immutable 
 moral law, upon the pretext that the moral law is pos- 
 stessed of fixed principles which transcend history and 
 the variations of individual peoples. We state, on the 
 contrary, that up to the present time all ethical theory is 
 in the last instance a testimony to the existence of cer- 
 tain economic conditions prevailng in any community 
 
MORALS AND LAW 129 
 
 at any particular time. And in proportion as society 
 developed class-antagonisms, morality became a class 
 morality and either justified the interests and domina- 
 tion of the ruling class, or as soon as a subject class 
 became strong enough justified revolt against the domi- 
 nation of the ruling class and the interests of the subject 
 class. That, by this means, there is an advance made 
 in morals as a whole, just as there is in all other branches 
 of human knowledge, there can be no doubt. But we 
 have not yet advanced beyond class morals. Real human 
 morality superior to class morality and its traditions will 
 not be possible until a stage in human history has been 
 reached in which class antagonisms have not only been 
 overcome but have been forgotten as regards the con- 
 duct of life. Now the colossal egotism of Herr Dueh- 
 ring may be understood when it is seen that, on the eve 
 of a revolution which will bring about a state of society 
 devoid of classes, he claims from the midst of an old and 
 class divided society to proclaim an eternal system of 
 morals independent of time and material change. He 
 himself declares what up to the present has been hid 
 from the rest of us that he understands the structure of 
 this future society at least as regards its salient features. 
 In conclusion he makes a revelation which is essen- 
 tially original but none the less " fundamental respecting 
 the origin of evil." We have the fact that the type of 
 the cat with its inherent treachery is pictured as the 
 representative animal type, and this also displays a form 
 of character to be found also in man. There is no 
 mystery then about evil if one can detect a mysticism 
 in the cat or any other beast of prey. Evil is — the cat. 
 Goethe was evidently wrong when he introduced Mephis- 
 topheles as a black dog instead of a cat similarly colored. 
 This is ethics suited not only to all worlds but to cats also. 
 
Equality 
 
 By dint of experience we have come to learn Herr 
 Duehring's " method." It consists in separating each 
 department of knowledge into what are assumed to be 
 its most simple elements, then of making so called self 
 evident axioms with regard to these simple elements, 
 and thereupon operating with the results obtained in this 
 way. Thus a sociological question is to be " decided 
 on simple axiomatic principles just as if it were a matter 
 of elementary mathematics." - Thus the application of 
 the mathematical method to history, ethics and law gives 
 mathematical certainty to the final results which appear 
 as pure and immutable truths. 
 
 This is only another form of the old ideological, a 
 priori method so called, which learned the properties of 
 an object not from the object itself but derived them 
 by proof from the concept of the object. First you 
 derive a concept of the object from the actual object, 
 tlien you turn the spit and measure the object in terms 
 of its derivative the concept. The concept is not shaped 
 after the pattern of the object but the object after the 
 pattern of the concept. In Herr Duehring's method, the 
 simplest elements, the last abstractions to which he can 
 attain do duty for the concept which is unchangeable, 
 the simplest elements are under the best conditions purely 
 imaginary in their nature. The philosophy of realism 
 hence appears to be mere ideology, and has no derivation 
 
 130 
 
MORALS AND LAW I3I 
 
 from real life but is absolutely dependent upon the im- 
 agination. When such an ideologist proceeds to con- 
 struct a system of morals and law from his concept of 
 the so-called simplest elements of society instead oT 
 from the real social conditions of the men about him, 
 where does he get his material for construction? The 
 material evidently consists of two kinds — firstly, the 
 slim vestiges of reality which are still present in every 
 fundamental abstraction, and secondly in the actual con- 
 tent which our ideologist evolves from his own conscious- 
 ness. And what does he discover in his consciousness? 
 For the most part moral and ethical philosophic ideas 
 and these constitute an expression corresponding more 
 or less closely, whether positive or negative, harmonious 
 or hostile, with the social and political conditions which 
 environ him. Besides he probably has notions derived 
 from literature pertaining to these conditions, and finally 
 he has possibly person^ idiosyncrasies. Let our ide- 
 ologist dodge all that he can, the historical reality which 
 he has thrown out of doors comes in again at the win- 
 dow and although he may fancy that he is employed in^ 
 the manufacture of moral and legal doctrines good for 
 all worlds and all ages he is actually making a distorted, 
 counterfeit of the conservation or revolutionary tenden- 
 cies of his time, because torn from its real place, as things 
 seen in a concave mirror are upside down. 
 
 Herr Duehring therefore resolves society into its 
 simplest elements and discovers accordingly that the most 
 elementary society consists of at least two human beings. 
 He thereupon operates with these two human beings to 
 produce his axiom. Then he delivers himself of the 
 fundamental maxim of morals, " Two human wills, as 
 such, are entirely identical, and the one can in conse- 
 quence make no positive demands upon the other." 
 
132 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 Here the " foundation of moral law " is apparent, so " in 
 order to develop the principal concepts of justice we re- 
 quire two human beings under absolutely simple and 
 elementary conditions." 
 
 That two human wills or two human beings are just 
 alike is not only no axiom, it is a glaring exaggeration. 
 In the first place two human beings may differ as re- 
 gards sex, and this simple fact shov/s us, if we look at 
 childhood for a moment, that the elements of society are 
 not two men, but a little man and a little woman, which 
 constitute a family, the simplest' and earliest form of as- 
 sociation for productive purposes. But Herr Duehring 
 cannot by any means agree to this. On the one hand 
 the two constituents of society might very possibly be 
 made alike and on the other Herr Duehring would not 
 be able to construct the moral and legal equality of man 
 and woman from the original family. Therefore one of 
 two things must take place. Either the molecules of 
 Herr Duehring's society from the multiplication of which 
 all society is built up is merely a priori and destined to 
 fail, since two men cannot produce a child, or we must 
 consider them as two heads of families. In this case 
 the entire foundation is made its very opposite. In- 
 stead of the equality of man we have at the most the 
 equality of two heads of families, and since women are 
 not comprehended we have the consequent subjection of 
 women. 
 
 We are sorry to warn the reader that these two no- 
 torious men cannot be got rid of, for a long time. They 
 take up in the realm of social conditions the role hereto- 
 fore played by the dwellers in the other world with 
 whom it is to be hoped we have now finished. Should 
 any question of political economy, of politics or any other 
 such matter require solution, out come the two men and 
 
MORALS AND LAW . 133 
 
 make the thing axiomatic forthwith. This is a remark- 
 able, clever, and system-shaping discover of our system- 
 shaping philosopher. But to ,gi.ve^ tlie truth its due we 
 are- reg^TJ^^^ul!}' bcuim to say that he did not discover the 
 two men. They are common to the whole of the eight- 
 eenth century. They appear in Rousseau's Treatise on 
 Equality, 1754, where, by the way, they serve to prove 
 axiomatically the direct opposite of Herr Duehring's 
 contentions. They play an important part in political 
 economy from Adam Smith to Ricardo, but here they 
 are so far unequal that they follow different trades, prin- 
 cipally hunting and fishing, and they exchange their 
 mutual products. They serve through the entire eight- 
 eenth century principally as mere illustrative examples, 
 and the originality of Herr Duehring consists in the 
 fact that he elevates this method of illustration to a 
 fundamental method for all social science and to a meas- 
 ure of all historical instruction. There is no easier 
 way to arrive at " a really scientific philosophy of things 
 and men." 
 
 In order to create the fundamental axiom the two men 
 and their wills are mutually equal and neither has any 
 right to lord it over the other. We cannot find two 
 suitable men. They must be two men who are so free 
 from all national, economic, political and religious con- 
 ditions, from sex and personal peculiarities that nothing 
 remains of either of them but the mere concept " man " 
 and then they are entirely equal. They are therefore 
 two fully-equipped ghosts conjured up by that very Herr 
 Duehring who particularly ridicules and denounces 
 " spiritistic " movements. These two phantoms must of 
 course do all that their wizard wants of them and so 
 their united productions are a matter of complete in- 
 difference to the rest of the world. 
 
134 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 -^_Now let US follow Herr Duehring's axiomatic utter- 
 ances a ififle furiiier. These two men cannot make posi- 
 tive demands upon each- other. The one who does so 
 and enforces his demand thereupon performs " tirTunjust ^ 
 act, and with this idea as a foundation Herr Duehring 
 explains the injustice, the tyranny, the servitude, in short 
 all the evil happenings of history up to the present time. 
 Now Rousseau has in the work above mentioned proved 
 the contrary just as axiomatically, by means of two 
 men. A. cannot forcibly enslave B. except by putting 
 B. in a place where he cannot do without A. This is 
 far too materialistic an idea for Herr Duehring. He 
 has accordingly put the same matter somewhat differ- 
 ently. .Two shipwrecked men being by themselves on an 
 island form a society. Their wills are, theoretically 
 speaking, entirely equal and this is acknowledged- by 
 both. But in reality the inequality is tremendous. A. 
 is resolute and energetic, B. inert, irresolute and 
 slack. A. is sharp, B. is stpuid. How long will it 
 be before A. imposes his will upon B., first by taking the 
 upper hand, and keeping it habitually, under the pre- 
 tence that B.'s submission is voluntary. Whether the 
 form of voluntariness continues or force is resorted to 
 slavery still is slavery. Voluntary entering into a state 
 of slavery lasted all through the Middle Ages in Ger- 
 many up to the Thirty Years War. When serfdom was 
 abolished in Prussia after the defeats of 1806 and 1807 
 and with it the duty of the nobiUty to take care of their 
 subjects in need, sickness and old age the peasants there- 
 upon petitioned to be allowed to remain in slavery — for 
 who would care for them when they were in trouble? 
 The concept of the two men is just as applicable to in- 
 equality and slavery as it is to equality and mutual aid, 
 and since, under the penalty of extinction, men must as- 
 
MORALS AND LAW 135 
 
 sume the headship of a family, hereditary slavery may 
 be foreseen in it. 
 
 Let us put this view of the case on one side for a mo- 
 ment. We assume that we are convinced by Herr Dueh- 
 ring's maxim and that we are zealous for the full equali- 
 sation of the two wills, for de " universal sovereignty 
 of man" for the "sovereignty ti the individual," mag- 
 nificent expressions, in comparison with which Stirner's 
 " individual " with his private property is a mere bungler 
 though Le might claim his modest part therein. Then 
 \\e are all free and independent. All? No, not even 
 now. There are still " occasional dependent relations " 
 but these are to be explained " on grounds which must 
 be sought not in the action of two wills as such but in 
 a third consideration, in the case of children, for ex- 
 ample, in the inadequateness of their self-assertion." 
 
 Indeed, the foundations of independence are not tj be 
 sought in the realisation of the two wills as such. Nat- 
 urally not, since the realisation of one of the wills is 
 thus interfered with. Bu': they must be sought i.i v. 
 third direction. And wnat is the third direction? The 
 actual fixing of a subjected will as an inadequate one. 
 So far has our realistic philosopher departed from real- 
 ity that will, the real content, the characteristic determi- 
 nation of this will serves him as a third ground, for 
 abstract and indefinite speech. However this ma}' b-; 
 we must agree that equality has its exceptions. It does 
 not apply to a will which, is infected v/ith inadequateness 
 of self expression. 
 
 Further, " Where the animal and the human are inter- 
 mingled in one person can one in the name of a second 
 fully developed human being demand the same actions 
 as in the case of a single human being . . . our sup- 
 position is liere of two morally unequal persons of which 
 
136 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 one has a share of purely animal characteristics in a 
 certain sense the typical fundamental conception which 
 characterises the differences in and between groups of 
 men." Now the reader may see by these modest ex- 
 cuses in which Herr Duehring turns and winds like a 
 Jesuit priest to establish a casuistical position, how far 
 the human human can prevail over the Lestial human, 
 how far he can employ deceit, warlike, keen terrorising 
 means of deceit against the latter without overstepping 
 immutable ethical bounds. 
 
 Therefore, if two persons are "morally unequal " there' 
 is an end of equality. It was therefore not worth while 
 to conjure up two fully equal men, since there are no two 
 individuals who are morally equal. But inequality con- 
 sists in this that one is a human being and the other has 
 some part of the animal in his composition. It is evi- 
 dent that since man is descended from the animal cre- 
 ation he ii not free from animality. So that as re- 
 gards man degrees of animality can only be differentiated 
 to a greater or less degree. A division of men into 
 two sharply differentiated groups, into humans and hu- 
 man beasts, into good and bad, into sheep and goats, even 
 Christianity, let alone the realist philosophy, is aware, 
 implies a judge who makes the distinction. But who 
 shall be judge as regards the realist philosophy? We 
 must follow the practice of Christians according to which 
 the pious little sheep undertake to act as judges of the 
 universe against their unworthy neighbors the goats, with 
 results which are too well known. The sect of the realist 
 philosophers supposing it ever comes into existence will 
 certainly not give up anything quietly. This is indeed a 
 matter of small concern to us but we are interested in 
 the confession that as a conclusion of the moral inequal- 
 ity between men equality no longer exists. 
 
MORALS AND LAW 137 
 
 Again " If the one acted in accordance with truth and 
 science but the other in accordance with a superstition 
 or prejudice a mutual disagreement would generally oc- 
 cur. At a certain silage of incapacity barbarism or an 
 evil tendency of character must in all circumstances pro- 
 duce an antagonism. Force is the last resort not alone 
 with children and incapables. The peculiar character- 
 istics of whole classes of men, whether in a state of na- 
 ture or civilised, may render necessary the subjection of 
 their inimical will, due to their own impotency, in order 
 to bring them into harmony with social arrangements. 
 But such a man has challenged his own equality by the 
 perversity of his inimical and hurtful actions, and if he 
 suffers at the hands of a superior force he only reaps the 
 recoil of his own actions.' 
 
 Thus not only moral but spiritual inequality is suffi- 
 ciently potent to do away with the " full equality " of 
 two wills and to furnish an ethical rule by which all the 
 shameful acts of civilised plundering states against back- 
 ward peoples down to the atrocities of the Russians in 
 Turkestan may be justified. When General Kaufmann, 
 in the summer of 1873, fell upon the Tartar tribes of the 
 Jomuden, burnt their tents, mowed down their wives and 
 families, as the command ran, he explained that the de- 
 struction was due to the perversity, the inimical minds 
 of the people of the Jomuden, and was employed for the 
 purpose of bringing them back to the social order, and 
 the means used by him had been the most efficient 
 
 But he who wills the end wills also the means. But 
 he was not so cruel as tojnsult the Jomuden people in 
 addition and to say that he massacred them in the name 
 of equality, that he considered their wills equal to his 
 own. And again in this conflict the select, those who 
 pose as champions of truth and science, the realist philos- 
 
TjS LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 opliers in the last instance must be able to distinguish 
 superstition, prejudice, barbarism, evil tendencies of 
 character, and when force and subjection are necessary 
 to bring about equality. So that equality now means 
 equalisation by means of force, and the will of one recog- 
 nises the will of the other as equal by overthrowing it. 
 
 The phrase that an external will in its bringing about 
 equalisation by force is only to be regarded as produc- 
 ing equality is nothing but a distortion of the Hegelian 
 theory that punishment is a right of the criminal. " That 
 punishment is to be regarded as implying a right to it 
 in accordance with which the criminal is respected as a 
 rational being." (Rechtsphil, loo.) 
 
 We may pause here. It would be superfluous to fol- 
 low Herr Duehring any further in the piecemeal destruc- 
 tion of his axiomatically established equality, universal 
 human sovereignty, etc., to observe how fie brings society 
 into existence with two men and produces yet a third in 
 order to establish the state, because to put the matter- 
 briefly, no majority can be had without the third, and 
 without him, that is, without the domination of the ma- 
 jority over the minority, no state can exist. There is no 
 need either for us to observe how he launches his future 
 social state on the more peaceful waters of construction, 
 where we may have the honor some fine morning of be- 
 holding it. We have seen so far that the complete 
 equality of two wills only exists as long as they do not 
 will anything. That as soon as they cease to become 
 human wills as such and to be converted into real indi- 
 vidual wills, into wills of real persons, that is, equality 
 ceases ; that childhood, idiocy, animality so called, super- 
 stition, prejudice, supposed lack of power on the one 
 hand and supposed humanity and insight into truth and 
 science on the other hand, that therefore every difference 
 
MORALS AND LAW 139 
 
 in the quality of the two wills and in the degree of intel- 
 ligence accompanying it justifies an inequality which may 
 go as far as subjection. Why should we seek further 
 since Herr Duehring has brought his own edifice of 
 equality which he so laboriously constructed tumbling to 
 the ground? 
 
 But if we are now prepared to meet Herr Duehrlng's 
 silly and incompetent consideration of equality of rights 
 we are not yet ready to take issue with the idea itself 
 which through the influence of Rousseau has played a 
 theatrical part, and since the days of the great Revolution 
 a practical and political part, and now plays no insignifi- 
 cant role in the agitation carried on by the socialist move- 
 ment of all countries. The establishment of its scientific 
 soundness has a value for the proletarian agitation. 
 
 The idea that all men have something in common as 
 men and that they are equal with respect to that common 
 quality is naturally older than history. But the modern 
 doctrine of equality is something quite different than 
 that. This derives from the property of humanity, com- 
 mon to man, the equality of man, as man, or at least of all 
 citizens of a given state or of all members of a given so- 
 ciety. Until the conclusion 6f equality of rights in the 
 state and society was deduced from the original notion 
 of relative equality, and until this conclusion was to be 
 stated as something natural and self evident, many thou- 
 sands of years had to pass and indeed have passed. In 
 the oldest and most elementary communities it may Be 
 said that equality of rights among the members existed 
 in the highest degree, women, slaves, and foreigners, 
 however, being excluded. Among the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans inequality existed to a greater degree. Greeks 
 and barbarians, freemen and slaves, citizens and sub- 
 jects, Roman citizens and Roman subjects (to employ 
 
I40 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 a comprehensive expression) that these should have 
 any claim to equality of political rights would have been 
 regarded by the ancients necessarily as madness. Under 
 the Roman Empire there was a complete elimination of 
 all these distinctions with the excepiton of those of free- 
 men and slaves. There arose therefore as far as the 
 freemen were concerned that equality of private indi- 
 viduals upon which Roman law was founded and de- 
 veloped as the most perfect system of jurisprudence based 
 on private property with which we are acquainted. But 
 while the contradiction of freemen and slaves, existed 
 there could be no statement based upon the universal 
 equality of man as such, as was recently shown in the 
 slave states of the Northern American Union. 
 
 Christianity recognised one equality on the part of all 
 men, that of an equal taint of original sin, which en- 
 tirely corresponded with its character as a religion of 
 slaves and the oppressed. In the next place it recog- 
 nised completely the equality of the elect but it only de- 
 clared this at the beginning of its teaching. The traces 
 of common property in possessions which may be found 
 occasionally in the earliest days of the religion was based 
 rather upon the mutual assistance which persecuted peo- 
 ple hold out to each other, than upon any real concepts 
 of human equality. Very soon the establishment of the 
 antithesis between the priesthood and the laity put an 
 end to even this expression of Christian equality. The 
 inundation of Western Europe by the Germans abolished 
 for centuries all concepts of equality by the creation of 
 a universal, social and political gradation of rank of a 
 much more complicated nature than had existed up to 
 that time. Contemporaneously with this Western and 
 Middle Europe entered upon a historical development, 
 shaped for the first time a compact civilisation, and a 
 
MORALS AND LAW 14! 
 
 system which was on the one hand dynamic and on the 
 other conservative, the leading national states. There- 
 upon a soil was prepared for the declaratiomof the equal- 
 ity of human rights so recently ma'de. 
 
 The feudal middle ages moreover developed the class in 
 its womb destined to be the apostle of the modern agita- 
 tion for equality, the bourgeois class. In the beginning 
 even under the feudal system the bourgeois class had de- 
 veloped the prevalent hand-industry and the exchange of 
 products even within feudal society to a high degree 
 considering the circumstances, until with the close of the 
 fifteenth century the great discoveries of lands beyond 
 the seas opened before it a new and individual course. 
 The trade beyond Europe which up to that time had 
 been carried on between the^ Italians and the Levant was 
 now extended to America and the Indies and soon ex- 
 ceeded in amount the reciprocal trade of the European 
 countries as well as the internal commerce of any partic- 
 ular land. American gold and silver flooded Europe and 
 like a decomposing element penetrated all the fissures, 
 crevices and pores of feudal society. The system of 
 hand-labor was no longer sufficient for the growing de- 
 mand, it was replaced by manufacture in the leading in- 
 dustries of the most highly developed peoples. 
 
 A corresponding change in the political structure fol- 
 lowed this powerful revolution in the economic condi- 
 tions of society but by no means immediately. The 
 organisation of the State remained feudal in form while 
 society became more and more bourgeois. Trade, par- 
 ticularly international, and to a greater degree world- 
 commerce demanded for its development the free and 
 unrestricted possessors of commodities, who have equal- 
 ity of right to exchange commodities at least in one and 
 the same place. The transition from hand labor to man- 
 
142 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ufacture presupposes the existence of a number of free 
 laborers, free on the one hand from the fetters of the 
 gild and on the other free to employ their labor force 
 in their own behalf, who could make contracts for the 
 hire of their labor force to the manufacturers and there- 
 fore face him as if endowed with equal rights as contract- 
 ing parties. At last then there arose equality of rights 
 and actual equality of all human labor, for labor force 
 finds its unconscious but strongest expression in the law 
 of value of modern bourgeois economy according to 
 which the value of a commodity finds its measure in the 
 socially necessary labor incorporated in it. But where 
 the economic circumstances render freedom and equality 
 of rights necessary, the political code, gild restrictions 
 and peculiar privileges oppose them at every step. Lo- 
 cal provisions of a legal character, dififerential taxation, ■ 
 exceptional laws of every description, interfere not only 
 with foreigners or colonials but frequently enough also 
 with whole categories of citizens in the nation itself. 
 Gild privileges in particular constituted a continual im- 
 pediment to the development of manufacture. The 
 course was nowhere open and the chances of the bour- 
 geois victory were by no means equal, but to make the 
 course open was the first and ever more pressing neces- 
 sity. 
 
 As soon as the demand for the abolition of feudalism 
 and for the equality of rights was set on the order of the 
 day it had necessarily to take an ever widening scope. 
 As soon as the claim was made in behalf of commerce 
 and industry it had also to be made in behalf of the 
 peasants who, being in every stage of slavery from serf- 
 dom labored for the most part without any return for 
 the feudal lords and were obliged in addition to perform 
 innumerable services for them and for the State. . Also 
 
MORALS AND LAW 143 
 
 it became desirable to abolish feudal privileges, the im- 
 munity of the nobility from taxation, and the superiority 
 which attached to a certain status. And as men no longer 
 lived in a world empire like the Roman, but in an in- 
 dependent system with states which approximated to a 
 similar degree of bourgeois development and which had 
 intercourse with one another on an equal footing, the 
 demand took on necessarily a universal character reach- 
 ing beyond the individual state, and freedom and equal- 
 ity were thus proclaimed as human rights. But as re- 
 gards the special bourgeois character of these human 
 rights, it is significant that the American Constitution 
 which was the first to recognise these rights of man in 
 the same breath established slavery among the colored 
 people : class privileges were cursed, race privileges were 
 blessed. 
 
 As is well known, the bourgeois class as soon as it 
 escaped from the domination of the ruling class in the 
 cities, by which process the medieval stage passes into 
 the modern, has been steadily and inevitably dogged by 
 a shadow, the proletariat. So also the bourgeois de- 
 mands for equality are accompanied by the proletarian 
 demands for equality. Directly the demand for the 
 abolition of class privileges was made by the bourgeois 
 there succeeded the proletarian demand for the abolition 
 of classes themselves. This was first made in a re- 
 ligious form and was based upon early Christianity, but 
 later derived its support from the bourgeois theories of 
 equality. The proletarians take the bourgeois at their 
 word, they demand the realisation of equality not merely 
 apparently, not merely in the sphere of government but 
 actually in the sphere of society and economics. Since 
 the French bourgeoisie of the great Revolution placed 
 equality in the foreground of their movement, the French 
 
144 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 proletariat has answered it blow for blow with the de- 
 rnand for social and economic equality, and equality has 
 become the special battle cfy of the French proletariat. 
 
 The demand for equality as made by the proletariat 
 has a double significance. Either it is, as was particu- 
 larly the case at first, in the Peasants' War, for example, 
 a natural reaction against social inequalities which were 
 obvious, against the contrast between rich and poor, 
 masters and slaves^ luxurious and hungry, and as such 
 it is simply an expression of revolutionary instinct find- 
 ing its justification in that fact and in that fact alone. 
 On the other hand it may arise from reaction against 
 the bourgeois claims of equality from which it deduces 
 more or less just and far reaching claims, serves as a 
 means of agitation to stir the workers, by means of a 
 cry adopted by the capitalists themselves, against the 
 capitalists, and in this case stands or falls with bourgeois 
 equality itself. In both cases the real content of the 
 proletarian claims of equality is the abolition of classes. 
 Every demand for equality transcending this is of neces- 
 sity absurd. We have already given examples and can 
 furnish many more when we come to consider Herr 
 Duehring's prophecies of the future. 
 
 So the notion of equality, in its proletarian as well as 
 in its bourgeois form, is itself a historic product. Cer- 
 tain circumstances were required to produce it and these 
 in their turn proceeded from a long anterior history. 
 It is therefore anything but an eternal truth. And if 
 the public regards it as self-evident in one sense or an- 
 other if it, as Marx remarks " already occupies the po- 
 sition of a popular prejudice " it is not due to its being 
 an axiomatic truth but to the universal broadening of 
 conception in accordance with the spirit of the eighteenth 
 century. If Herr Duehring then can set up his two 
 
MORALS AND LAW 145 
 
 famous men in housekeeping on the grounds of equality, 
 it is apparent that the prejudices of the mass of men in 
 its favor is an antecedent condition. In fact Herr Dueh- 
 ring calls his philosophy the " natural " because it pro- 
 ceeds from generally recognised things, which appear to 
 him to be entirely natural. But why they seem to him to 
 be natural he does not take the trouble to enquire. 
 
Freedom and Necessity 
 
 (The former part of this section is taken up with a 
 criticism of Herr Duehring's knowledge of law of which 
 he had boasted. It is a purely technical discussion and 
 is of merely local interest. Having disposed of Dueh- 
 ring's juristic claims Engels proceeds to discuss " Free- 
 dom and Necessity " as follows. ) 
 
 One cannot deal properly with the question of morals 
 and law without a discussion of free will, human re- 
 sponsibility, and the limits of necessity and freedom. 
 The reaHstic philosophy has not only one but two solu- 
 tions of these questions. 
 
 " One must substitute for false theories of freedom 
 the actual conditions in which reason on the one hand 
 and instinct on the other unite upon a middle ground. 
 The fundamental facts of this sort of dynamics are to 
 be learned from observation and as regards the calcula- 
 tion in advance of phenomena which have not yet oc- 
 curred, we must judge of them in general terms accord- 
 ing to their special qualities. In this way the silly 
 speculations with respect to the freedom of the will which 
 have wasted thousands of years are not only entirely re- 
 moved but are replaced by something positive, some- 
 thing useful for practical life." So freedom of the 
 will consists in this that reason impels men to the right 
 and irrationahty to the left and according to this parallel- 
 ogram of forces the true direction is that of the diagonal. 
 
MORALS AND LAW 147 
 
 Freedom would therefore be the average between insight 
 and impulse, between understanding and lack of under- 
 standing, and its degree would to use an astronomical 
 expression be empirically established by the " personal 
 equation." But a few pages later we read " We estab- 
 lish moral responsibility upon freedom by which we 
 only mean susceptibility to known motives according to 
 the measure of natural and acquired reason. All such 
 motives in spite of antagonism realise themselves in ac- 
 tion with the inevitability of natural law, but we count 
 upon this inevitable necessity when we deal with morals." 
 This second definition of freedom which is quite op- 
 posed to the first is nothing but a very weak paraphrase 
 of Hegel's notions on the subject. Hegel was the first 
 man to make a proper explanation o± the relations of 
 freedom and necessity. In his eyes freedom is f^p ]-prnp- 
 nition of necessity . " Necessity is Wind only in so far 
 as it is not understood. Freedom does not consist in 
 an imaginary independence of natural laws but in a 
 knowledge of these laws and in the possibility thence 
 derived of applying them intelligently to given ends. 
 This is true both as regards the laws of nature and of those 
 which control the spiritual and physical existence of man 
 himself, — two classes of laws which we can distinguish 
 as an abstraction but not in reality. Freedom of the will 
 consists in nothing but the ability to come to a decision 
 when one is in possession of a knowledge, of the facts. 
 The freer the judgment of a man then in relation to a 
 given subject of discussion so much the more necessity 
 is there for his arrival at a positive decision. On the 
 other hand lack of certainty arising from ignorance which 
 apparently chooses voluntarily between many different 
 and contradictory possibiHties of decision shows thereby 
 its want of freedom, its control by things which it should 
 
^ 
 
 lA^C^^ landmI\rks of scientific socialism 
 
 .< Z' |in reality control. Freedom, therefore, consists in mas- 
 ''V* vi^^y °^^'" ourselves and external nature founded upon 
 Iknowledge of the necessities of nature, it is, therefore, 
 Aecessarily a product of historical development. The 
 first human beings to become differentiated from the 
 lower animals were in all essentials as devoid of free- 
 dom as these animals themselves but each step in human 
 development was a step towards freedom. At the thresh- 
 old of human history stands the discovery of the trans- 
 formation of mechanical motion in heat, the generation 
 of fire by friction ; at the close of development up to the 
 present stands the discovery of the transformation of 
 heat into mechanical motion, the steam engine. In spite 
 of the tremendous revolution in the direction of freedom 
 which the steam engine has produced in society it is not 
 yet half complete. There is no question that the pro- 
 duction of fire by friction still surpasses it as an agent 
 in the liberation of humanity. Because the production of 
 fire by friction for the first time gave man power over 
 the forces of nature and separated him for ever from the 
 lower animals. The steam engine can never bridge so 
 wide a chasm. It appears however as the representative 
 of all those productive forces by the help of which alone 
 a state of society is rendered possible in which no class 
 subjection or pain will be produced by reason of the 
 lack of means for the sustenance of the individual, in 
 which moreover it will be possible to speak of real hu- 
 man freedom as arising from living in accordance with 
 the recognised laws of nature. But considering the 
 youth of humanity it would be absurd to wish to impute 
 , any universal absolute validity to our present philosoph- 
 ical views, and it follows from the mere facts that the 
 whole of history up to the present time is to be regarded 
 as the history of the period extending from the time of 
 
MORALS AND LAW 
 
 149 
 
 the practical discovery of the transformation of mechan- 
 ical movement into heat to that of the transformation of 
 heat into mechanical movement. 
 
 (The above constitutes a reply to the view which re- 
 gards history simply as the record of humf>.n error and 
 is followed by a discussion of Duehriog'.f opinions in 
 that regard.) 
 
 0^ ^"^ 
 
 J> 
 
 i/U^' 
 
 M^ 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DIALECTIC 
 
 Quantity and Quality 
 
 (Here Heir Duehring contends " The first and most 
 important staternent with respect to the foundation logi- 
 cal properties of existence points to the exclusion of 
 contradiction. Contradiction is a category which can 
 belong to thought alone but which can pertain to noth- 
 ing real. There are no contradictions in things; in 
 other words the law of contradiction is itself the crown- 
 ing point of absurdity." To which Engels replies as 
 follows) : 
 
 The thought content of the foregoing passages is con- 
 tained in the statement that contradiction is an absurdity 
 and cannot occur in the actual world. This statement 
 will have for people of average common sense the same 
 self-evident truth as to say that straight cannot be 
 crooked nor crooked straight. But the differential cal- 
 culus shows in spite of all the protests of common sense 
 that under certain conditions straight and crooked are 
 identical, and reaches thereby a conclusion which is not 
 in harmony with the common sense view of the absurdity 
 of there being any identity between straight and crooked. 
 Considering moreover the significant role which the so 
 called Dialectic of the Contradiction played in the ancient 
 Greek philosophy, a stronger opponent than Herr Dueh- 
 ring would be obliged to meet it with better arguments 
 than a mere affirmation and a number of epithets. 
 
 As long as we regard things as static and without life, 
 
 150 
 
THE DIALECTIC I5I 
 
 each by itself, sepafately, we do not run against any con- 
 tradictions in them. We find certain qualities sometimes 
 common, sometimes distinctive, occasionally contradic- 
 tory, but in this last case they belong to different objects 
 and are hence not self contradictory. While we follow 
 this method we pursue the ordinary metaphysical method 
 of thought. But it is quite different when we consider 
 things in their movement, in their change, their life and 
 their mutually reciprocal relations. Then we come at 
 once upon contradictions. Motion is itself a contradic- 
 tion since simple mechanical movement from place to 
 place can only accomplish itself by a body being at one 
 and the same moment in one place and simultaneously in 
 another place by being in one and the same place and yet 
 not there. And motion is just the continuous establish- 
 ing and dissolving the contradiction. 
 
 Here we have a contradiction which is "objective, and 
 so to speak corporeal in things and events." And what 
 does Herr Duehring say about it? He affirms that "in 
 rational mechanics there is no bridge between the strictly 
 static and the dynamic." Finally the reader is able to 
 see that there is behind this pretty little phrase of Herr 
 Duehring nothing more than this— ^ that the metaphys- 
 ical mode of thought can absolutely not pass from the 
 idea of rest to that of motion because the aforesaid con- 
 tradiction intervenes. Motion is absolutely inconceivable 
 to the metaphysician, because a contradiction. And as 
 he affirms the inconceivability of motion he admits the 
 existence of this contradiction against his will and 
 therefore admits that it constitutes an objective contra- 
 diction in actual facts and events, and is moreover an ac- 
 tual fact. 
 
 But if simple mechanical motion contains a contradic- 
 tion in itself still more so do the higher forms of motion 
 
152 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 of matter and to a high degree organic life and its de- 
 velopment. We saw above that life consists chiefly in 
 this that a being is at one and the same time itself and 
 something different. Life itself then is likewise a con- 
 tradiction contained in things and events, always estab- 
 lishing and dissolving itself, and as soon as the contra- 
 diction ceases life also ceases, death comes on the scene. 
 Thus we saw also that we cannot put an end to the Con- 
 tradictions in the realm of thought, and how for example 
 the contradiction between the intrinsically unlimited pos- 
 sibilities of human knowledge and its actual existence in 
 the persons of human beings with limited faculties and 
 powers of knowledge, is dissolved in the, for us at least, 
 practically endless progression of the race, in unending 
 progress. 
 
 We stated just now that higher mathematics holds as 
 one of its basic principles that straight and crooked may 
 be identical under certain circumstances. It shows an- 
 other contradiction, that lines which apparently inter- 
 sect yet are parallel from five to six centimeters from 
 the point of intersection, should be such as should never 
 intersect although indefinitely produced, and yet, not- 
 withstanding these and even greater contradictions, it 
 produces not only correct results but results which are 
 unattainable by lower mathematics. 
 
 But even in the latter there is a host of contradictions. 
 It is a contradiction, for example, that a root of A should 
 be and actually is a power of A. A to the power of one- 
 half equals the square root of A. It is contradiction 
 that a negative magnitude should be the square of any- 
 thing, since every negative magnitude multiplied by it- 
 self gives a positive square. The square root of minus 
 one is therefore not only a contradiction but an absurd 
 .contradiction, a veritable absurdity. And yet the square 
 
THE DIALECTIC ^ 153 
 
 root of minus one is in many instances the necessary 
 result of correct mathematical operationSj nay further, 
 where would mathematics higher or lower be if one were 
 forbidden to operate with the square root of minus one. 
 Mathematics itself enters the realm of the dialectic and 
 significantly enough it was a dialectic philosopher, Des- 
 cartes, who introduced this progressiveness into mathe- 
 matics. As is the relation of the mathematics of varia- 
 ble magnitudes to that of invariable quantities, so is the 
 relation of the dialectic method of thought to the meta- 
 physical. This does not prevent the great majority of 
 mathematicians from only recognising the dialectic in 
 the realms of mathematics, a condition of things satis- 
 factory to those who operate in the antiquated, limited, 
 metaphysical fashion by methods attained by means of 
 the dialectic. 
 
 (Duehring having made an attack upon Marx's " Cap- 
 ital " because of its reliance upon the dialectic, and hav- 
 ing indulged in the epithets to which he is too prone with 
 respect to this work, Engels takes up its defence in that 
 respect as follows) : 
 
 It is not our business to concern ourselves at this point 
 with the correctness or incorrectness of the investigations 
 of Marx as regards economics, but only with the appli- 
 cation which he makes of the dialectic method. So much 
 is certain, that it is only now that the readers of " Capi- 
 tal " will by the aid of Herr Duehring understand what 
 they have read properly, and among them Herr Dueh- 
 ring himself, who in the year 1867 was still in a position, 
 as far as possible to a man of his calibre, to review the 
 book rationally. He did not then, it may be noted, first 
 translate the arguments of Marx into Duehringese, as 
 now seems indispensable to him. Even if he at that 
 
154 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 I 
 
 time made the blunder of identifying the Marxian dia- 
 lectic with that of Hegel he had not altogether lost the 
 ability to distinguish methods from the results attained 
 by them and to comprehend that an abuse of the former 
 is no contradiction of the latter. 
 
 Herr Duehring's most astonishing observation is that 
 from the Marxian standpoint, " in the last analysis every- 
 thing is identical," that therefore in the eyes of Marx, 
 for example, capitalists and wage workers, feudal, capi- 
 talistic and social methods of production are " all one." 
 In order to show the possibility of such sheer stupidity it 
 only remains to point out that the mere word " dialec- 
 tic " makes Herr Duehring mentally irresponsible and 
 makes what he says and does so inaccurrate and confused 
 as to be in the last analysis " all one." 
 
 (Herr Duehring remarks, " How comical for example 
 is the declaration based upon Hegel's confused notions 
 that quantity becomes lost in quality and that money 
 advanced [i. e. for productive purposes. Ed.] becomes 
 capital whefi it reaches a certain limit merely through 
 quantitative increase." To which Engels replies thus) : 
 
 This seems peculiar when presented in this washed 
 out fashion by Herr Duehring. On page 313 (2nd ed. 
 " Capital ") Marx, after an investigation of fixed and 
 variable capital and surplus value, derives from his in- 
 vestigations the conclusion that "' not every amount of 
 gold or value capable of being transformed into capital is 
 so transformed ; rather a certain minimum of gold or of 
 exchange value is presupposed to be in the possession of 
 the individual owner of gold or goods." He thereupon 
 gives an example, thus, in a branch of industry the 
 worker works eight hours per day for himself, i. e. in 
 order to produce the value of his wages, and the follow- 
 
THE DIALECTIC 155 
 
 ing four hours for the capitahst in producing surplus 
 value to go into their pockets. One must have sufficient 
 values to permit of the setting up of two workmen 
 with raw material, means of labor and wages, in order 
 to live as well as a workman. But since capitalistic 
 production is not undertaken for mere livelihood but for 
 increase of wealth, our individual with his two work- 
 men would still be no capitalist. If he lives twice as 
 well as an ordinary workman and transforms half of 
 the surplus value produced into capital he will have to 
 cniplo}- eiglit workmen and possess four times the afore- 
 mentioned amouiit of value, and only after this and 
 other examples for the purpose of illustrating and estab- 
 lishing the fact that not every small amount of value 
 can effect a transformation of itself into capital, but that 
 each period of industrial development and each branch of 
 industry has its own minimum, fixed, Marx remarks 
 " Here, as in nature, the correctness of the law of logic, 
 as discovered by Hegel, is established — that mere quan- 
 titative changes at a certain point suddenly take on quali- 
 tative differences." 
 
 One may remark the elevated and dignified fashion in 
 which Duehring makes Marx say the exact opposite of 
 what he did say. Marx says " The fact that a given 
 amount of value can only transform itself into capital 
 as soon as it has attained a definite minimum, varying 
 with circumstances, in each individual case, — this fact 
 is proof of the correctness of the law of Hegel. Herr 
 Duehring makes him say " Because, according to the law 
 of Hegel, quantity is transformed into quality therefore 
 ' a sum of money when it has reached a certain amount 
 becomes capital.' He says just the opposite. 
 
 We have seen above in the Scheme of the Universe 
 that Herr Duehring bad the misfortune to acknowledge 
 
156 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 and apply, in a weak moment, this Hegelian system of 
 calculation, according to which at a given point quantita- 
 tive changes suddenly become qualitative. We then 
 gave one of the best known examples, that of the trans- 
 formation of the form of water which at 0° C. changes 
 from a liquid to solid and at 100° C. from liquid to gas- 
 eous, where thus at both these points of departure a mere 
 quantitative change in temperature produces a qualita- 
 tive change in the water. 
 
 We might have cited from nature- and human society 
 a hundred more such facts in proof of this law, thus the 
 whole fourth section of Marx's " Capital " entitled " Pro- 
 duction of Relative Surplus Value in the realm of co- 
 operative industry, the Division of Labor, and Manu- 
 facture, Machinery and the Great Industry," goes to 
 show innumerable instances in which qualitative change 
 alters the quantity of the thing, and where also, to use 
 Herr Duehring's exceedingly odious expression, quantity 
 is converted and transformed into quality. So also the 
 mere cooperation of large numbers, the melting of sev- 
 eral diverse crafts into one united craft, to use Marx's 
 expression, produces a new " industrial power " which, 
 is substantially different from the sum of the individual 
 crafts. 
 
 Marx, in the interest of the entire truth, has remarked, 
 in complete contrast to the perverted style of Herr Dueh- 
 ring " The molecular theory employed in modern chem- 
 istry, first scientifically developed by Laurent and Ger- 
 hardt, rests upon no other law. But what does Herr 
 Duehring care for that ? He knows that " the eminently 
 modern constructive elements of scientific thought make 
 just the same mistake as was made by Marx and his 
 rival Lassalle ;> half-knowledge and a touch of pseudo- 
 philosophy furnish the tools necessary for a display of 
 
THE DIALECTIC ^ 157 
 
 learning." While with Herr Duehring "elevated no- 
 tions of exact knowledge in mechanics, physics and 
 chemistry " are, as we have seen, the foundations. But 
 that the public may be in a position to decide we shall 
 examine somewhat more closely the example cited by 
 Marx in his note. 
 
 Here we have, for example, the homologous series of 
 compounds of carbon of which many are known and each 
 has its own algebraic formula. If we, for example, ac- 
 cording to the practice of chemistry, represent an atom of 
 carbon by C, an atom of hydrogen by H, an atom of 
 oxygen by O and the number of atoms contained in each 
 combination of carbon by n, we can express the molecular 
 formula of each one of this series thus, 
 
 C'H^* + 2 — Series of normal paraffin. 
 
 C«H2> + 20 — Series of primary alcohol. 
 
 C-Hj'Og — Series of the monobasic oleic acids. 
 
 Let us take, for example, the last of this series and set 
 one after the other n = 1, n = 2, etc., we get the follow- 
 ing results omitting the compounds. 
 
 CHaOj — Formic Acid — boiling point 100° — melting 
 point 1°. 
 
 CjH^Oj — Acetic Acid — boiling point 118° — melting 
 point 17°. 
 
 CjHoOj — Propionic Acid — boiling point 140° — melt- 
 ing point — . 
 
 CiHgOa — Butyric Acid — boiling point 162° — melt- 
 ing point — . 
 
 CjHjoOj — Valerianic Acid — boiling point 175° — 
 melting point — . 
 
 'And so on to CsoHjoOj, Melissic Acid, which melts 
 first at 180°, and which has no boiling point, because it 
 does not evaporate without splitting up. 
 
 Here we see therefore a whole series of qualitatively 
 
158 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIAMSM 
 
 different bodies, produced by single- quantitative addi- 
 tions of the elements and always in the same propor- 
 tions. This occurs absolutely where all elements of the 
 combinations change their quantity in the same propor- 
 tions, so with normal paraffin, C«H„»-|- 2 : the lowest is 
 CH4 a gas, the highest known is CieHj^, a body forming 
 a hard colorless crystal which melts at 21° and boils at 
 278°. In both the series each new step is reached 
 through the introduction of CH2, an atom of carbon and 
 two atoms of hydrogen, to the molecular form of the pre- 
 ceding step, and this quantitative change in the molecu- 
 lar form brings about a qualitatively different body. 
 
 These series are merely obvious examples. Almost 
 universally in chemistry, particularly in the different 
 oxides of nitrogen^ in the oxi-acids of phosphorus or 
 sulphur, one can see how " quantity suddenly changes ^ 
 into quality " and how this so called " confused Hegelian- 
 ism " is, so to speak, inherent in things and events, and 
 no one is ever confused or beclouded by it, except Herr 
 Duehring. If Marx is the first to observe this, and if 
 Herr Duehring points this out, without understanding it 
 (since he could not let so unheard of a crime pass), he 
 should explain which of the two, Marx or Duehring, is 
 without elementary conceptions of natural science and 
 the established principles of chemistry, and do it without 
 boasting about his own ideas on natural philosophy. 
 
 In conclusion, let us call attention to a witness on the 
 change of quantity into quality, namely Napoleon. He 
 describes the conflicts between the French cavalry, bad 
 riders but disciplined, with the Mamelukes who, as re- 
 gards single combat were better horsemen but undis- 
 ciplined, as follows — Two Mamelukes were a match for 
 three Frenchmen, one hundred Mamelukes were equal 
 to one hundred Frenchmen, three hundred Frenchmen 
 
THE DIALECTIC 1 59 
 
 could beat three hundred Mamelukes and a thousand 
 Frenchmen invariably defeated fifteen hundred Mame- 
 lukes." Just as in the statement of Marx, that a certain 
 amount of money, variable in amount, is necessary as a 
 minimum, to make its transformation into capital possi- 
 ble, so, according to Napoleon, a certain minimum num- 
 ber of cavalrxmen is required to bring into being the 
 force of discipline inherent in military org'anisation, to 
 make them evidently superior to greater numbers of in- 
 dividually better riders and fighters, cavalry at least as 
 brave, though irregular. But what effect has this argu- 
 ment on Herr Duehring? Was not Napoleon utterly 
 defeated in his conflict with Europe? Did he not suffer 
 defeat after defeat? And why? Simply as a result of 
 his introduction of confused Hegelian ideas into cavalry 
 tactics. 
 
 Negation of the Negation 
 
 " The historical sketch (of the so called original ac- 
 cumulation of capital in England) is comparatively the 
 best part of Marx's book and it would be even better if 
 it had been developed scientifically and not by means 
 of the Dialectic. The Hegelian negation of the negation 
 is called upon to serve here as a midwife, in default of 
 anything better and clearer, and by means of it the fu- 
 ture is brought into existence from the present. The 
 abolition of privatis property which is shown to have 
 been going on since the sixteenth century is the first 
 negation. Another negation must follow which is char- 
 acterised as the negation of the negation and therefore 
 the restoration of individual private property, but in a 
 higher form, founded on the common ownership of land 
 and instruments of labor. If this new ' individual pri- 
 vate property ' is called also ' social property ' by Herr 
 
l6o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 Marx, the higher Hegelian unity is here manifested in 
 which the contradiction will be destroyed, that is, in ac- 
 cordance with this juggling of words, be destroyed and 
 preserved. . . . The dispossession of the dispos- 
 sessor is, as it were, in this case the automatic product 
 of historical reality in its material external form. . . . 
 It would be difficult for a cautious man to convince him- 
 self of the necessity of communism in land and property 
 on the credit of Hegel's shiftiness, of which the negation 
 of the negation is an example. . . . The confusion 
 of the Marxian philosophic notions will not be strange 
 to him who knows what can be done by means of the 
 Hegelian dialectic or rather what cannot be done. For 
 those who do not know the trick, it must be noted that 
 the first negation of Hegel is the teaching of the cate- 
 chism with respect to the Fall, and the second is a 
 higher unity leading to the Redemption. On these anal- 
 ogies, which pertain to religion no logic of facts can be 
 established. . . . Herr Marx consoles himself in the 
 midst of his simultaneously individual and social prop- 
 erty and leaves his disciples to solve his profound dia- 
 lectic puzzle." Thus far flerr Duehring is quoted.) 
 
 So Marx cannot prove the necessity of the social revo- 
 lution, the restoration of a common property in land 
 and the means of production, except by a reliance upon 
 Hegel's negation of the negation. And, since he founds 
 his socialistic theories upon analogies pertaining to re- 
 ligion, he comes to the conclusion that in future society 
 a simultaneously individual and social property will pre- 
 vail, as the Hegelian higher unity of the contradiction 
 destroyed. 
 
 Let us leave the negation of the negation for a little 
 and look at " the coexistent individual and social prop- 
 erty." This will be called by Herr Duehring a " cloud 
 
THE DIALECTIC l6l 
 
 realm," and, strange to say he is really right in this re- 
 gard. But sad to say it is not Marx who is found to be 
 in the cloud realm but on the contrary Herr Duehring 
 himself. Since by virtue of his wonderful versatility in 
 the vagaries of Hegel he does not experience any diffi- 
 culty in telling us' the necessary contents of the as yet 
 unpublished volume of " Capital," so, after setting Hegel 
 right, he is able to correct Marx without any trouble in 
 that he ascribes to him a higher unity of a private prop- 
 erty of which Marx has not said a word. 
 
 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 la- 
 bor 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 prop- 
 erty." That is all. The condition attained by the dis- 
 possession of the dispossessor is here shown as the resto- 
 ration of individual private property resting however on 
 a basis of social property in the land and means of pro- 
 duction. 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 in- 
 dividual, 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. 
 
l62 LANDMARKS OF SCIEI^TIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 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 there- 
 fore 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 non- 
 sense 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 lat- 
 ter 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 attitude did Marx take to the negation of the 
 negation ? On page 761 and following he states the con- 
 clusion with respect to his economic and historical in- 
 vestigations into the so-called accumulation of original 
 capital, extending over the fifty preceding pages. Be- 
 fore the capitalistic era in England, at least, small pro- 
 duction existed, based upon the private property of the 
 worker in his tools. The so called accumulation of cap- 
 ital consists in the expropriation of these immediate pro- 
 ducers, that is in the abolition of private property rest- 
 ing on the labor of individuals. This was possible be- 
 cause 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 trans- 
 formation of individual and divided modes of produc- 
 tion into social production, constitutes the early history 
 
THE DIALECTIC 163 
 
 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 association 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 expro- 
 priate, 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 expropria- 
 tion of many capitalists by a few, there develop con- 
 tinually the conscious technical application of science, 
 the deliberate organised exploitation of the soil, the 
 transformation of the instruments of labor into instru- 
 ments 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 monopo- 
 lise all the advantages of this process of transformation, 
 grows the mass of misery, pressure, slavery, degradation 
 and robbery but there grows also revolt and the con- 
 stant progress in union and organisation of the working 
 class brought about through the mechanism of the capi- 
 talistic process of production. Capitalism becomes an 
 impediment to the methods of production developed with 
 and under it.i*> The concentration of the means of pro- 
 duction 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." 
 
164 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 And now I ask the reader, where are the dialectic 
 twists and twirls, the intellectual arabesques, where the 
 confused thought the i^esult of which is the identity of 
 everything,- where thp dialectic mystery for the faithful, 
 where the dialectic hocus pocus, and the Hegelian in- 
 tricacies, without which, Marx, according to Ilerr Dueh- 
 ring, 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 novv the capitalistic method of production has itself 
 developed likewise the material circumstances 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 dis- 
 credit of Marx, that it happens to be so fatal to Herr 
 Duehring. ' 
 
 In the first place, since Marx is ready with his his- 
 torical 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 in- 
 dividuals, 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 ful- 
 fils itself in accordance with a certain dialectic law, 
 That is all. It is therefore again merely supposition on 
 Herr Duehring's part to assert that the negation of the 
 
THE DIALECTIC I65 
 
 negation must act as a midwife by whose means the fu- 
 ture 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 na- 
 ture 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 mathe- 
 matics. Formal logic is itself more than anything else 
 a method for the discovery of new results, for advancitig 
 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 quantities, proceeds within the 
 limits of formal logic, at least as a rule : the mathematics 
 of variable quantities which is peculiarly concerned with 
 calculations running to the infinite, is substantially noth- 
 ing but the application of the dialectic in mathematics. 
 Mere proof becomes secondary before the manifold ap- 
 plication of the method to new fields of investigation. 
 But nearly all the proofs of higher mathematics from 
 the first of the diflferential 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 woq in the realrii of dialectics 
 by means of formal logic. For a crass metaphysician 
 like Herr Duehring to want to prove anything by means 
 of the dialectic would be the same wasted labor as Leib- 
 nitz and his pupils went through when they tried to 
 establish the thesis of calculation to infinitv bv means 
 
l66 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 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 pro- 
 cess, 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 unprdtected meta- 
 physicians to take refuge from the stroke of Herr Dueh- 
 ring. 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 individ- 
 ual 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 
 i}s take a cultivated ornamental plant, like the dahlia or 
 
THE DIALECTIC I67 
 
 orchid. Let us consider the seed and the plants de- 
 veloped 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 repetition of 
 this process, every new negation of the negation, in- 
 creases the tendency to perfection. Similarly this process 
 is gone through by most insects, butterflies, for ex- 
 ample. They come out of the egg by a negation of the 
 egg, they go through certain transformations till they 
 reach sex maturity, they copulate and are again negated, 
 since they'die as soon as the process of copulation is com- 
 pleted, 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 geol- 
 og>' is a series of negated negations, one layer after an- 
 other following the destruction of old and the establish- 
 ment of new rock foundations. First, the original crust 
 of the earth, through the cooling of the fluid mass, and 
 through oceanic, meteorological, and chemical atmos- 
 pheric action, being broken up into small parts, these 
 broken masses 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 
 masses 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 
 
l68 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 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 quantity 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^ that is 
 the original positive quantity but in a higher form that 
 is to the second power. It does not matter that we can 
 attain the sanie a^ by the multiplication of a positive by 
 itself. The negated negation is established so completely' 
 in a^ that under all circumstances it has two square roots 
 a and — a. And this impossibility, the negated nega- 
 tion, the getting rid of the negative root in the square 
 has much significance in quadratic equations. The ne- 
 gation of the negation is more evident in the higher 
 analyses, in those " unlimited summations of small quan- 
 tities," 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 quantities 
 X and y, of which one cannot vary without causing the 
 other to vary also under fixed conditions. I differen- 
 tiate X and y, that is I consider x and y as being so in- 
 finitesimally small, that they do not represent any real 
 quantities, even the smallest, so that, of x and y, nothing 
 remains, except their reciprocal relations, a quantitative 
 
 dx 
 relation without any quantity ; therefore — , the relation 
 
 dy 
 
THE DIALECTIC ' 169 
 
 O O 
 
 of the two differentials of x and y, is — *- but — is fixed as 
 
 O O 
 
 y 
 
 the expression of — . That this relation between two 
 
 X 
 
 vanished quantities, the fixed moment of their vanishing, 
 is a contradiction I merely mention in passing, 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 quantities, as 
 quantities 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 quantifies 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 teefh in vain. 
 It is not otherwise in history. All civilised peoples 
 began with common property in land. Among all peo- 
 ples which pass beyond a certain primitive stage the com- 
 mon 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 agricul- 
 ture, private property becomes in its turn a bar to pro- 
 duction, as is to-day the case with both large and small 
 land proprietorship. The next step, to negate it in turn, 
 
170 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 to transform it into social property, necessarily follows. 
 This advance however does not signify the restoration 
 of the old primitive common property, but the establish- 
 ment 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 inven- 
 tions. 
 
 But again ; ancient philosophy was primitive naturalis- 
 tic 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 reestab- 
 lishment of the old, but unites, with the surviving founda- 
 tions, 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," de- 
 stroyed as to its form, preserved as to its real content. 
 Where Herr Duehring only sees word-fugglery a more 
 real content is brought to light by the newer poiht of 
 view. 
 
 Finally, even the Rousseau doctrine of equality, of 
 which that of Herr Duehring is only a feeble and false 
 plagiarism, has no existenoe unless the Hegelian nega- 
 
THE DIALECTIC I7I 
 
 tion of the negation serve it is a midwife, although it 
 originated twehty 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 manifesta- 
 tion. In a state of nature and savagery men were equal, 
 and, since Rousseau regards speech as a falsifyitig of 
 natural conditions, he is quite right in predicating equal- 
 ity of animals of one species as far as this reaches, and 
 the same also with regard to those speechless animal- 
 men, recently Hypothetically classified by Haeckel as 
 Alali. But these equal animal men had one quality be- 
 yond the other animals, — perfectibility, the power of 
 further development and this was the reason of inequal- 
 ity. 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 discov- 
 ery brought about this great revolution " (the transfor- 
 mation 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 founda- 
 tion 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 
 
172 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 where inequality is brought to a climax and, then, trans- 
 formed into'its opposite, again becomes the reason of 
 equality, for to despots all are equal, that is equally of no 
 account. Here is die extreme of inequality, the crown- 
 ing point which closes the circle, and touches the point 
 from which we have proceeded; here all private individ- 
 uals 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 analogous to that pur- 
 sued in Marx's " Capital," but also a whole series of sin- 
 gle dialectic turns of which Marx avails himself : Proc- 
 esses, which are antagonistic in their nature, containing 
 a contradiction in themselves, are transformed frofti 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 H?gel, 
 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 
 
THE DIALECTIC 173 
 
 men flourishes and which is set forth as an ideal con- 
 dition is shown on page 271 of the Philosophy as the orig- 
 inal condition. This original condition on page 279 is 
 of necessity destroyed by the " robber system " — first ne- 
 gation. But we have now, thanks to the philosophy of 
 reality, a!rrived at the point of abolishing the " robber 
 system " and substituting for it the economic commune 
 discovered by Herr Duehring — negation of the nega- 
 tion, 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 him- 
 self, in spite of his opposition and resistance, must fol- 
 low, after his own fashion. It is evident that I say noth- 
 ing 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 assertion 
 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 consti- 
 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 
 or barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it, a 
 
174 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 positive quantity 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 objec- 
 tion are, in fact, the chief arguments of the metaphysi- 
 cians 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 nega- 
 tion 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 there- 
 fore 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 
 
THE DIALECTIC 175 
 
 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 metaphy- 
 sicians 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 asserts 
 that the negation of the negation was an analogy made 
 by Hegel derived from religion and built up on the story 
 of the Fall and the Redemption. Men thought dialec- 
 tically 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^ and where 
 the dififeren'tial and integral calculus are both forbidden 
 by law. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 In this short section Engels leaves the general discus- 
 ion in order to again pay his respects to the shortcom- 
 ings and deficiencies of Herr Duehring. The matter pos- 
 sesses 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 
 
 /. 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. Pro- 
 duction 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 eco- 
 nomic curve. 
 
 The conditions under which men produce and ex- 
 change 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 rail- 
 way 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 
 
 176 
 
, I^LITICAL ECONOMY 177 
 
 or bankruptcy. Anyone who should attempt to apply the 
 same laws of political economy to Patagonia as to pres- 
 ent-day England would only succeed in producing stupid 
 commonplaces. Political economy is thus really a his- 
 torical science. It is engaged with historical material, 
 that is, material which is always in course of develop- 
 ment. At the close of this investigation it can, for the 
 first time, shoyv the few (especially as regards produc- 
 tion and exchange) general laws which apply univer- 
 sally. 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 accord- 
 ance with the method of production and exchange of a 
 given society at a given time. In the tribal or village 
 community with comrpunal 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 distribu- 
 tion according to the historical circumstances from which 
 they have developed. But it is apparent that large farm- 
 ing requires a different mode of distribution than small 
 farming; that the large farming shows the existence of 
 class antagonism — slave-holders and slaves, landlords 
 and tenants, capitalists and wage workers, — but that, on 
 the contrary, in small farming, class distinction does not 
 
1/8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 arise from the farming operations of separate individua:ls 
 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 waa the exclusive or general practice, is closely 
 associated with a slow or rapid revolution of the mode 
 of distribution hitherto prevailing, and to such an ex- 
 tent 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, atid form of 
 exchange, corresponding with the development of these, 
 free competition, render them inevitable. 
 
 With the difference in distribution however class differ- 
 ences are introduced. Society becomes divided into upper 
 and lower classes, into plunderers and plundered, into 
 master and servant classes, and the state which the orig- 
 inal groups composed of societies claiming the same an- 
 cestry 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 su- 
 premacy of the dominant class against the dominated 
 class by means of force. 
 
 So distribution is not a mere passive witness of pro- 
 duction and exchange; it has an immediate influence op 
 both. Every new method of production and form of ex- 
 change is impeded, not only through the old forms and 
 their particular forms of political development, but also 
 through the old methods 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 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 179 
 
 method of production and exchange is built up and de- 
 velops, 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 thou- 
 sands 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 conclu- 
 sion 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 
 t U hundred years ago, has, in this short time, developed an- 
 tagonisms in distribution — concentration of capital on 
 the one hand in the possession of a few persons and, on 
 the other, concentration of propertyless masses 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 class at the introduction of 
 the greater industry. As long as this method of produc- 
 tion 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 class itself (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) 
 it found at first practically no sympathy among the 
 masses of the exploited. But directly the method of pro- 
 duction has travelled a good portion of its upward prog- 
 
l8o 1 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM , 
 
 ress, when half of its life was over, when its destinv 
 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 un- 
 just. 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 produc- 
 tion and, at the same time, as signs of its approaching 
 dissolution, and to point oijt, amid the break up of the 
 existing economic system, the elements of the new or- 
 ganization 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 class, 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 pro- 
 duced and exchanged and according to which 'they have 
 distributed the products of their labor, — political econ- 
 omy, 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 tlie neces- 
 sity of the disappearance of these by means of tlie cap- 
 italistic forms, then develops the laws of the capitalistic 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY l8l 
 
 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 pro- 
 duction 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 con- 
 stitute more and more an insufferable fetter upon pro- 
 duction itself. The mode of distribution which is' neces- 
 sarily, associated with this form of production has brought 
 about a class condition which grows daily more unberable. 
 It has produced the daily sharpening antagonism between 
 the continually less numerous but constantly richer capi- 
 talists and the more numerous, but on the whole, con- 
 tinually 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 develop- 
 ment of their faculties in an ever increasing degree. 
 
 In order to fully accomplish this criticism of the bour- 
 geois 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 com- 
 parision has been undertaken as a whole by Max alone 
 and we consider that this investigation practically sums 
 up all that has been established respecting theoretical 
 economy prior to that of the bourgeois. 
 
l82 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 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 con- 
 temporary 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 con- 
 sisted in this that he had to manufacture commodities and 
 carry on bis trade according to the given historical con- 
 ditions of that period. 
 
 (Herr Duehring having applied the two mail theory 
 to political economic conditions and having decided that 
 such conditions are unjust, upon which conclusion he 
 bases his revolutionary attitude, 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 class antagonisms. At the beginning of mod- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY I83 
 
 em 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 class antagonisms and class distinctions 
 left the working, suffering classes cold until 1830, if it 
 now takes hold of one land after another with the same re- 
 sults 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 class, which for the first time in history can 
 set about the abolition not of this or that particular class 
 organization or of this or that particular class privilege 
 but of classes in general, and it is in the position that it 
 must carry out this line of action on the penalty of sink- 
 ing to the Chinese coolie level. And that the same greater 
 industry has on the other hand produced a class which is 
 in possession of all the tools of production and the means 
 of life but in every period of prosperity (Schwindelper- 
 iode) and in each succeeding panic shows that it is in- 
 capable of controlling in the future the growing produc- 
 tive forces; a class 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 sys- 
 tem of distribution based upon it are in glaring contradic- 
 tion to the mode of production itself and to such a degree 
 that a revolution in the modes of production and distribu- 
 tion must take place which will abolish all class differences 
 or the whole of modern society will fall. It is in these 
 
184 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 actual material facts, which are necessarily becoming more 
 and more evident to the exploited proletariat, that the con- 
 fidence in the victory of modern socialism finds its foun- 
 dation and not in this or that bookworm's notions of 
 justice and injustice. 
 
 //. The Force Theory. 
 
 (Herr Duehring argues that the causes of class sub- 
 jection are to be sought in political conditions and that 
 political force is the primary, a|nd economic conditions 
 merely the secondary, cause of class 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 placgs. But we can- 
 not find the slightest attempt to prove it or to disprove 
 the opposite theory in the three thick volumes. More- 
 over 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 constitutes 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 hot so by any means. The idea 
 
.POLITICAL ECONOMY l8S 
 
 that the political doings of monarch and states are de- 
 cisive 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 bour- 
 ■geois 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 sub- 
 jugated as a slave or mere tool for economic service and 
 was kept in subjection merely as a tool." Robinson only 
 enslaved Friday that he might work for tlie benefit of 
 Robinson. And how could Robinson derive benefit from 
 the labor of Friday ? Only by virtue of the fact that Fri- 
 day produced more means of livelihood by his labor than 
 Robinson had to give him to keep him able to work. 
 Robinson has therefore, contrary to Herr Duehring's 
 pretty prescription, made, by the enslavement of Friday, 
 a political organization, not just because he wanted to, 
 but simply as a means of providing himself with food, 
 and he ought to see how little he has in common with his 
 lord and master Herr Duehring. 
 
 The childish example therefore which Herr Duehring 
 has discovered in order to show that force is the " his- 
 torical fundamental " proves that force is only a means 
 to further an economic interest, and in history the eco-_ 
 nomic side is likewise more fundamental than the po- 
 litical. The example therefore" proves just the opposite 
 
l86 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 of what it ought to prove. And, as with Robinson and 
 Friday, so it is also with all the examples of lordship and 
 slavery up to now. Slavery, to use Duehring's own 
 elegant expression, always implies a means for supplying 
 sustenance (using the term in its broadest sense) and 
 never merely implies a political organization which has 
 been developed by its own will. One would have to be a 
 Herr Duehring to venture to call taxes only a secondary- 
 feature of government, or, to say that the political group- 
 ings of the dominant bourgeois of to-day and the sub- 
 jugated proletariat are purely voluntary and not made to 
 serve the material interests of the bourgeois, namely 
 profit making and the accumulation of capital. 
 
 Let us give our attention again to our two men. Rob- 
 inson " sword in hand " makes Friday his slave. But to 
 do this Robinson uses something else besides his sword. 
 A slave is not made by that means solely. In order to be 
 able to keep a slave one has to be superior to him in two 
 respects, one must first have control over the tools and 
 objects of labor of the slave and over his means of sub- 
 sistence also. Therefore, before slavery is possible, a cer- 
 tain point in production has to be reached and a certain de- 
 gree of inequality in distribution attained. And when 
 slave labor becomes the dominant mode of production of 
 an entire society a higher development of the powers of 
 production, of trade and of wealth, accumulation occurs. 
 In early tribal communities which had common owner- 
 ship of the soil, slavery is either nonexistent or its role 
 is very subordinate. So it was at first in Rome, as a 
 state of farmers, but when Rome became the capital city 
 of the world and the soil of Italy came more and more 
 to be owned by a numerically small class of enormously 
 wealthy property owners, the population of framers per- 
 ished in front of the slave population. When at the 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY I87 
 
 time of the Persian War, the number of slaves in Corinth 
 was 460,000, and in ^gina 470,000, and there were ten 
 slaves to every freeman in the population, the explana-^ 
 tion must be sought in something other than force ; there 
 were ^ highly developed art and handicraft and foreign 
 commerce. Slavery in the United States of America 
 was much less due to force than to the English cotton 
 industry ; where there was not cotton grown or where 
 slaves were not raised, as in the border states, for the 
 cotton producing states, it perished of its own accord 
 and without any employment of force simply because it 
 did not pay. 
 
 When Herr Duehring therefore calls the property of 
 the present day. property resting on force and designates 
 it as "that form of domination which does not. merely 
 signify the exclusion of one's fellow beings from the use 
 of the natural means of sustenance, but implies in ad- ' 
 dition that the subjection of man has lain at the founda- 
 tion of human slavery " he puts the matter upside down. 
 The subjection of humanity to slavery in all its forms 
 means the control by the master of the means of labor by 
 virtue of which alone he can employ his slaves upon them 
 and the disposal of the means of livelihood by which he 
 can keep his slaves alive. In all cases therefore it im- 
 plies a certain power of possession which transcends the 
 ordinary? How did this arise? Occasionally it is clear 
 that it was seized and can therefore be said to rest upon 
 force but this is by no means essential. It can be got 
 by labor, be robbed, be obtained by trade, or taken by 
 fraud. It must be worked for generally before it can be 
 stolen. 
 
 Private property does not historically cqme into exist- 
 ence by any means as a rule as the product of robbery and 
 violence. On the contrary. It arises > from the Jimita- 
 
l88 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 tion of certain things in the early tribal communes. It 
 develops in the first place within the tribe and aftei**-^^ 
 wards in exchange with peoples outside of the tribe in' 
 the form of wares. In proportion as the products of the 
 tribe assume the form of commodities, i. e., the less they 
 are produced for the use of the producer and the more 
 for the purpose of exchange, the exchange destroys the 
 original form of distribution in the commune itself, and 
 the more unequal become the shares of the individual 
 members of the community with respect to material 
 possessionsr' So the old communal ownership of land be- 
 comes more and more invaded, the communal property 
 is rapidly converted into a village of farmers, each tilling 
 his own piece of ground'. Oriental despotism and the 
 changing government of conquering nomads had no power 
 to alter the old form of communal ownership for a thous- 
 and years.^ But the continual destruction of the primitive 
 domestic industry through the competition of the prod- 
 ucts of the great industry is bringing about its dissolu- 
 tion. The thing has little to do with force as has lately 
 appeared in the matter of the division of the communal 
 ])rop.erty of the feudal societies on the Moselle and in 
 Ilochwald. The peasants are finding the substitution of 
 individual for communal holdings to their interests. Even 
 the growth of a primitive aristocracy as among the Celts, 
 the Germans, and in Mesopotamia, is a result of tlie com- 
 munal ownership of landed property, and does not de- 
 pend upon force in the slightest degree but upon free will 
 anc;! custom. Especially where private property arises 
 it "appears as the result of a change in the methods of 
 production and exchange in the interests of the increase 
 of production and the development of commerce and 
 therefore arises from economic causes. Force plays no 
 role in this.-' It is clear tbat the institution of private 
 
fOLtXrCAf. ECONOMY 189 
 
 property must have already existed before the robber is 
 -able to possess himself of other people's goods and that 
 force may change the possession but cannot alter pri- 
 vate property as such. 
 
 But to explain the " subjection of men to slavery " in 
 its modern form, in wage-labor, we can make no use of 
 either force or property acquired by force. We have 
 already mentioned the part which the transformation of 
 the products of labor into commodities, their production 
 not for use alone, but for exchange, plays in the 
 destruction of the primitive communal property and 
 therefore in the bringing into existence directly or in- 
 directly the universality of private property. ' But Marx; 
 has proved in his " Capital " — and Herr Duehring does 
 not venture to intrude upon the matter — that at a certain 
 stage in economic development the production of 
 commodities is transformed into capitalistic production 
 and that at this point " the law of appropriation resting 
 upon the production and circulation of cominodities, the 
 law of private property, by its own inevitable diabetic 
 becomes changed into its opposite, the exchange of 
 equivalents, which appeared as ■ its original mode of 
 operation, but has now become so twisted that there is 
 only an appearance of exchange since. In the first place, 
 the portion of capital exchanged for labor-force is itself 
 only a portion of the product of another's labor taken 
 without an equivalent, and in the second place, it is not 
 only supplied by its producers, the workers, but it must 
 be supplied also with a new surpluS; Originally property 
 seemed to us to be established on labor only — property 
 now^appears (as a conclusion of the Marxian argument), 
 on the side of the capitalist, as the right to unpaid labor 
 and, on the side of the workingman, as an impossibility, 
 the ownership of his own product. The difference be- 
 
igO LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 tween property and labor is the result of a law which ap- 
 parently proceeded from their identity." In other words 
 if we exclude the possibility of force, robbery, and cheat- 
 ing absolutely, if we take the position that all private 
 property originally depended upon the personal labor 
 of its possessor and that equivalents are always ex- 
 changed we nevertheless come, in the course of the de- 
 velopment of production and exchange, of necessity, to 
 the modern capitalistic methods of production, to the 
 monopolisation of the means of production and livelihood 
 in the hands of a single class few in numbers, to the 
 degradation of the other consisting of the immense ma- 
 jority of producers to the position of propertyless prol- 
 etarians, to the periodical alternations of swindling 
 operations and trade crises and to the whole of the pres- 
 ent anarchy in production. The entire result rests on 
 purely economic grounds without robbery, force, or any 
 intervention of politics or the government being neces- 
 sary. Property resting on force becomes a mere phrase 
 which merely serves to obscure the understanding of the 
 real development of things. 
 
 This course, historically expressed, is the story of the 
 development of the bourgeoisie. If " political conditions 
 are the decisive causes of economic conditions the modern 
 bourgeoisie would necessarily not have progressed as the 
 result of a fight with feudalism, but would be the darling 
 child of its womb. Everybody knows that the opposite 
 is the case. The bourgeoisie, originally bound to pay 
 feudal dues to the dominant feudal nobility, recruited 
 fi;om bond slaves and thralls, in a subject state, has, in 
 the course of its conflict with the nobility captured posi- 
 tion after position, and finally has come into possession 
 of the power in civilized countries. In France it directlv 
 attacked the nobility, in England it made the aristocracv 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY I9I 
 
 more and more bourgeois and finally incorporated it with 
 itself as a sort of ornament. And how did this come 
 about? Entirely through the transformation of economic 
 conditions which was sooner or later followed either by 
 the voluntary or compulsory transformation of political 
 conditions. The fight of the bourgeoisie against the 
 feudal nobility is the fight of the city against the coun- 
 try, of industry against landlordism, of economy based 
 on money against economy based on natural products. 
 The distinctive weapons of the bourgeois in this fight 
 were those which came into existence through the de- 
 velopment of increasing economic force by reason of the 
 growth at first of hand manufacture and afterwards 
 machine-manufacture and through the extension of 
 trade. During the whole of this conflict the political 
 power was in the hands of the nobility, with the excep- 
 tion of a period when the king employed the bourgeoisie 
 against the nobility in order to hold one in check by 
 means of the other. From the very moment, however, in 
 which the bourgeoisie still deprived of political power be- 
 gan to be dangerous because of the development of its 
 economic power the monarchy again turned to the nobility 
 and thereby brought about the revolution of the bour- 
 geois first in England and then in France. The political 
 conditions in France remained unaltered until the eco- 
 nomic conditions outgrew them. In politics the noble 
 was everything, the bourgeois nothing. As a social factor 
 the bourgeoisie was of the highest importance while the 
 nobility had abandoned all its social functions and yet 
 pocketed revenues, social services which it did not 
 any longer perform. Even this is not sufficient. Bour- 
 geois society was, as far as the whole matter of produc- 
 tion is concerned, tied and bound in the political feudal 
 forms of the Middle Ages, which this production, not 
 
192 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 only as regards manufacture but as regards handwork 
 also had long transcended amid all the thousandfold 
 gild-privileges and local and provincial tax impositions 
 which had become mere obstacles and fetters to produc- 
 tion. The bourgeois revolution put an end to them. 
 But the economic condition did not, as Herr Duehring 
 would imply, forthwith adapt itself to the political cir- 
 cumstances, — that the king and the nobility spent a long 
 time in trying to effect — but it threw all the mouldy old 
 political rubbish aside and shaped new political condi- 
 tions in which the new economic conditions might come 
 into existence and develop. And it has developed splen- 
 didly in this suitable political and legal atmosphere, so 
 so splendidly that the bourgeoisie is now not very far 
 from the position which the nobility occupied in 1789. 
 It is becoming more and more not alone a social super- 
 fluity but a social impediment. It takes an ever di- 
 minishing part in the work of production and> becomes 
 more and more, as the noble did, a mere revenue con- 
 suming class. And this revolution in its position and 
 the creation of a new class, that of the proletariat, came 
 about without any forde-nonsense but by purely economic 
 means. Further more, it has by no means accomplished 
 it by its own willful act. On the other hand it has ac- 
 complished itself irresistibly against the wish and inten- 
 tions of the bourgeoisie. Its own productive forces have 
 taken the management of affairs and are driving modern 
 bourgeois society to the necessity of revolution or 
 destruction. And if the bourgeoise now appeals to force 
 to ward off the ruin arising from the decrepit economic 
 condition it proves thereby that it suffers from the same 
 error as Herr Duehring, in that it thinks that " political 
 conditions are the distinctive causes of economic condi- 
 tion " and that by the use of the prime factor of mere 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 193 
 
 political force it can maunfacture the secondary factor 
 of economic conditions. It thinks that it can shape 
 economic conditions and their inevitable development, 
 and therefore eliminate the economic effects of the steam 
 engine, and the modern industry which has proceeded 
 from it. It thinks that it can abolish the world commerce 
 and the bank credit development of to-day from the 
 universe by means of Krupp guns and Mauser rifles. 
 
 ///. Force Theory {Continued). 
 
 Let us look at this omnipotent " force " of Herr 
 Duehring a little more closely. Robinson enslaved Fri- 
 day " sword in hand." How did he get the sword? Rob- 
 inson's imaginary island never grew swords on trees and 
 some answer to this question is due from Herr Duehring. 
 We might just as well assume that as Robinson became 
 possessed of a sword so, one fine morning, Friday ap- 
 peared with a loaded revolver in his hand. Thereupon 
 the " force " is entirely reversed. Friday takes command 
 and Robinson must submit. We beg pardon of the 
 reader for returning to the story of Robinson Crusoe, 
 which is more appropriate to the nursery than to an eco- 
 nomic discussion, but what can we do about it? We are 
 compelled to pursue Herr Duehring's axiomatic scientific 
 methods and it is not our fault if we always find ourselves 
 in the realms of childishness. The revolver then triumphs 
 over the sword and it should be apparent even to the 
 maker of childish axioms that superior force is no mere 
 act of the will but requires very real preliminary con- 
 ditions for the carrying out of its purposes, especially 
 mechanical instruments, the more highly developed of 
 which have the superiority over the less highly developed. 
 Furthermore these tools must be produced, whence it 
 appears that the producer of the more highly developed 
 
194 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 tool of force, commonly called weapon, triumphs over 
 the producer of the less highly develppei! tool." In a 
 word, the triumph of force depends upon the production 
 of weapons, therefore upon economic power, on economic 
 conditions, on the ability to organize actual material in- 
 struments. 
 
 Force at the present day implies the army and the navy, 
 and the two of them cost, to our sorrow, a heap of 
 money. But force cannot make money, on the contrary it 
 gets away very fast with what is made, and it does not 
 make good use of it as we have just discovered painfully 
 with respect to the French indemnity. Money must there- 
 fore finally be provided by means of economic production, 
 force is thus again limited by the economic conditions 
 which shape the means of making and maintaining the 
 instruments of production. But that is not all by any 
 means. Nothing is more dependent upon economic con- 
 ditions than armies and fleets. Arming, concentration, 
 organization, tactics, strategy, depend before anything 
 else upon the degree of development in production and 
 transportation. In the trade of war the free inventiy- 
 ness of liberal-minded generals has never worked a 
 revolution, but the discovery of better weapons and the 
 change in military equipment have never failed to do 
 so. The inventiveness of the general under the most 
 favorable conditions finds its limitations in the adapta- 
 tion of methods of warfare to the new weapons and the 
 new soldiers. 
 
 At the beginning of the fourteenth century gun- 
 powder was brought from the Arabs to Western Europe 
 and, as every schoolboy knows, entirely revolutionized 
 warfare. The introduction of gunpowder and firearms 
 was however by no means an act of force but an in- 
 dustrial and therefore economic advance. Industry is 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY IQS 
 
 Still industry whether its object in the creation or the 
 destruction of material things. The introduction of fire- 
 arms not only produced a revolution in the methods 
 of warfare but also in the relations of master and subject. 
 Trade and money are concomitants of giinpowder and 
 firearms and these former imply the bourgeoisie. Fire- 
 arms from the first were bourgeois instrum^ts of war- 
 fare employed on behalf of the rising monarchy against 
 the feudal nobility. The hitherto unassailable stone 
 castles of the nobles submitted to the cannon of the 
 burghers, the fire of their guns pierced the mail armor of 
 the knights. The supremacy of the nobility fell with the 
 heavily armed cavalry of the nobility. With the develop- 
 ment of the bourgeoisie, infantry and artillery became 
 more and more the important arms of the service and be- 
 cause of artillery the trade of war had to create another 
 industrial subdivision, to-wit, engineering. 
 
 The development of firearms proceeded very slowly. 
 Shooting remained clumsy and small arms were inef- 
 fective in spite of many individual inventions. Three 
 hundred years elapsed before a musket was produced 
 which sufficed for the arming of a complete infantry. 
 First at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a musket 
 with a bayonet iattached, which discharged a stone su- 
 perseded the pike as an infantry weapon. The infantry 
 of that day was exceedingly unreliable, only kept to- 
 gether by physical force, composed of the basest elements 
 of society, frequently made up of men picked up by the 
 press gang and prisoners of war intermingled with 
 soldiers recruited by the various princes. The only 
 fighting formation in which these soldiers could be made 
 to use the new weapon was the linear tactic, which 
 reached its highest development under Frederick II. The 
 whole infantrv of an army was drawn up in a very long 
 
196 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 hollow square three files deep and advanced in battle array 
 en masse. It was usually permitted to one of the two 
 wings to be a little in advance or a little in the rear. 
 This helpless body could only advance and keep its 
 formation on perfectly level ground and then only at a 
 slow marching time (seventy-five steps to the minute) a 
 change of formation during"the fight was injpossible and 
 victory or defeat was determined rapidly at a stroke as 
 soon as the infantry came under fire. 
 
 These helpless lines in the American Revolutionary 
 War came into collision with the rebel troops, which cer- 
 tainly could not drill but could shoot so much the better 
 in that they were fighting for their own interests and 
 therefore did not desert like the enlisted soldiers. These 
 did not, like the English, deploy in massed bodies on the 
 open field, but in rapidly moving bodies of sharpshooters 
 in the thick woods. The organised lines were here pow- 
 erless and had to contend against invisible and unap- 
 proachable foes. The sharpshooters thereupon were 
 brought into existence as a part of the army organization 
 — a new method of fighting arising from a change in 
 the military material. 
 
 What the American Revolution began the French 
 completed in the military realm. To the drilled troops 
 of the Coalition the French Revolution opposed soldiers 
 who were badly drilled but who constituted large masses, 
 the product of the whole nation. Some means had to be 
 discovered of protecting Paris with these masses. 
 That could not be done without victory in the open 
 field. A mere musketry engagement would not suf- 
 fice, a form would have to be discovered by which 
 the masses could be utilized and this was found in the 
 column. The column formation allowed slightly drilled 
 troops to keep better order and by means of a better 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY I97 
 
 marching speed (one hundred steps to the minute) al- 
 lowed it to break through the stiff old-fashioned line ar- 
 rangement. It was possible by this formation to fight in 
 country unsuitable to the line formation, to mass troops in 
 places suitable, to associate scattered sharpshooters with 
 the columns, to keep back, occupy and wear the lines of 
 the enemy, until the decisive movement came when a 
 charge could "be made by the troops held in reserve. This 
 new method of combining riflemen and columns and mak- 
 ing a complete army corps consisting of all arms, which 
 was fully developed on its tactical and strategic side by 
 Napoleon, was only rendered possible by the change 
 in military material brought about by the French Revolu- 
 tion. There were still two very important technical pre- 
 liminaries, first the making of light carriages for field 
 pieces which were constructed by Gribevaul by means of 
 which alone the required quick advance was rendered 
 possible, and making the army rifle a more precise 
 weapon by adapting to it some of the features of the 
 hunting rifle. Without these improvements military 
 sharpshooting would have been impossible. 
 
 The revolutionary method of arming the entire popula- 
 tion was subjected to certain limitations and chiefly as 
 regards the excusing of the well to do, and in this form 
 became common to most of the great continental coun- 
 tries. Prussia alone sought by its militia system to make 
 the entire force of its people available for military pur- 
 poses. Prussia was the first state to provide its entire in- 
 fantry with the latest weapons, and to place officers in the 
 rear, since between 1830 and i860 trained officers leading 
 their troops had played an unimportant part. The results 
 of 1866 were largely due to these innovations. 
 
 In the Franco Prussian War two armies came into 
 contact both of which had their officers in the rear and 
 
198 " LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 which both used substantially the same tactics as in the 
 time of the old smooth bore flintlocks. The Prussians 
 however by the introduction of company columns had 
 made an attempt to discover a method of fighting more 
 suitable to the new system of arming. But on the i8th 
 of August at St. Privat the Prussian guard which cm- 
 ployed the company column formation lost the most part 
 of five regiments, over a third of its strength in two 
 hours (176 officers and 5 114 men) after which the 
 company column form of battle order came in for no 
 less criticism than the battalion column form and the 
 line formation. Every attempt to oppose a solid forma- 
 tion to the fire of the enemy was thereafter abandoned. 
 The battle was thereafter, on the German side, carried 
 on by dense swarms of riflemen into which the columns 
 dissolved under the fire of the enemy spontaneously, with- 
 out orders from the superior "officers, and this was, in 
 fact, the only possible method of advance under fire. The 
 private soldier was again cleverer than his officer ; he had 
 discovered the only form of fighting formation, and set 
 himself to follow it in spite of the resistance of his 
 leaders. 
 
 In the Franco-German war there is a point of de- 
 parture of entirely different significance from all preced- 
 ing wars." In the first place the weapons are now so 
 complete that a new revolutionary departure in this re- 
 spect is no longer possible. When you have cannon with 
 which you can decimate a battalion as far as your eye 
 can make it out, and when you have rifles by which you 
 can aim at individuals, and which take less time to load 
 than to aim, all further advances as far as battle in the 
 field goes are immaterial. The era of progress on this 
 side is substantially closed. In the second place, how- 
 ever, this war has induced all the great states of the 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 19')" 
 
 continent to adopt the highly developed Prussian militia 
 system and thus to take up a military burden which will 
 ruin them in a few years. The army has become the 
 main object of the state, it has become an object in itself. 
 The people only exist to furnish and maintain sol- 
 diers. Militarism dominates and devours Europe. But 
 this militarism has in it the seeds of its own destruction-. 
 The competition of the various states with each other 
 necessitates the spending of more money every year on 
 ihe army, the fleet, weapons of destruction, etc., and thus 
 accelerates financial breakdown. On the other hand, with 
 the increasingly rigid military service, the whole people 
 becomes familiar with the use of military weapons. It 
 therefore becomes able at some time to impose its wili 
 upon the dominating military authority. And this time 
 arrives as soon as the mass of the people — country and 
 :ity workers and farmers — has the will. At this point 
 the army of the classes becomes the army of the masses, 
 the machine refuses to do the work, militarism goe& 
 under in the dialectic of its own development. What the 
 bourgeois democrats of 1848 could not accomplish, just 
 because they were bourgeois and not proletarian, nameh 
 the endowment of the laboring masses with a will, the 
 content of which corresponded with their class condition, 
 socialism will certainly accomplish. And that means the 
 destruction of militarism and with it of all standing 
 armies absolutely and entirely. 
 
 That is the moral of our history of modern infantry. 
 The second moral which brings us back to Herr Duehring 
 is that the entire organization and methods of warfare 
 of modern armies and, with them, victory and defeat, 
 are dependent upon material things, that is upon eco- 
 nomic conditions, upon soldier material and upon weapon 
 material and therefore upon the quality of a population 
 
200 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 and upon technique. Only a hunting people like tlie, 
 Americans could rediscover the sharpshooter. Now the 
 Yankees of the old States have, from purely economic 
 causes, become transformed into farmers, industrialists, 
 sailors and merchants, who no longer shoot in the pri- 
 meval forests and on that account have become all the 
 more successful in the field of speculation where they 
 have developed into colossal appropriators. Only a 
 Revolution like the French- which emancipated the 
 burghers and still more the peasants could discover the 
 simultaneously massed armies and free advance ^y which 
 they overcame the stiff old line formation, the military 
 product of the absolutism against which they fought. 
 And as for the advances in technique as soon as they 
 were applicable and were applied, forthwith changes, nay 
 revolutions, in the methods of warfare were at once 
 mide^ often against the will of the military leaders as we 
 have seen over and over again to be the case. A diU- 
 gent subaltern could explain to Herr Duehring how at 
 the present day the making of war is dependent upon the 
 productivity and means of communication of the back 
 country as well as of the theatre of war. In short, eco- 
 nomic conditions and means of power are always the 
 things which help " force " to victory, and without them 
 " force " comes to an end. So that he who would re- 
 form the art of war according to the axioms of Herr 
 Duehring would only get a flogging for his pains. 
 
 If we go from the land to the sea we shall discover a 
 complete revolution, even within the last twenty years. 
 The warship' of the Crimean War was the wooden three 
 decker, with from sixty to a hundred guns, which de- 
 pended upon its sailing power and had only a weak aux- 
 iliary steam engine. It carried in general thirty-two 
 pounders of about sixty hundred weight and only a few 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 20I 
 
 sixty-eight pounders of ninety-five hundred weight. At 
 the end of the war ironclad floating batteries were used, 
 clumsy and slow but impregnable to the artillery of that 
 time. Very soon iron plates were placed on the war- 
 ships, at first thin, four inches thickness of iron was then 
 considered to constitute a remarkably great thickness. 
 But the progress in artillery soon discounted the thick- 
 ness of armour, for every addition to the armour there 
 was a new and more powerful artillery which pierced it 
 with the greatest ease. So now we have warships with 
 ten twelve, fourteen twenty-four inches of armour plate 
 (the Italians are going to build a warship with armour- 
 plate three feet thick) on the one hand and on the other 
 hand gxins which reach to a hundred tons and which 
 hurl projectiles amounting to two thousand pounds in 
 weight to unheard of distances. The modern war ves- 
 sel is a rapid travelling armoured screw steamer of eight 
 to ten thousand tons and of from six to eight thousand 
 horse power provided with turrets and four or six very 
 powerful big guns, together with a ram at the bow be- 
 low the water line for the purpose of destroying the ship 
 of the enemy. It is a colossal machine in which steam not 
 only furnishes the driving power but also steers, raises the 
 anchor, moves the towers, aims and loads the guns, 
 works the pumps, takes in and lowers the boats, which 
 are frequently steamers, and so forth. And the contest 
 between the armour plate and the projectile is so far 
 from having been settled that a ship is to-day practically 
 obsolete as soon as it has left the ways. The modern 
 warship is not only a product of modern industry but 
 a masterpiece, a product of the dissipation of wealth. 
 The country in which the greater industry has developed 
 the most completely has a monopoly of shipbuilding. 
 All the Turkish, almost all the Russian and the greater 
 
202 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 part of the German warships are built in England. Ar- 
 mour plate of the best type is made almost exclusively in 
 Germany. Of the three iron foundries which are alone 
 in the position to turn out the heaviest artillery, two of 
 them, Woolwich and Elswick, are in England, the' third 
 Krupp's is in Germany. Here it may be seen that the 
 pure political power which Herr Duehring maintains to 
 be the original reason for economic conditions is on the 
 contrary inseparable from economic conditions and that 
 not only the existence but the very management of the 
 tool of force on the sea, the warship, is in itself a branch, 
 of modern industry. And that this is so gives nobody 
 more trouble than just that force, the state, which has 
 now to pay more for one ship than it had formerly for a 
 small fleet and sees that these exp^sive ships are obso- 
 lete as soon as they are launched. And the state is just 
 as much upset as Herr Duehring would be over the fact 
 that the controller of the economic force of the ship, 
 the engineer, is a much more important person than the 
 man of pure force, the captain. On the other hand we 
 have no further grounds for annoyance when we see 
 that how as a result of this contest between armour plate 
 and projectile the battle ship has arrived at the point 
 when it is as expensive as it is unfit for fighting and that 
 this contest shows the dialectic law of progress at work, 
 in naval warfare according to which militarism like every 
 other historical phenomenon must come to an end as a 
 result of its own development. 
 
 We can thus see as plain as noonday that it is not true 
 that " the original reason must be sought in pure political 
 force and not in indirect economic force." Quite the 
 contrary. Economic force is the control of the power of 
 the great industry. Political force in naval matters 
 which is dependent upon modern ships of war is by no 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 203 
 
 means " pure force " but is involved in economic force, 
 m the advanced development of metallurgy, in the mas- 
 tery of historical technique and the possession of rich 
 coal-fields. 
 
 IV. Force Theory (Conclusion) 
 
 (Herr Duehring makes an argument which is briefly 
 summarised by Engels as follows and which may be said 
 to involve the notion that the monopolization of land is 
 the cause of human slavery and is the product of force. 
 Engels proceeds) : 
 
 Thesis — The domination of nature by man is the rea- 
 son of the domination of man by man. 
 
 Proof — The existence of landlordism on a large scale 
 cannot be carried on anywhere except by means of 
 slavery. 
 
 Proof of proof — Landlordism on a large scale can- 
 not exist without slavery because the great landlord with 
 his own family without the help of slaves can only culti- 
 vate a small piece of his property. 
 
 Therefore, in order to show that man cannot subdue 
 nature without the subjugation of his fellowman, Herr 
 Duehring transforms " nature " forthwith into " private 
 ownership of large tracts of land " and this indefinite pri- 
 vate ownership into the ownership exercised by a great 
 landlord, who naturally cannot cultivate his land without 
 slaves. 
 
 In the first place the domination of nature and the 
 cultivation of private landed property do not imply 
 the same thing. The domination of nature in industrial 
 affairs is displayed in a manner altogether different frotn 
 that in agricultural affairs, for these latter are always 
 at the mercy of the climate instead of being supreme over 
 the climate. 
 
204 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 In the second place if we limit ourselves to the ex- 
 ploitation of private property in land in large amounts 
 we come to the question as to whom the land belongs^ 
 We find that in the beginnings of civilised peoples the 
 land was not owned by great landlords but was held in 
 common by tribal and village communities. From India 
 to Ireland the exploitation of land property in large 
 tracts has proceeded from the tribal and village com- 
 munal ownership which was the original form. Some- 
 times the land was cultivated in common for the benefit 
 of the common members, sometimes in separate pieces, 
 parcelled by the community to separate families from 
 time to time with wood and willow land retained for 
 communal use. 
 
 It is pure imagination on the part of Herr Duehring 
 to declare that the exploitation of landed property is re- 
 sponsible for the existence of master and servant. Who 
 is the owner of private landed property in the entire 
 Orient wher? the land is possessed by the community or 
 the State and the word landlord is not to be found in 
 the language ? The Turks first introduced a species of 
 feudalism into the lands which they conquered. The 
 Greeks in heroic times had a classified system of rank 
 which itself bore witness to a long unknown preceding 
 history, but the land was then cultivated by an inde- 
 pendent peasantry. The large possessions of the nobles 
 and leaders of the tribes were the exception and had no 
 permanence. Italy was originally cultivated by small 
 peasant farmers; when in the latter days of the Roman 
 Republic the great holdings, the latifundia destroyed 
 the small farmer-holdings, cattle raising was substituted 
 for agriculture, and as Pliny points out Italy was ruined 
 {latifundia Italiam perdidere). In the whole of Europe 
 during the Middle Ages small farming was the rule and 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 205 
 
 it is very appropriate to the above discussion to note what 
 tasks these peasant were obliged to perform for the feu- 
 dal lords. The Frisians, lower Saxons, Flemings and 
 people from the lower Rhine who invaded the lands of 
 the Slavs to the east of the Elbe and cultivated them 
 did so under very favorable terms of rent but by no 
 means under a species of slavery. In North America, 
 by far the greatest amount of tte land is cultivated by 
 the labor of free small farmers, while the great landed 
 proprietors of the South with their slaves and extravagant 
 farming methods destroyed the soil until the land ceased 
 to be productive and the cultivation of cotton travelled 
 ever Westward. , In Australia and New Zealand the 
 attempts to artificially establish an agrarian aristocracy 
 by the British government have failed. In short, if we 
 except the tropical and sub-tropical colonies, in which the 
 climate is prohibitive of agriculture by Europeans, it 
 seems that the idea of a great land holding class origi- 
 nally dominating nature by means of the employment of 
 slaves and serfs is a pure product of the imagination. 
 Things are quite otherwise. If one goes to the older 
 countries like Italy the land was not waste originally 
 but the transformation of the agricultural land cultivated 
 by the small farmers into cattle-land utterly ruined the 
 country. 
 
 Latterly, for the first time since the growth in the in- 
 tensity of the population has increased the value of land 
 and especially since the progress in agriculture has made 
 possible the reclamation of poor lands, the greater land- 
 fordism has begun to obtain possession of waste and pas- 
 ture lands and has stolen the old communal lands of the 
 peasants in this country, as well in England as in Ger- 
 many. And this has not happened without a counter- 
 poise. For every acre of common land which the great 
 
206 LANDMARKS OF SCfEKTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 landlords in England converted into arable land they 
 have made at least three acres of arable land in Scotland 
 into shooting preserves and mere places for the hunting 
 of wild animals. 
 
 We have to consider the declaration of Herr Duehring 
 to the effect that the cultivation of large parcels of land 
 has not come into existence otherwise than through great 
 landlords and their slaves, a declaration which we have 
 seen implies an entire ignorance of history. We have 
 now to see how far at different epochs the cultivation of 
 the soil has been carried on by means of slaves, as in 
 the palmy days of Greece, or by means of tenants, like 
 the socage tenure, since the Middle Ages, and then what 
 has been the social function of the greater landlordism 
 at different periods of history. 
 
 If Herr Duehring means that the mastery of man by 
 men as a preliminary to the mastery of nature by man 
 is a universal law, that our present economic condition, 
 the stage attained to-day in agriculture and industry, is 
 the result of a society which has developed itself in 
 class antagonisms, in mastership on the one hand and 
 in slavery on the other hand, he says something which 
 is a mere commonplace since the publication of the Com- 
 munist Manifesto. We have thus to explain the exist- 
 ence of these classes and when Herr Duehring has no 
 further explanation to give than " force " we are right 
 back at the beginning again. The mere fact that the 
 subject and the plundered have always been more numer- 
 ous and that therefore the actual force has rested with 
 them is enough to show the stupidity of the entire force 
 theory. We have therefore still to explain the origin of 
 master and subject classes. They have come into being 
 in two ways. 
 
 When men originally sprang from the lower animals 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 207 
 
 they came into history, still half-wild animals, elemen- 
 tary, with no power over the forces of nature, still un- 
 acquainted with their own powers, as poor as the ani- 
 mals and hardly more productive than they. There pre- 
 vailed a certain equality in the conditions of life, and as 
 far as the heads of families were concerned an equality 
 of social condition — there was at least an absence of 
 those class distinctions which developed later in the 
 agricultural communities. In such a social state there 
 were certain common interests which overrode the inter- 
 ests of the individual in certain respects, the settlement 
 of disputes, the repression of individuals who exceeded 
 their rights, the looking after the water supply, particu- 
 larly in hot countries, and finally under the conditions 
 of life in the primeval forests, religious functions. We 
 find analogous communal duties exercised by communal 
 officials at all periods as well in the oldest German mark 
 communities as in India to-day. These are contempo- 
 raneous with a sort of beginning of authority and state 
 power in a rudimentary form. The productive forces 
 develop ; a denser population produces common and then 
 conflicting interests between members of the society, 
 the grouping of which in accordance with a new divi^on 
 of labor causes the creation of new organs for the pur- 
 pose of maintaining the society on the one hand and 
 repressing the antagonistic interests on the other. These 
 organs which act for the entire group have different 
 forms according to the varying circumstances of the in- 
 dividual groups, partly through the natural growth of 
 a hereditary leadership in a world where everything pro- 
 ceeds naturally and partly through a growing need owing 
 to the development of conflicts with other groups. How 
 these social functions which were subsidiary to society 
 came in the course of time to triumph over society ; how 
 
208 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 the original servant, under favorable conditions be- 
 came transformed into the master, how, according to 
 circumstances, this master made his appearance as Orien- 
 tal despot or satrap, as Greek chieftain, as Celtic clan 
 chief, etc., how far he relied on force for this transforma- 
 tion and finally how the individual leaders associated 
 themselves into a dominant class we have here no oppor- 
 tunity to consider. We can only state that real social 
 duties lay at the base of the political domination and that 
 the political supremacy has only existed as long as the 
 politically supreme fulfilled these social functions. How 
 many despotisms have risen and fallen among the Per- 
 sians and Hindoos, and everybody knows quite well that 
 the public management of the irrigation was the prime 
 necessity of agriculture in those places. The " edu- 
 cated " English were the first to observe this among the 
 Hindoos ; they let the canals and locks fall into disuse 
 and they have now discovered by the regular recurrence 
 of famine that they have neglected the only opportunity 
 to make their rule at least as righteous as that of their 
 predecessors. 
 
 But there is another form of class distinction besides 
 the one described. The natural division of labor in the 
 agricultural families permitted at a certain point of pros- 
 perity the introduction of foreign labor power. This 
 was particularly the case in countries where the old com- 
 mon ownership of the soil had disappeared or whefe at 
 kast the old system of common cultivation had become 
 supplanted by the cultivation of separate plots by indi- 
 vidual families. Production had so far developed that 
 the human labor force was able to produce more than 
 was necessary for the support of the individual laborer. 
 The time was ripe for the employment of more labor- 
 power, labor-power had become a value. But the 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 209 
 
 limitations of the communal system did not afford any 
 attainable surplus labor power. Yet war did give such 
 an opportunity for getting surplus labor power and 
 war was as old as the simultaneous existence of groups 
 of communal groups in close juxtaposition. Up to this 
 time nien did not take prisoners of war, they killed them 
 right off, and, at a still earlier date, they ate them. But 
 at the stage of economic development of which we speak 
 they had a value and they were not only allowed to live 
 but were set to work. So force instead of being the 
 master of economic conditions was pressed into the ser- 
 vice of those conditions. Slavery was discovered. It 
 soon became the dominant form of production among 
 all people who had developed beyond the tribal communal 
 stage and as a matter of fact was at the end one of the 
 main reasons for the break up of the communal system. 
 Slavery first made the division of labor between agri- 
 culture and industry completely possible and brought 
 into existence the flower of the old world, Greece. 
 Without slavery there would have been no Grecian state, 
 no Grecian art and science and no Roman Empire. 
 There would have been no modern Europe without the 
 foundation of Greece and Rome. We must not forget 
 that our entire economic, political and mtellectual de- 
 velopment has its foundation in a state of society in 
 which slavery was regarded universally as necessary. 
 In this sense we may say that without the ancient slavery 
 there would have been no modern socialism. 
 — ^It is very easy to make preachments about slavery and 
 to express our moral indignation at such a scandalous 
 institution. Unfortunately the whole significance of this 
 is that it merely says that these old institutions do not 
 correspond with our present conditions and the senti- 
 ments engendered by these conditions. We do not how- 
 
2.IO LANDMARKS OP SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 ever in this way explain how these institutions came into 
 existence, why they came into existence and the role 
 which they have played in history. And when we enter 
 upon this matter we are obliged to say in spite of all con- 
 tradiction and accusations of heresy that the introduction 
 of slavery under the conditions of that time was a great 
 step forwards. It is a fact that man sprang from the 
 lower animals and has had to employ barbaric and really 
 bestial methods in order to rid himself of barbarism. 
 The old communal system where it persisted built up 
 the most elementary form of the state, Oriental despot- 
 ism, from India to Russia. Only where it has been dis- 
 solved has the people progressed and the next economic 
 step lay in the development of production by means of 
 slave labor. It is evident that as long as hurnan labor 
 was so little productive that it afforded only a small sur- 
 plus over the necessary means of life, the development 
 of the productive forces, the institution of commerce, 
 the development of the State and of law and the founda- 
 tion of art and science were only possible through an 
 increase in the subdivision of labor. This implied the 
 broad division between the mass of the workers and the 
 directors of labor, trade, state, state-business, and later 
 the occupation of a few privileged persons in art and 
 science. The simplest and most natural form of this 
 subdivision of labor was slavery. In the conditions of 
 the ancient, and especially the Greek world, the advance 
 to a society founded on class distinction could only be 
 for the slaves, the prisoners of war from whom the ma- 
 jority of slaves were recruited inste-ad of being mur- 
 dered as they would have been at an earlier date or 
 instead of being eaten as they would have been at a stage 
 still earlier. 
 
 Here we add that all the historical antitheses of rob- 
 
i>OLITlCAL ECONOMY itt 
 
 bers and robbed of master and subject classes find their 
 explanation in the relatively undeveloped productivity 
 of human labor. As long as the actual working people 
 claim that they have no time left at the close of their 
 necessary labors to attend to the common business of 
 society — the organization of labor, the business of the 
 government, the administration of justice, art, science, 
 etc., just so long will distinct classes exist which are free 
 from actual labor to carry on these functions. Naturally 
 these classes do not hesitate to lean more and more and 
 more upon the shoulders of the working class for their 
 own advantage. The development of the great industry 
 with its enormous increase in the forces of production 
 for the first time permitted of the subdivision of labor 
 in all social grades and thus allowed tif the reduction of 
 the time necessary for labor so that enough leisure re- 
 mains for all to take part in the actual public business — 
 theoretical as well as practical. So that now for the 
 first time the dominant and exploiting classes have be- 
 come superfluous and even an obstacle to social progress, 
 and so now for the first time they will be unceremon- 
 iously brushed aside in spite of their " pure force." 
 
 When Herr Duehring then shows his scorn of the 
 Greek civilisation because it was founded on slavery 
 he might just as reasonably reproach the Greeks for not 
 having steam engines and electric telegraphs. And 
 when he explains that our modern wage slavery is only 
 a somewhat transformed and ameliorated inheritance of 
 chattel slavery and not to be explained from itself ( that 
 is from the economic laws of modern society) it only 
 signifies that wage slavery, like chattel slavery, is a form 
 of class domination and class subjection as every child 
 knows, or it is false. So we might with the same right 
 maintain that wage slavery is only a milder form of 
 
^12 LANDMARKS OF SCIEHttFlC gOCIALtSM 
 
 cannibalism, the established original method of dispos- 
 ing, of conquered enemies. 
 
 The, role which force has played in history with respect 
 to economic development is therefore clear. In the first 
 place, all political force rests originally on an economic 
 social function, and developed in proportion as the old 
 tribal communistic society was dissolved and transformed 
 into various grades of private producers, and the admin- 
 istrators of the communal functions therefore became 
 more widely separated from the rest of the community. 
 In the second place, when political force, independent of 
 society^ has transformed itself from the position of ser- 
 vant to that of master, it may work in two directions. 
 In the first place, it may work sensibly and in the direc- 
 tion of general economic development. In this case 
 there is no quarrel between the two, economic develop- 
 ment is advanced. Or it may work against it and then 
 with few exceptions it succumbs to the economic develop- 
 ment. These few exceptions consist of individual bases 
 of tyranny where barbaric conquerors have overcome a 
 country and have destroyed the economic forces which 
 they did not know how to handle. Thus the Christians 
 in Spain destroyed the irrigation works upon which the 
 highly developed agriculture and horticulture of that 
 country depended. Every conquest by a more barbar- 
 ous people interferes with economic development and de- 
 stroys numerous productive forces. But in the great 
 majority of instances of the permanent conquest of a 
 country, the more barbaric conquerors are obliged to 
 adopt the higher economic conditions into which their 
 conquest has brought them. They are assimilated into 
 the conquered people and are compelled to adopt their 
 language. But where — apart from instances of con- 
 quest — the inner political forces of a country comes in 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 213 
 
 conflict with its economic development, which at the 
 present day is practically true of all political force, the 
 battle has always ended with the destruction of the 
 political force. Without exception and inexorably, eco- 
 nomic development has attained its goal. The last most 
 striking example of which we have already called atten- 
 tion to, the French Revolution. If, as according to Herr 
 Duehring's teachings, the economic development and the 
 economic conditions of a certain country are altogether 
 dependent upon political forces there is no explanation 
 of the fact that Frederick William IV after 1848 could 
 not succeed, in spite of his army, in attaching the guilds 
 of the Middle Ages and other romantic tomfooleries to 
 the steam-engines, railroads and the newly developing 
 greater industry, or why the Czar who is still much more 
 powerful could not only not pay his debts but could not 
 collect his forces without drawing on the credit of the 
 economic conditions of Western Europe. 
 
 According to Herr DueHring force is the absolute 
 evil. The first act of force is to him the first fall into 
 sin. His whole conception is a preachment over the in- 
 fection of all history up to the present time with the 
 original sin. He talks about tbe disgraceful falsifying 
 of all natural and social Idws by the invention of the 
 devil, force. That force plays another role in history, 
 a revolutionary role, that it is in the words of Marx, the 
 midwife of the old society which is pregnant with the 
 new, that it is the tool by the means of which social 
 progress is forwarded, and foolish, dead political forms 
 destroyed, — of that Herr Duehring has no word to say, 
 only with sighs and groans does he admit the possibility 
 that force may be necessary for the overthrow of a 
 thievish economic system. He simply declares that every 
 application of force demoralizes him who uses it. And 
 
214 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 til is in Spite of the moral and intellectual uplift which 
 has followed every victorious revolution. He says this 
 in Germany, too, where a powerful and necessary upris- 
 ing would at least have the advantage of abolishing the 
 slavish snobbery of the national mind which has pre- 
 vailed since the humiliation of the Thirty Years War. 
 And this foolish and senseless sort of preaching is set 
 up in opposition to the most revolutionary party known 
 to history. 
 
 V. Theory of Value 
 
 It is now about a hundred years since a book appeared 
 in Lcipsic which by the beginning of this century had 
 gone through thirty-one editions and which was dis- 
 tributed throughout the towns and the country districts 
 by officials, preachers and humanitarians, of all sorts, 
 and which was universally adopted in the schools as a 
 reader. This book was called, " The Children's Friend " 
 by Rochow. It had the object of teaching the children 
 of the peasant and laboring classes their vocation in life- 
 and their duties to their social and political superiors, 
 and making them satisfied with their lot in life, with 
 black bread and potatoes, compulsory servitude, low 
 wages, fatherly beatings and other similar agreeable 
 things. In pursuit of this end, the youth in town and 
 country was informed what a wise provision of nature 
 it was that man was obliged to get his food and enjoy- 
 ment by means of his labor, and how fortunate the peas- 
 ant and handworker ought to feel that they were able 
 to spice their food with hard labor while the spendthrift 
 and the picture suffered the pangs of indigestion or lack 
 of appetite. These commonplaces which old Rochow 
 thought good enough for the peasant children of his 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 215 
 
 day have been elevated into the " absolute fundamental " 
 of the newest political economy by Herr Duehring. 
 
 Value is defined as follows by Herr Duehring " Value 
 is what economic goods and activities will fetch in ex- 
 change." What they will fetch is shown " by the price 
 or some other equivalent, wages for example." In 
 other words Value is price. Or not to do Herr Duehr- 
 ing an injury and to show the absolute absurdity of his 
 definition in his own language, " Value is prices." On 
 page 19 he says " Value and its prices expressed in 
 money " and he also affirms that the same value has very 
 different prices ^and therefore has different values. If 
 Hegel had not died long ago he would hang himself out 
 of pure jealousy, for, with all his theology, he could not 
 have produced this value which has as many different 
 values as it has prices. One would have to possess the 
 confidence of Herr Duehring to begin a new and more 
 profound treatment of political economy with the declara- 
 tion that there is no difference between value and price 
 except that one ,is expressed in terms of money and the 
 -other is not. 
 
 (After gentle raillery of Duehrihg's statements En- 
 gels proceeds.) 
 
 The actual, practical value of an object according to 
 Herr Duehring consists in two things, first in the amount 
 of human labor contained in it and secondly in a forcibly 
 imposed tax. In other words value as it exists to-day is 
 a monopoly price. If all wares have this monopoly price, 
 as according to this theory, only two things are possible. 
 Either every buyer, as buyer, loses what he made as 
 seller, for prices have only changed their names, they 
 are really the same, everything remains as it was and the 
 much talked of exchange value is merely imaginary, or 
 the imposed cost represents real values, values produced 
 
2l6 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 by the working value-making class, but taken by the 
 monopolising class, and this sum of values is simply 
 unpaid labor. In this latter case we come, in spite of 
 the force theory, and the compulsory taxation theory and 
 the special exchange value theory back again to the 
 Marxian theory of value. 
 
 The fixing of the value of a commodity by wages 
 vvhich is frequently confused by Adam Smith with the 
 fixing of value by the time expended in labor has been, 
 since the time of Ricardo, denounced by political econo- 
 mists and only to-day persists in popular economics. It 
 is now the sycophants of the existing capitalistic system 
 who declare that value is fixed by wages and therefore 
 declare the profits of the capitalists to be higher kind of 
 wages, wages of abstinence, in that the capitalist has not 
 dissipated his capital, wages of superintendence, prem- 
 iums on risks, etc. Herr Duehring only differ^s from 
 there in that he calls profits robbery. In other words 
 Herr Duehring founds his socialism on the worst teach- 
 ings of the popular economists. His popular economics 
 and his socialism stand or fall together. 
 
 It is clear that what a workman accomplishes and 
 what he costs are different matters from what a machine 
 makes and what it costs. The value 'which a workman 
 makes in a day of twelve hours has nothing in common 
 with the value of the means of life which he consumes 
 in this working day and the periods of rest in connec- 
 tion with it. There may be one, three, fcxur or seven 
 hours of labor time incorporated in these means of 
 livelihood according to the stage of the productivity of 
 labor. Let us take seven hours as the necessary time 
 for the production of them. Then Herr Duehring and 
 the vulgar economists declare that the product of twelve 
 hours labor has the value of the product of seven hours 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 217 
 
 labor or in other words twelve is equal to seven. To 
 make the matter more explicit, a peasant produces say 
 twenty hectolitres of wheat in a year. During this time 
 he consumes a sum of values which may be expressed by 
 fifteen hectolitres. Then the twenty hectolitres have 
 the same value as the fifteen in the same market under 
 identical conditions. In other words 20 equals 15. 
 And this is failed political economy ! 
 
 The entire development of human society from' the 
 position of savagery began from the day when the labor 
 of a family resulted in the production of more than was 
 necessity for its support, from the day when a part of the 
 labor was no longer expended on mere means of living 
 but was transformed into means of production. A sur- 
 plus of labor product over and above the cost of the 
 maintenance of labor, and the creation and increase of 
 a social production and reserve fund out of this surplus 
 was and is the foundation of alt social, political and in- 
 tellectual development. In history up to the present time 
 this fund has been the property of a certain superior 
 class which has, with its possession, also the political 
 mastery and the spiritual supremacy. The approaching 
 social revolution will make this social production and re- 
 serve fund that is the entire mass of raw material, in- 
 struments of production, and means of life for the first 
 time really social property, in that it will put an end to 
 its monopolisation by the superior class and make it the 
 common possession of the entire society. 
 
 It is one of two things. Suppose value shows itself in 
 the cost of maintenance of the necessary labor, that is in 
 present society in wages. If such is the case every 
 worker gets the value of his product in wages and the 
 robbery of the working class by the capitalistic class is 
 an impossiblity. Let it be granted that the cost of main- 
 
2l8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 taining a worker in a given society is three marks. Then 
 the daily product of the worker is, according to the pop- 
 ular economist, of the value of three marks. Now let 
 us consider that the capitalist who employs this worker 
 takes a profit on this product and sells it for four marks. 
 Other capitalists do the same thing. But thereupon the 
 worker can no longer maintain himself with three marks 
 a day, it will cost him four marks. Other conditions 
 remaining the same, wages expressed in terms of the 
 means of life must remain the same arid wages expressed 
 in gold will rise therefore from three to four marks 
 daily. What the capitalists gain in the form of profit on 
 the working class they have to return in the form of 
 -wages. So wc are just where we were at the beginning. 
 If wages signify value, no plunder of the working class 
 by the capitalist is possible. But the creation of a sur- 
 plus is impossible if, according to our hypothesis the 
 workers consume as much, as they produce. And since 
 the capitalists produce no value it is impossible to see 
 bow they can live. And if such a surplus of production 
 over consumption does exist, if such a production and 
 reserve fund exists in the hands of the capitalists there 
 is no other explanation possible than that the working 
 class uses only enough values for its own maintenance 
 and turns over the rest of the goods which it produces to 
 the capitalist. 
 
 On the other hand, if this production and reserve fund 
 actually exists in the hands of the capitalist class, if it 
 has really come into existence through the piling up of 
 profits, (we will leave rent out of the question' for the 
 present) ; it necessarily comes from the accumulated 
 profits of the capitalist class taken from the working 
 class over and above the sums paid by the capitalist 
 tlass to th^ working class in the form of wages. Value 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 219 
 
 therefore does not depend upon wages, but upon amount 
 of labor. The working class renders to the capitalist 
 class a greater amount of value than it receives in wages 
 and thus the profit of capital as of all other forms of 
 the appropriation of unpaid for products of labor is to 
 be explained on the simple ground of the surplus value 
 discovered by Marx. 
 
 VI. Simple and Compound Labor 
 
 (The argument of Duehring against which Engels 
 here directs his efforts may be best summed up ia Duehr- 
 ing's concluding words " Marx in his utterances on 
 value cannot escape the lurking ghost of highly skilled 
 labor. The prevalent notion of the intellectual classes 
 has been a hindrance to him in this matter, for according 
 to this idea it is an enormity to reckon the labor time 
 of a barrow pusher and an architect as economic equiva- 
 lents.") 
 
 Engels thereupon says " the passage in the works of 
 Marx which caused this outbreak on the part of Duehr- 
 ing is very short. Marx is examining the question as to 
 the basis of the value of commoditiies and answers it by 
 the statement that it is the amount of human labor con- 
 tained in them. " This " he goes on " is the expression 
 of that simple labor force which belongs to the average 
 human being without any special devolpment. Skilled 
 labor is a power or rather a multiple of simple labor, 
 so that a small amount of skilled labor is equivalent to 
 a larger amount of unskilled labor. Practice shows that 
 this reduction to the terms of unskilled labor takes place, 
 A commodity may be the product of skilled labor, its 
 value may be equivalent to a product of unbilled labor 
 skilled labor. The proportion in which different forms 
 of labor are reduced to their general standard in ua- 
 
220 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 skilled labor is established by a social process going 
 on behind the backs of the producers, and appears to 
 them merely customary." 
 
 Here Marx is only dealing with the value of com- 
 modities, that is of objects produced and exchanged by 
 private producers in a society consisting of private pro- 
 ducers producing for their own profit. He is therefore 
 not concerned here with " absolute value " whatever that 
 may be but only with the value which is realised in a 
 given form of society. This value under the given so- 
 cial conditions is shaped and measured by the human 
 labor incorporated in the commodities and this human 
 labor shows itself as the expression of simple human 
 energy. But every piece of work is not merely an ex- 
 pression of simple labor force. Very many labor pro- 
 ducts require the expenditure of more or less time, 
 money, trouble, and acquired skill or knowledge. Do 
 these kinds of compound labor show at the same period 
 of time the same commodity values as simple labor, are 
 they the expression of merely simple labor force? Evi- 
 dently not. The product of an hour of compound labor 
 is a commodity of higher, double or three times the value 
 of a product of an hour of simple labor. The value of 
 the product of compound labor can in this comparison be 
 expressed through the measure of simple labor; and 
 this reduction of compound labor is carried on by means 
 of a social progress behind the back of the producer, by 
 means of which can here be established according to the 
 theory of value but not explained. 
 
 The thing which Marx states here is a simple fact 
 which happens every day before our eyes in the present 
 capitalistic society. 
 
 (After some invective and satire hurled at Duehring 
 Engels proceeds:) 
 
POLttlCAL ECONOltY Ht 
 
 Let us examine with regard to equality of value a 
 little more closely. All labor time is of equal value, that 
 of the barrow pusher and that of the architect. There- 
 fore labor time and consequently labor itself has a value. 
 But labor is the creator of all values. It is the only 
 thing which gives the original products of nature a 
 value in the economic sense. Value in itself is nothing 
 but the expression in a given qbject of necessary, social, 
 human labor. One might just as well speak of and fix 
 a value to labor as speak of the value of value, of the 
 weight, not of a specific body, but of gravity itself. Herr 
 Duehring calls people like Owen, St. Simon and Fourier, 
 social alchemists. When he invents a value for labor 
 time, that is for labor, he shows that he is far below these 
 same alchemists. 
 
 For Socialism, which will emancipate human labor 
 force from its place as a commodity, the understanding 
 that labor has no value and can have none is a matter 
 of the greatest importance. With an understanding of 
 it, all attempts made by Herr Duehring by means of his 
 crude worker-socialism (Arbeitersozialismus) to regu- 
 late the division of the means of existence, as a kind 
 of higher wages, fall to the ground. From it there 
 follows the broader view, since it is controlled by 
 purely economic motives, that distribution regulates 
 itself in the interests of production, and production is 
 advanced in the greatest degree by a method of distri- 
 bution which permits all the social departments to de- 
 velop, maintain, and express their capacities to the full- 
 est possible extent. To the ideas of the intellectuals 
 which have come into Herr Duehring's possession, it 
 must always seem to be an enormity that it will abolish 
 barrow pushing and architecture simultaneously as pro- 
 fessions, and that the man who has given half an hour 
 
222 LANDilARKS OP SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 to architecture will also push the cart a little until his 
 work as architect is again in demand. It would be a 
 pretty sort of socialism which perpetuated the business 
 of barrow-pushing. 
 
 If the equality of value of labor time has the signifi- 
 cance that workers produce equal products in equal per- 
 iods of time it is evidently false, unless an average is 
 first taken. Of two workmen at the same branch of 
 industry the value of the product of their labor time 
 will differ according to the intensity of labor and their 
 respective ability. No scheme of economic equality, at 
 least on our planet, can remedy this unfortunate state of 
 affairs. What then is left of the equality of all and every 
 sort of labor? Nothing but high sounding phrases 
 which have no economic value, nothing but the evident 
 inability of Herr Duehring to distinguish between the 
 fixing of value by labor and the fixing of value by the 
 wages of labor, only the ukase, which is the founda;tion 
 of the new social economy, that wages shall be equal for 
 equal amounts of labor time. Really the old French 
 communists and Weitling had much better grounds for 
 their equality of wages theories. 
 
 How then do we solve the whole weighty question of 
 the higher wages of compound labor? In a society of 
 private producers, private individuals or their families 
 have to bear the cost of creating intellectual workers. 
 An intellectual slave always commanded a better price, 
 an intellectual wage worker gets higher wages. In an 
 organized socialist society, society bears the cost and to 
 it therefore belong the fruits, the greater value produced 
 by intellectual labor. The laborer himself has no further' 
 claim. Whence it follows that there are many difficul- 
 ties connected with the beloved claim of the worker for 
 the full product of his toil. 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY M3 
 
 VII. Capital and Surplus Value 
 
 (" Marx does not have the usual economic idea of cap- 
 ital that it is means of production already produced, but 
 he seeks to endow it with a special dialectic history in the 
 metamorphosis of a historical idea. Capital is expressed 
 in gold, it creates an historical period which has its begin- 
 ning in the sixteenth century and the establishment oi 
 a world-market. Any keen economic analysis is im- 
 possible with such a notion. Such barren conceptions 
 which are half historical and half logical destroys the 
 possibility of any proper discrimination with respect to 
 the matter." These remarks of Duehring arc answered 
 as follows by Engels:) 
 
 According to Marx, then, capital manifested itself 
 as gold at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is 
 just as if anybody were to say that specie had ex- 
 pressed itself as cattle for three thousand years, be- 
 cause formerly cattle had performed the gold functions 
 along with others. Only Herr Duehring could be guilty 
 of such a crude and distorted expression, Marx in his 
 analysis of the economic forms in which the process of 
 the circulation of commodities takes places simply de- 
 clares gold to be the last form, " This last product of 
 the circulation of commodities is the form in which cap- 
 ital first appears. Historically capital comes with the 
 possession, of property in the form of money, as hoards 
 of money, merchant-capital, and usury-capital. . . . 
 This history is goinr on every day before our eyes. 
 New capital comes on the scene, that is the market, — 
 the market for commodities, the labor market or the 
 money market, simply as money, money which is trans- 
 formed into capital by a definite process." Again Marx 
 states the fact. It is useless for you to struggle against 
 
^^4 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 it, Herr Duehring, Capital must express itself in gold. 
 
 Marx further examines the process by which money is 
 transformed into capital and discovers that the form in 
 which money circulates as capital is the inversion of the 
 form in which 'it circulates as the universal equivalent. 
 The individual owner of commodities sells to buy^ he sells 
 what he does not need, and buys with the money thus 
 obtained what he does need. The budding capitalist 
 buys on the contrary what he does not want himself, he 
 buys to sell, and to sell for a higher money value than 
 he put into the business, he makes a money profit, and 
 this profit Marx calls surplus value. 
 
 What is the origin of this surplus value? Either the 
 buyer buys goods below their value or the seller sells 
 them above their value. In both cases gain and loss 
 would balance one another, since every buyer is also a 
 seller. It can also not arise from extortion, for extortion 
 might enrich one at the expense of the other but it could 
 not increase the total sum of money neither could it 
 increase the amount of commodities in circulation. 
 " The entire capitalist class of a country cannot overreach 
 itself." 
 
 Now, we find that the totality of the capitalist class 
 in every country grows richer before our very eyes, by 
 the process of selling dearer than it botight, by appro-_ 
 priating surplus value. So we are just at the beginning 
 of the discussion. Where does this surplus value come 
 from? This question has to be answered on purely 
 economic grounds to the exclusion of all cheating, and 
 all invasion of force. How is it possible to keep selling 
 dearer than one buys under the assumption that equal 
 values are always exchanged for equal values? 
 
 The solution of this problem is the crowning glory of 
 the work of Marx. He sheds clear daylight in economic 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 225 
 
 places where the earlier socialists no less than the 
 bourgeois economists have groped in utter darkness. 
 From his work dates the origin of scientific socialism. 
 
 The solution is as follows. The power of increase 
 in money which is transformed into capital cannot pro- 
 ceed from the money neither does it depend upon trade, 
 since the money only realizes the price of the commodi- 
 ties and this price is, since we hold that only equal val- 
 ues are exchanged, no different from its value. On 
 the same grounds the power of increase cannot come 
 from the exchange of commodities. The change there- 
 fore depends upon the commodities which are exchanged, 
 but not upon their value, since they are bought and sold 
 at their value. It arises from their consumption-value 
 as such; that is the change must arise out of the con- 
 sumption of commodities. " In order for a commodity 
 to derive value from consumption our possessor of 
 money must be fortunate enough to discover a commod- 
 ity whose use-value has the peculiar property of being 
 a source of value, whose consumption would imply the 
 expenditure of labor and thus be value-producing. And 
 the possessor of money finds such a specific commodity 
 on the market in the shape of labor-power." If, as we 
 have seen, labor has no value this is by no means the case 
 with labor-force. This has a value, as it is a commodity, 
 and, as a matter of fact, it is a commodity tO-day and 
 this value is fixed " like that of every other commodity 
 by the amount of labor time necessary for the production 
 and reproduction of this specific commodity." It is 
 fixed by the labor time which is necessary for the pro- 
 curing of the means of livelihood required to maintain 
 the laborer in a condition to continue laboring and re- 
 produce his kind. Let us suppose that these' means of 
 livelihood represent, taking one day with another, six 
 
226 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 hours labor-time a day. Our budding capitalist who 
 buys labor force for his business, that is hires a laborer, 
 pays this laborer the full daily value of his labor force, 
 if he pays him a sum of money which represents six 
 hours of labor. If the kborer has only expended six 
 hours in the service of the capitalist he has got the full 
 return of his expenditure, the day's value of his labor- 
 force has been paid. But money could not be trans- 
 formed into capital in this fashion, it would have pro- 
 duced no surplus value. The buyer of labor-power has 
 quite another view of the nature of his business. Since 
 only six hours' work is necessary to maintain the laborer 
 for twenty-four hours, it does not follow that the laborer 
 cannot work twelve hours out of the twenty-four. The 
 value of labor force and its realization in the laboj-pro- 
 cess are two different magnitudes. The owner of money 
 pays out a day's value of labor-force but there belongs to 
 him its use for the day, the whole day's labor. That 
 the value which it produces in the course of a day is 
 double its own value for the day is fortunate for the 
 buyer but according to the laws of exchange no injustice 
 to the seller. The laborer then costs the owner of money 
 according to our calculation the value product of six 
 hours' labor, but he gives him daily the value product 
 of twelve hours' labor. The difference to the credit of 
 the owner of the money is six hours' unpaid extra labor, 
 an unpaid for surplus product, in which the labor of six 
 hours is incorporated. The trick is done. Surplus val 
 ue is produced, money is transformed into capital. 
 
 While Marx, in this way, proved how surplus value 
 exists and the only possible way in which it can exist, 
 under the laws which regulate the exchange of com- 
 modities he also exposed the present capitalistic methods 
 of production and the methods of appropriation resting 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 227 
 
 upon them and unveiled the secret upon which the whole 
 arrangement of the society of to-day depends. 
 
 There is a necessary presupposition to this origin and 
 birth of capital. " For the transformation of money 
 into capital the money owner must first find free 
 laborers in the market, free in the double sense that 
 as a free person the laborer can use his labor power as 
 a commodity, that he has no other wares to sell, that he 
 is unemployed and that he is free of everything necessary 
 to the realisation of his labor power." But this condi- 
 tion of a possessor of money or commodities on the one 
 hand, and, on the other, of the possessorn of nothing, ex- 
 cept his own labor force, is no natural condition of 
 affairs nor is it common to all periods of history ; " it . 
 is clearly the result of a historical development, the 
 product of a whole series of older forms of social 
 production." And this free laborer first strikes 
 our notice as a historical phenomenon at the end of 
 the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century as a result of the dissolution of feudal so- 
 ciety. Thereupon with the creation of the world trade 
 and the world market which dates from the same period 
 the foundation was laid for the mass of moveable wealth 
 to become more and more transformed into capital and 
 for the capitaHstic system, directed more and more to the 
 production of surplus value, to become the dominant sys- 
 tem. 
 
 VIII. Capital and Surplus Value {Conclusion) 
 
 (Duehring having said that the term surplus value 
 merely signifies in ordinary language, rent, profit and 
 interest, Engels still further explains) 
 
 We have already seen that Marx does not say that 
 the surplus product of the industrial capitalist, of which 
 
ijSf' LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 f>e is the first owner, is always exchanged for its value, 
 • ts Herr Duehring points out. Marx plainly says that 
 tfade profit only constitutes a portion of the surplus 
 value and under the foregoing conditions this is only 
 possible if the factory proprietor sells his product under 
 value to the trader and thus parts with a portion of the 
 booty. Marx' contention rationally put is How is sur- 
 plus value transformed into its subordinate forms, profit, 
 interest, trade-profits, ground rents etc.? and this ques- 
 tion Marx undertakes to answer in the third volume of 
 Capital. But since Herr Duehring cannot wait long 
 enough for the second volume to appear he has in the 
 meantime to take a close look at the first volume. He 
 thereupon reads that the immanent laws of capitalistic 
 production, the course of the development of capitalism, 
 realise themselves as the necessary laws of competition 
 and thus are brought to the consciousness of the individ* 
 ual capitalists as dominant motives. That therefore a 
 scientific analysis of competition is only possible when 
 the real nature of capital is grasped, just as the apparent 
 movement of heavenly bodies can only be understood by 
 apprehending their real movement, and not merely those 
 movements which are perceptible to the senses. So 
 Marx shows how d certain law, the law of value, ap- 
 pears under given conditions in the competitive system 
 and makes evident its impelling force. Herr Duehring 
 might have understood that competition plays an im- 
 portant role in the distribution of surplus values, and, 
 after sufficient thought, might have grasped at least 
 the outlines of the transformation of surplus value into 
 its subordinate forms from the examples given in the 
 first volume. 
 
 Herr Duehring finds competition to be the stumbling 
 block in the way of his Comprehension. He cannot uti- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 229 
 
 derstand how competing entrepreneurs can manage to 
 sell the entire product of labqr including the surplus 
 product for so much more than the natural cost of pro- 
 duction. Here again that " force " of his which, in his 
 estimation, is the very evil thing, comes into play. Ac- 
 cording to Marx, the surplus product does not have 
 any cost of production, it is the part of the product 
 which costs the capitalist nothing. If the entrepreneurs 
 were to sell the surplus product at its real cost of pro- 
 duction they would have to give it away. Is it not a 
 fact that the competing entrepreneurs really sell the 
 product of labor every day at its natural cost of pro- 
 duction? According to Herr Duehring the cost oi pro- 
 duction consists " in the expenditure of labor or force 
 and therefor^ in the last analysis must be measured by 
 cost of maintenance," and therefore, in. present day 
 society, is to be estimated at the cost of the raw ma- 
 terial, instruments of labor and actual wages paid in 
 distinction to taxation, profit and compulsory raising of 
 prices. It is well recognised that in modern society the 
 competing entrepreneurs do not sell their wares at the 
 natural cost of production but calculate on a profit and 
 generally get it. This question which Herr Duehring 
 fancies will level the walls of Marxism as the blast of 
 Joshua did those of Jericho is a question which the eco- 
 nomic doctrines of Duehring have to meet also. 
 
 " Capitalistic property," he says, " has no practical 
 value and only realises itself because it implies the exer- 
 cise of indirect power over man. The testimony to the 
 existence of this force is capitalistic profit, and the 
 amount of this latter depends upon the extent and in- 
 tensity of the power of ' force.' . . . Capitalistic 
 profit is a political and social institution which manifests 
 itself very strongly as competition. The entrepreneurs 
 
230 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 take their stand on this relation and each one of them 
 maintains his position. A certain amount of profit is a 
 necessity of the dominant economic condition." 
 
 We know quite well that the entrepreneurs are in a 
 position to sell the products of labor at a cost above the 
 natural cost of production. Surely tkrr Duehring does 
 not think so meanly of his public as to hold the position 
 that profit on capital stands above competition as the 
 King of Prussia used to stand above the law. The pro- 
 ceeding by which the King of Prussia reached his po- 
 sition of superiority to the law we all know, the methods 
 by which profit has come to be mightier than competition 
 is just what Herr Duehring has to explain and what he 
 stubbornly refuses to explain. It is no argument when 
 he says that the entrepreneurs trade from this position 
 and each one of them maintains his owri place. If we 
 take him at his word, how is it possible for a number 
 of people each to be able to trade only on certain terms 
 and yet each one of them to keep his position? The 
 gildmen of the Middle Ages and the French nobility 
 of 1789 operated from a decidedly superior position, 
 and yet thej^ came to grief. The Prussian army at Jena 
 occupied an advantageous position and yet it had to 
 abandon it and surrender piecemeal. It is not enough 
 to tell us that a certain measure of profit is a necessary 
 concomitant of domination in the economic sphere, it is 
 necessary to tell us why. We do not get a step further 
 by the statement of Duehring. " Capitalistic superiority 
 is inseparable from landlordism. A portion of the peas- 
 antry is transformed in the cities into factory hands and 
 in the final analysis into factory material. Profit appears 
 as another form of rent." This is a mere assertion and 
 only repeats what should have been explained and 
 proved. We can come to no other conclusion, then, 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 23I 
 
 except that Herr Duehring does not like to tackle the 
 answer to his own question how the capitalists are in 
 a position to sell products of labor for more than the 
 natural cost of production, in short Herr Duehring 
 shirks an explanation of profit. He takes the only path 
 open to him, a short cut, and simply declares that profit 
 is the product of " force." This has been stated by Herr 
 Duehring in his economic theory under the statement 
 " force distributes." That is all very well ; but the 
 question still persists what does force distribute? 
 There must be something to distribute otherwise force 
 cannot distribute it. The profit which the competing cap- 
 italists pocket is something actual and tangible. Force 
 may take but it cannot create. And if Herr Duehring 
 still obstinately persists in his statement that " force " 
 takes the profits for the entrepreneurs he is as silent as 
 the grave as to whence it takes it. Where there is noth- 
 ing the Kaiser, as all other " force," ceases to operate. 
 From nothing comes nothing, particularly nothing in 
 the shape of profits. If capitalistic private property has 
 not practical actuality, and cannot realize itself, except 
 by the exercise of indirect force over men, the question 
 still persists, on the first place, how did the capitalist 
 government come into possession of this " force " and 
 in the second place how has this force been transformed 
 into profits, and in the third place where does it get these 
 profits ? 
 
 (The remainder of this section is merely further 
 elaboration of this idea with more caustic satire at the 
 expense of the antagonist of Engels.) 
 
232 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 I IX. Natural Economic Laws — Ground Rent. 
 
 (In this chapter Engels proceeds to examine what 
 Herr Duehring called the " fundamental laws " of his 
 theory^ of economic science.) 
 
 Law No. i. The productivity of economic instru- 
 ments, natural resources and human force are capable of 
 being increased by invention and discovery." 
 
 We are amazed. Herr Duehring treats us like that 
 joke of Moliere on the parvenu who was informed that 
 he had talked prose all his life without being aware of it. 
 That inventions and discoveries increase the productive 
 force of labor in many cases (but in many cases not, as 
 the patent records everywhere show) we have been for 
 a long time aware. 
 
 Law No. IL " Division of Labor. The formation 
 of branches of work and the splitting up of activities in- 
 creases the productivity of labor." 
 
 As far as this is true it is a mere commonplace since 
 the time of Adam Smith. HoW far it is true will appear 
 in the third division of this work. 
 
 Law No. IIL " Distcince and transportation are the 
 most important causes of the advance or hindrance of 
 the organization of productive forces. 
 
 Law No. IV. The industrial state has incomparably 
 greater capacity for population than the agricultural 
 state. 
 
 Law No. V. " In economics only material interests 
 count." 
 
 These are the natural laws on which Herr Duehring 
 founds his new economics. He remains true to his 
 philosophic methods. 
 
 (Hereupon Engels proceeds to the discussion of 
 Duehring's opinions on ground-rent.) 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 233 
 
 Herr Duehring defines ground-rent as " that income 
 which the landowner as such derives from ground and 
 land." The economic idea of ground-rent, which Herr 
 Duehring undertakes to explain to us, is transformed 
 light away into the juristic concept so that we are no 
 further than at first. He compares the leasing of a piece 
 of land with the loan of capital to an entrepreneur but 
 finds, as is so often the case, that the comparison will 
 not hold. Then he says " to pursue the analogy the pro- 
 fit which remains to the lessee after the payment of 
 ground-rent, answers to that portion of the profit on 
 capital which remains to the entrepreneur who operates 
 with borrowed capital after the interest on the borrowed 
 capital has been paid." 
 
 (To these arguments Engels replies:) 
 
 The theory of ground-rent isa special English eco- 
 nomic matter, and this of necessity because only in Eng- 
 land does a mode of production exist by which rent is 
 separated from profit and interest. In England there 
 prevail the greater landlordism and the greater agricul- 
 ture. The individual landlords lease their lands in great 
 farms to lessees who are able to cultivate them in a 
 capitalistic fashion and do not, like our peasants, work 
 with their own hands, but employ laborers just like 
 capitalistic entrepeneurs. We have here then the three 
 classes of bourgeois society, and the income which each 
 receives —J- the private landlord in the form of ground- 
 rent, the capitalist in that of profit and the laborer in 
 the form of wages. No English economist has ever re- 
 garded the profit of the lessee as Herr Duehring does 
 and still less would he have to explain that the profit of 
 the lessee is what it indubitably is, profit on capital. In 
 England there is no use to discuss this question for the 
 question as well as its answer are obvious from the facts 
 
234 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 i 
 
 and, since the time of Adam Smith, there has been no 
 doubt at all about it. 
 
 The case in which the lessee cultivates his own land, 
 as the rule in Germany, for the profit of the ground 
 landlord does not make any difference in this respect. If 
 the landlord cultivates the land for his own profit and 
 furnishes the capital he puts the profit on capital in his 
 pocket as well as the ground-rent for it cannot be other- 
 wise under existing conditions. And if Herr Duehring 
 thinks that rent is something different when the lessee 
 cultivates the land for himself it is not so and only 
 shows his ignorance of the matter. 
 
 For example : — 
 
 " The revenue derived from labor is called wages ; 
 that derived from stock by the person who manages or 
 employs it is called profit. The revenue which pro- 
 ceeds from land is called rent and belongs altogether to 
 the landlord. The revenue of the farmer is derived 
 partly from his labor and partly from his stock. . . . 
 When those three different sorts of labor belong to dif- 
 ferent persons they are readily distinguished, but when 
 they belong to the same they are sometimes confounded 
 with one another at least in common language A gen- 
 tleman who farms part of his own estate, after paying 
 the expenses of cultivation, should gain both the rent 
 of the landlord and the profit of the farmer. He is apt 
 to denominate, however, his whole gain, profit, and thus 
 confounds rent with profit, at least in common language. 
 The greater part of our North American and West 
 Indian planters are in this situation. They farm, the 
 greater part of them, their own estates, and accordingly 
 we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation but frequently 
 of its profit. ... A gardener who cultivates his 
 own garden with his own hands, unites in his own per- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 235 
 
 son the three different characters of landlord, farmer, 
 and laborer. His produce, therefore, should pay him 
 *he rent of the first, the profit of the second and the 
 wages of the third. The whole, however, is commonly 
 considered as the wages of his labor. Both rent and 
 profit are in this case confounded with wages." 
 
 This passage is in the sixth chapter of the first book of 
 Adam Smith. The case of the landholder who tills hi? 
 own land has been examined a hundred years ago and 
 the doubts which perplex Herr Duehring so much are 
 caused entirely by his own ignorance. 
 
 X. With Respect to the " Critical History " 
 
 This which is the concluding portion of the Second 
 Division of the work and which deals with Herr Dueh- 
 ring's estimates of economic writers is omitted as being 
 of too limited and polemic a character for general inter- 
 est. 
 
PART III 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 The first two chapters of this Division, Which deal 
 respectively with the historical and the theoretical sides 
 of Socialism, are omitted. They have been already 
 translated. The well known pamphlet " Socialism, Uto- 
 pian and Scientific " contains both of them. The second 
 has also been translated by R. C. K. Ensor and published 
 in his " Modern Socialism." 
 
 Production 
 
 For him (Herr Duehring) socialism is by no means 
 a necessary product of economic development, and, still 
 less, a development of the purely economic conditions of 
 the present day. He knows better than that. His so- 
 cialism is a final truth of the last instance, it is " the 
 natural system of society." He finds its root in a " uni- 
 versal system of justice." And if he cannot take notice 
 of the existing conditions which are the product of the 
 sinful history of man up to the present time in order to 
 improve them that is so much the worse, we must loc^k 
 upon it as a misfortune for the true principles of justice. 
 Herr Duehring forms his socialism as he does every- 
 thing else on the basis of his two famous men. Instead 
 of these two marionnetes, as heretofore, playing the 
 game of lord and slave they are converted to that of 
 equality and justice and the Duehring socialism is al- 
 ready fovinded. 
 
 236 
 
SOCIALISM 237 
 
 Clearly in the view of Herr Duehring the periodic 
 industrial crises have by no means the same significance 
 as we must attribute to them. According to Herr Dueh- 
 ring they are only occasional departures from normality 
 and furnish a splendid motive for the institution of a 
 properly regulated system. 
 
 ( Duehring attributes crises to underconsumption ; to 
 which Engels replies:) 
 
 It is unfortunately true that the underconsumption of^ 
 the masses and the limitation of the expenditures of the 
 great majority to the necessities of life and the reproduc- 
 tion thereof is not by any means a new phenomenon. 
 It has existed as long as the appropriating and the 
 plundered classes have existed. Even in those historic 
 peribds where the condition of the masses was excep- 
 tionally prosperous, as in England in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, there was underconsumption ; men were very far 
 from having their entire yearly product at their own 
 disposal. Although underconsumption has been a con- 
 stant historical phenomenon for a thousand years, the 
 general break down in trade, due to overproduction, has 
 appeared, for the first time, within the last fifteen years. 
 Yet the vulgar political economy of Herr Duehring at- 
 tempts to explain the new phenomenon, not by means of 
 the new factor of overproduction, but by means of the 
 exceedingly old factor of underconsumption. It is just 
 as if one were to try and explain a change in the rela- 
 tion of two mathematical quantities, one of which is con- 
 stant and the other variable, not from the fact that the 
 variable quantity has varied, but that the constant has 
 remained constant. The underconsumption of the 
 masses is a necessary condition of all forms of society 
 in which robbers and robbed exist, and therefore of the 
 <,:ipitalist system. But it is the capitalist system which 
 
238 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 first brings about the economic crisis. Underconsump- 
 tion is a prerequisite of crises and plays a very conspicu- 
 ous role in them, but it has no more to do with the eco- 
 nomic crisis of the present 'day than it had with the 
 former absence of such crises. 
 
 In every society in which production has developed 
 ndturally, to which class that of to-day belongs, the pro- 
 ducers do not master the means of production but the 
 means of production dominate the producers. 
 
 In such a society every new leverage of production is 
 converted into a new means of subduing the producers 
 beneath the means of production. This was the cause of 
 that instrument of production, the mightiest up to the 
 time of the introduction of the greater industry, the di- 
 vision of labor. The first great division of labor, the 
 separation of the city and country, doomed the inhabit- 
 ants of the rural districts to a thousand years of stupidity 
 and the people of the towns to be the slaves of their own, 
 handiwork. It denied the chance of intellectual devel- 
 opment to the one and of physical development to the 
 other. If the peasant had his land and the town dweller 
 his handiwork, it is just as true to say that the land had 
 the peasant and the handiwork the townsman. As far as 
 there was a division of labor there was also a division 
 of man. The rise of one single fact slaughtered all 
 former intellectual and bodily capacities. This annexa- 
 tion of man grew in proportion as the division of labor 
 developed and reached its culmination in maufacture. 
 Manufacture distributes production into its separate 
 operations, makes one of these operations the function 
 of the individual worker, and imprisons the worker for 
 his whole life to a given function and to a given tool. 
 " It . forces the workingman to become an abnormality, 
 
SOCIALISM 239 
 
 since it makes him concentrate his efforts on detail at 
 the expense of the sacrifice of a world of forces and ca- 
 pacities. . . . The individual himself becomes subdi- 
 vided, he is transformed into the automatic tool of the di- 
 vision of Jabor " (Marx). This tool in many cases finds 
 its perfection in the literal crippling of the worker, body 
 and soul. The machinery of the greater industry de- 
 grades the workingman from a machine to being the mere 
 appendage of a machine. " From the lifelong specializa- 
 tion of looking after a machine there comes the lifelong 
 specialization of serving a part of a machine. The abuse 
 of machinery transforms the worker from childhood 
 into a portion of a part of a machine" (Marx). And 
 not only the workingman but the classes which indirectly 
 or directly plunder the workingman are also themselves 
 involved in the division of labor and become the slaves 
 of their own tools. The spiritually-barren bourgeois is 
 the slave of his own capital and his own profit-getting, 
 the jurist is dominated by his ossified notions of justice 
 which rule him as a self-contained force ; the " refined 
 classes " are dominated by the local limitations and prej- 
 udices, by their own physical and spiritual astigmatism, 
 by their specialised education and their lifelong bond- 
 age to this specialty, even though the specialty be doing 
 nothing. ^ 
 
 The Utopists were thoroughly aware of the effects 
 of the division of labor, of the effect on the one hand of 
 crippling the worker and on the other of crippling the 
 work, the unavoidable result of the lifelong, monotonous 
 repetition of one and the same act. The rise of the 
 antagonism between town and country was regarded 
 by Fourier as well as Owen as the beginning of the 
 rise of the old division of labor. According to both of 
 them the population should be divided into groups of 
 
240 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 from six hundred to three thousand each, distributed 
 over the country. Each group has an enormous house 
 in the midst of its territory and the housekeeping is 
 done in common. Fourier occasionally speaks of towns 
 but these only consist of four or five of the big com- 
 munal houses in close proximity to each other. By 
 both of them the work of society is divided into agricul- 
 ture and industry. According to Fourier, handwork and 
 machine manufacture were both included in the latter 
 while Owen made the great industry play the most im- 
 portant part, and the steam engine and machinery per- 
 formed the work of the community. But both in agri- 
 culture and manufacture the two writers named gave 
 the greatest possible variety of occupation to individuals, 
 and accordingly the education of the young provided 
 for the most universal technical training. Both of them 
 think that there will be a universal development of the 
 human race as a result of a universal practical partici- 
 pation in practical work, and that work will recover its 
 old attractiveness, which has been lost as a result of 
 the division of labor, by virtue of this variety and the 
 shortening of the time expended upon it. 
 
 Just as far as society obtains the domination of the 
 social means of production in order to organize them 
 socially it abolishes the existing servitude of man to his 
 own means of production. Society cannot be free with- 
 out every member of society being free. The old 
 methods of production must be completely revolutionized 
 and the old form of the division of labor must be done 
 away with above all. In its place an organization 
 of production '"will have to be made in which, on the one 
 hand, no single individual will be able to shift his share 
 in productive labor, in providing the essentials of hum^n 
 
SOCIALISM 241 
 
 existence, upon another, and on the other hand produc- 
 tive labor instead of being a means of slavery will be a 
 means towards human freedom, in that it offers an 
 opportunity to everyone to develop his full powers, physi- 
 cal and intellectual, in every direction and to exercise 
 them so that it makes a pleasure out of a burden. 
 
 This is no longer at the present time a phantasy, a 
 pious wish. Owing to the present development of the 
 powers of production, production has proceeded far 
 enough, provided that society eadows itself with the 
 possession of the social forces and abolishes the checks 
 and impediments, as well as the waste of products and 
 productive forces, which springs from the capitalistic 
 methods, to make a general reduction of labor time, to 
 an amount; small as compared with present day ideas. 
 
 The abolition of the old method of division of labor 
 is not an advance which would not be possible except 
 at the expense of the productivity of labor, quite other- 
 wise. It is a condition of production which has come 
 about spontaneously through the great industry. " The 
 machine industry does away with the necessity of con- 
 stantly distributing groups of workmen at the different 
 machines by keeping the worker constantly at the same 
 task. Since the total product of the factory, proceeds 
 not from the worker but from the machine, a continual 
 changing about of individuals could not exist, without 
 an interruption of the labor-process. Finally the speed 
 with which work at the machine is learnt even by chil- 
 dren does away with the necessity of training a distinct 
 class of workmen exclusively as machine laborers." 
 But while the capitalistic method of use of machinery 
 does away with the old limited particularity of labor, 
 and, in spite of the fact, that technique is rendered super- 
 fluous, machinery itself rebels against the anachronism. 
 
242 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 The technical basis of the greater industry is revolution- 
 ary. " Through machinery, chemical processes and 
 other methods, the functions of the working class and 
 the social labor process are revolutionized along with the 
 technical basis of production. The division of labor is 
 also revolutionized and masses of capital and labor are 
 hurled incontinently from one branch of industry to 
 another. The nature of the greater industry demands 
 mobility of labor, a fluidity of functions and a complete 
 adaptibility on the part of the laborers. We have seen 
 how this absolute contradiction shows itself in the con- 
 tinual sacrifice of the working class, the most complete 
 waste of labor force, and the dominance of social anar- 
 chy. But if the mobility of labor now appears to be 
 a law of nature beyond human control which realizes 
 itself, in spite of all obstacles, it also becomes a matter 
 of life and death for the greater industry, owing to its 
 catastrophic character, to recognise the mobility of labor 
 and hence the greatest possible adaptibiHty of the work- 
 ing class, as a universal law of social production, and 
 to accommodate circumstances to its normal ^develop- 
 ment. It becomes a question of life and death for the 
 greater industry to keep an enormous number of people 
 on the edge of starvation always in reserve, in order 
 that they may be able to be placed at the disposal of 
 the needs of capital as these vary. 
 
 While the greater industry has taught us how to trans- 
 form molecular movement into mass movement in order 
 to fulfill technical needs, it has, in the same measure, 
 freed industrial production from local limits. Water 
 power was local, steam power is free. If water power 
 belongs to the country, steam power is by no means 
 limited to the town. It is capitalistic practice which 
 cause? concentration into cities and which makes manu- 
 
SOCIALISM 243 
 
 facturing towns of manufacturing villages. But thereby 
 at the same time it undermines the essentials of its own 
 motive force. The first requisite of the steam engine 
 and a prime requisite of all branches of motive power is 
 a sufficient quantity of pure water. The factory town 
 transforms all water into evil smelling sewage. There- 
 fore, in proportion as the concentration into cities is 
 the foundation of capitalistic production, each individual 
 capitalist tries to get away from the towns which have 
 been necessarily produced to the motive forces of the 
 country. This process may be individually observed in 
 the textile districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The 
 greater industry creates new towns in the course of its 
 progress from the town to the country. The same 
 phenomenon was to be observed in the districts of the 
 metal industry where somewhat different causes produce 
 identical results. 
 
 The capitalistic character of the greater industry is 
 responsible for this aimless blundering and these new 
 contradictions. Only a society which organizes its in- 
 dustrial forces according to a single great harmonious 
 plan, can permit industry to settle itself in such a manner 
 throughout the land as to secure its own development 
 and the retention and development of the most important 
 elements of production. 
 
 The abolition of the antagonfsm between town and 
 country is now not only possible, it has become an ab- 
 solute necessity for industrial production itself. It has 
 also become a necessity for agricultural production, and 
 is, above all, essential to the maintenance of the public 
 health. Only through the amalgamation . of city and 
 country can the present poisoning of air, water, and 
 localities, be put at an end and the waste filth of the 
 
244 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 cities be used for the cultivation of vegetation rather 
 than the spreading of disease. 
 
 The capitaHstic industry has made itself relatively 
 independent of local limitatiohs for its raw materials. 
 The textile industry works with imported raw materials 
 for the most part. Spanish iron ores are worked up in 
 England and Germany, and South American copper ores 
 in England. Every coal field supplies a yearly increas- 
 ing number of places beyond its own confines. The 
 whole coast of Europe has steam engines driven by 
 English and, occasionally German and Belgian, coal. A 
 society freed from the limits of capitalistic production 
 could make still further advances. While it makes a 
 sort of all round skilled producers, who are acquainted 
 with the scientific requirements of general industrial pro- 
 duction, and by whom every new succession of branches 
 of production is completely developed from beginning 
 to end, it creates a new productive force which under- 
 takes the transportation of a superabundance of raw 
 material or fuel. 
 
 The abolition of the separation between town and 
 country is no Utopia, it is an essential condition of the 
 proportionate distribution of the greater industry 
 throughout the country. Civilization has left us a num- 
 ber of large cities, as an inheritance, which it will take 
 much time and trouble to abolish. But they must and 
 will be done away with, however much time and trouble 
 it may take. ' \¥hatever fate may be in store for the 
 German nation, Bismarck may have the proud conscious- 
 ness that his dearest wish, the downfall of the great city, 
 will be fulfilled. 
 
 And now we can see the childishness of Herr Duehr- 
 ing's notion that society can obtain possession of the 
 rneans of production without revolutionizing the old 
 
SOCIALISM 245 
 
 methods of production from the ground up and above all 
 doing away with the old form of the division of labor. 
 
 It is easy to see that the revolutionary elements which 
 will abolish the old division of labor together with the 
 separation of town and country and will revolutionize 
 production as a whole are already in embryo in the 
 methods of production of the modern great industry 
 and their unfolding is only hindered by the capitalistic 
 methods of production of to-day. But to see all this, it 
 is necessary to have a broader outlook than the mere lim- 
 itations of the Prussian Code, the country where 
 schnapps and beet sugar are the staple industries, and 
 you have to study industrial crises by way of the book- 
 trade. (This is a sneer at one of Duehring's illustra- 
 tions: Ed.) One has to understand the history and the 
 present manifestations of the greater industry particu- 
 larly in that land where it has its home and where it 
 has had its classic. development. It must not be imagined 
 that modern scientific socialism can be done away with 
 by the specific Prussian Socialism of Herr Duehring". 
 
 Distribution. 
 
 We have seen that Duehring's economics depend 
 upon the statement that the capitalistic method of pro- 
 duction is good enough and can be kept up, but that 
 the capitalistic method of distribution is bad and must 
 be done away with. We now discover that the " social- 
 ity " of Herr Duehring is merely the imaginary putting 
 ' into force of this statement. In fact it appears that 
 Jierr Duehring has nothing to declare respecting the 
 method of production as such in a capitalistic society, 
 and that he will maintain the old division of labor in all 
 
246 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 its essential features. So he has hardly a word to say 
 about production in his social state. Production is too 
 dangerous a ground for him to tread on. On the other 
 nand, in his estimation, distribution is not bound up 
 with production but can be settled by an act of the will. 
 
 Let us consider all the ideas of Herr Duehring as 
 realized. Let us then assume that the society pays each 
 of its members for his work a sum in gold in which are 
 incofporated six hours of labor, say twelve marks. Let 
 us now imagine that prices and values are in full accord, 
 so that under our hypothesis only the cost of raw ma- 
 terials, the wear and tear of machinery, the use of tools 
 and wages are comprehended. A society then of a hun- 
 dred working members produces daily goods of the 
 value of 1200 marks, and, in a year of three hundred 
 working days three hundred and sixty thousand marks 
 and expends the entire amount on its working members 
 and thus each member has his share of three thousand 
 six hundred marks a year. At the end of the year 
 and at the end of a hundred years the society is no bet- 
 ter off than it was at the beginning. Accumulation is 
 entirely overlooked. Worse than that, since accumula- 
 tion is a social necessity and the hoarding of gold is an 
 elementary form of accumulation, the organization of a 
 society on this basis will necessitate private accumula- 
 tion on .the part of its members and consequently the 
 destruction of the society. 
 
 How can this difficulty with respect to the economic 
 society be overcome ? Refuge might be taken in a forci- 
 ble raising of proceeds and the produce of the society 
 sold at four hundred and eighty thousand marks instead 
 of for three hundred and sixty thousand. But all other 
 
SOCIALISM 247 
 
 economic societies would be in the same fix and each 
 would have to make it out of the other with the result 
 that they would only be extorting tribute from their 
 own members. 
 
 Or it might find an easy way out by paying for six 
 hours work less than the product of six hours work, 
 eight marks a day instead of twelve, prices remaining 
 the same. It accomplishes in this way plainly and openly 
 what formerly it did secretly, it adopts the Marx surplus 
 value notion to the amount of one hundred and twenty 
 thousand marks a year, since it pays the members 
 under the value of their work and reckons the goods 
 which they are only able to buy by its means at their 
 full value. His economic society therefore can only get 
 a reserve fund by adopting the truck system. There- 
 fore one of two things is certain, either the economic 
 society practices " equal work for equal work " and then 
 it can get no funds for the maintenance and develop- 
 ment of industry except through private sources, or it 
 does create such a fund and ceases to practice " equal 
 work for equal work." 
 
 This is the fact about the exchange in the economic 
 society, but what about the form of it? According to 
 Herr Duehring in his economic society money does not 
 function as money between the members of the society. 
 It serves merely as a labor certificate ; it corresponds with 
 the expression of Marx " only the share of the individ- 
 ual of the common labor, and his individual claim to the 
 consumption of a certain portion of the common pro- 
 duct " and in this function, say.s Herr Duehring, it is 
 just as little money as a theater ticket. In short it 
 functions in exchange like Owens " labor-time money." 
 As far as the mere calculating between amount due for 
 production and the amount to be expended in consump- 
 
248 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 [ 
 
 tion of the individual member of the society is con- 
 cerned, paper markers or gold would serve the purpose 
 equally well. But it would not do for other purposes 
 as will appear. 
 
 If the specie does not function as money among the 
 members of a given society, but as a mark of labor, it 
 functions still less as money in the exchange between 
 different economic societies. According to the theory of 
 Herr Duehring, therefore, specie as money is entirely 
 superfluous. In fact it would be mere bookkeeping to 
 set off the products of equal labor against the products 
 of equal labor, according to the natural measure, 
 of labor-time, taking the labor-hour as a unit — if the 
 labor hours are first translated into terms of money. 
 Exchange is in reality only simple exchange ; all sur- 
 pluses are easily and simply equalized by means of bills 
 of exchange on other societies. But when one com- 
 munity has a deficit in its dealings with another com- 
 munity it can only make it up by increasing its labor out- 
 put, if it is not to suffer disgrace in the eyes of other 
 communities. The reader will notice here that this is 
 no attempt at social reconstruction. We are simply tak- 
 ing the notions of Herr Duehring and showing their 
 unavoidable conclusions. 
 
 Therefore neither in exchange among the individual 
 members of a society nor in exchange between different 
 economic societies can gold realize itself as money. Yet 
 Herr Duehring says that the fupction of money is car- 
 ried oyt even in his " sociality." We must therefore 
 discover another field of activity for this money function. 
 HelT Duehring predicates a quantitatively equal con- 
 sumption. But he cannot compel that. On the other 
 hand, he prides himself that in his community one can 
 do with his money as he will. He cannot prevent one 
 
SOCIALISM 249 
 
 man, therefore, from saving" money and another from 
 not making his wages sufficient. This is indisputable, 
 for he recognises the common property of the family in 
 inheritance and talks about the duty of parents to pro- 
 vide for their children. Thereby his quantitatively equal 
 consumption comes a cropper. The young unmarried 
 man can get along splendidly on twelve marks a day, 
 but the widower with eight young children has a hard 
 time ' of it. On the other hand the community, since 
 it takes money in payment without ceremony, lets money 
 be acquired otherwise than by individual labor when 
 the opportunity offers. Non olct. It does not know 
 whence it comes. But now arises the chance for money 
 which has up to now played the role of a standard of 
 work performed to operate as real money. The oppor- 
 tunities and the motives arise "for saving money on tlic 
 one hand and squandering it on the other. The need)- 
 borrows from the saver. The borrowed money taken 
 b\- the community in payment for means of living be- 
 comes again, what it is in present day society, the social 
 incarnation of human labor, the real measure of labor, 
 the universal means of circulation. All the laws in the 
 world are powerless against it, just as powerless as 
 they are against the multiplication table or the chemical 
 composition of water. And the saver of money is in 
 a position to demand interest so that specie functioning 
 as money again becomes a breeder of interest. 
 
 So far as we have only dealt with the operation of 
 specie inside of Herr Duehring's economic societ>. 
 But beyond the confines of that society the world goes 
 peacefully along its old way. Gold and silver remain 
 in the world-market, as world money, as the universal 
 means of purchase and payment, as the absolute social 
 incorporation of wealth. And in this ownership of the 
 
250 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 precious metals the individual societies find a new motive 
 for saving, for getting rich, for increasing their supply, — 
 the motive of becoming free and independent of the 
 communities beyond their borders and of converting into 
 money their piled up wealth in the world market. The 
 profit hunters transform themselves into traders in the 
 means of circulation, into bankers, into controllers of the 
 means of production, though these may remain forever 
 as the property of the economic and trading communties 
 in name. Therewith the savers and profit mongers who 
 have been converted into bankers become the lords of 
 the economic and trading communes. The " sociality " 
 df Herr Duehring is very distinct from the " cloudy 
 ideas " of the earlier socialists. It- has no other end 
 than the resurrectioji of the high finance. 
 
 The only value with which political economy is ac- 
 quainted is the value of commodities. What are com- 
 modities? Products produce*! in a society composed of 
 more or less separated private producers and therefore 
 private products. But these private products first be- 
 come commodities when they are made not for private 
 use but for the use of someone else, that is for social 
 use. They are converted into objects of social use by 
 means of exchange. The private producers are there- 
 fore in a social relationship, they constitute a society. 
 Their private products, while the private products of 
 each individual, are at the same time, unconsciously and 
 indeed involuntarily, social products also. Wherein 
 does the social character of these private products con- 
 sist ? Plainly in two properties, in the first place because 
 they satisfy human needs but have no use-value for the 
 producers, and in the second place that, while they are 
 the products of individual private producers, they are 
 at the same time plainly the products of human labor, 
 
SOCIALISM 251 
 
 of human labors in general. In so far as they have a 
 use value for other people they can be exchanged; in 
 so far as they all possess the common quality of human 
 labor in general, they can be ^mutually compared in ex- 
 change by means of this labor. In two similar products 
 under identical social conditions there may be unequal 
 amounts of private labor, but equal amounts of human 
 labor in general. An unskillful smith might take as 
 long to make five horeshoes as it would take a skillful 
 smith to make ten. But society does not fix the price 
 according to accidental lack of skill of the one, it recog- 
 nises only human labor in general, the human labor of 
 the ordinary norma! skilled smith. Each of the five 
 horseshoes then made by the first does not have any 
 more value than each of the other ten which were made 
 in the same time as the five. Only so far as is socially 
 necessary does private labor comprehend human labor 
 in general. 
 
 Therefore I maintain that a commodity has a certain 
 value, 1st. because it is a socially useful product, and. 
 because it is produced by a private individual for pri- 
 vate profit, 3d. because while it is a product of private 
 labor, it is, at the same time, unconsciously and involun- 
 tarily a social product and exchanges socially according 
 to a definite social standard. 4th. this standard is not 
 expressed in terms of labor, in so many hours, but in 
 another commodity. If, therefore, I say that this clock 
 is worth this piece of cloth and that they are both worth 
 fifty marks, I say that in the clock, the cloth and the 
 gold there is an equal amount of social labor. I also 
 affirm that the amounts of social labor time in them are 
 socially measured, and found to be equal, not directly and 
 absolutely however, as one measures labor time in hours 
 or days, but in a round about fashion, relatively, by 
 
252 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 means of exchange. I cannot therefore express this 
 certain amo.unt of labor-time in labor hours, since their 
 number is not known to me, but I can express it rela- 
 tively in terms of another commodity, which has th^ 
 same amount of labor time incorporated in it. The 
 clock is worth as much as the piece of cloth. 
 
 But while the production of commodities and the 
 exchange of commodities compel the society resting 
 upon them to take this roundabout course, they are im- 
 pelled to a shortening of the process. They separate 
 from the mass of commodities one sovereign commodity, 
 in which the value of all other commodities can be uni- 
 versally expressed, a commodity which is the complete 
 incarnation of social labor, and, against which, all other 
 commodities ftiay be set in direct comparison — gold. 
 Gold already germinates in the idea of value, it is only 
 developed value. But since the commodity value exists 
 in gold also, itself being a commodity, a new factor 
 arises in the society which produces and exchanges com- 
 modities, a factor with new social functions and opera- 
 tions. We can now examine this a little more closely. 
 
 The economy of the production of commodities is by 
 no means the only science which has to reckon with 
 relatively known factors. Even in physics, yve do not 
 know how many single gas molecules there are in a 
 given volume of gas, pressure and temperature being 
 given. But we know, as far as Boyle's law is correct, 
 that a given volume of that gas has as many molecules as 
 a similar volume of another selected gas at the same 
 pressure and the same temperature. We can therefore 
 compare the different volumes of different gases with 
 respect to their molecular content, and, if we take one 
 litre of gas at 0° Fahrenheit as the unit we can refer 
 the molecular content of each to this standard. In 
 
 \ I 
 
SOCIALISM 253 
 
 chemistry the absolute atomic weights of separate ele- 
 ments is unknown to us. But we know them relatively 
 when we know their mutual conditions. And just as the 
 production of commodities and their economy has a rela- 
 tive expression for the unknown quantities of labor exist- 
 ing in commodities, since it compares these commodities 
 according to the relative amounts of labor which they 
 contain, so chemistry makes a relative expression for 
 the amounts of atomic weights unknown to it, since it 
 compares the separate elements according to their ato- 
 mic weights and expresses the weight of the one as 
 multiples or factors of the other. And just as the pro- 
 duction of commodities elevates gold to the position of 
 an absolute commodity, to the universal equivalent 
 for other commodities, the measure of values, so chem- 
 istry elevates hydrogen to the position of a chemical 
 gold-commodity, since it fixes the atomic weight of 
 hydrogen at i and reduces the atomic weights of all 
 the other elements in terms of hydrogen and expresses 
 them as multiples of its atomic weight. 
 
 The production of commodities is by no means the ex- 
 clusive form of social production. In the ancient 
 Indian communities and the family communities of the 
 Southern Slavs products were not transformed into 
 commodities. The members of the community were di- 
 rectly engaged in social production, the work was dis- 
 tributed as custom and circumstances required as were 
 the products as they came into the realm of consumption. 
 Direct social production and direct social consumption 
 exclude all exchange of commodities and hence the trans- 
 formation of products into commodities (at least within 
 the confines of th^ society) and therewith their transfor- 
 mation into value. / 
 
 As soon as society comes into direct possession of the 
 
254 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 means of production and undertakes production as a 
 society, the labor of each, however distinctive its 
 special useful character may be, becomes direct social 
 labor. The amount of social labor existing in a product 
 does not then have to be established in a roundabout 
 way, daily experience shows the average amount of 
 human labor necessary. Society can easily determine 
 how many hours of labor there are in a steam engine, 
 how many in a hectolitre of wheat of last harvest, how 
 many in a hundred square yards of cloth of a given 
 quality. It cannot therefore happen that the quantities 
 of labor embodied in commodities, which will then be 
 absolutely and directly known, will be expressed in terms 
 of a measure which is only relative, fluctuating, inade- 
 quate and absolute, in a third product, and not in their 
 natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. This 
 would not happen any more than in chemistry. One 
 would express the atomic weights indirectly by means 
 of hydrogen if it were possible to express them ab- 
 solutely in their adequate measure, that is in real weight, 
 that is in billions or quadrillions of grammes. Under 
 the foregoing conditions, then, society ascribes no value 
 to products. The simple fact that a hundred yards of 
 cloth have taken a thousand hours in their production 
 need not be expressed in any distorted or foolish fash- 
 ion, they would be worth a thousand labor hours. So- 
 ciety would then know how much labor each object of 
 use required for its creation. It would have to direct 
 the plan of production in accordance with the means 
 of production to which labor-force also belongs. The 
 advantageous eflfects of the different objects of use and 
 their relations to each other and the creation of the 
 necessary means of labor would be the sole deter- 
 minants of the plan of production. People make thinp-s 
 
SOCIALISM 255 
 
 very easily without any interference on tlie part of the 
 much discussed " value." 
 
 The value idea is the most universal and the most 
 comprehensive expression of the economic conditions 
 of the production of commodities. In the idea of value 
 there is not only the germ of gold but also of those 
 more highly developed forms of commodity production 
 and exchange. Since value is the expression of the 
 social labor incorporated in individual products, there lies 
 the possibility of a difference between this and the in- 
 dividual labor embodied in the same product. This dif- 
 ference becomes very apparent to a private producer who 
 abides by an old fashioned method of production while 
 the social method of production has taken a step for- 
 ward. It then appears that the sum of all the private 
 manufacturers of a given commodity produce an amount 
 in excess of the social needs. Then, since the value of 
 a commodity is expressed only in terms of other com- 
 modities and can only be realised in exchange with 
 them, the possibility arises that either exchange will 
 cease or that the commodity will not realise its full 
 value. Finally, the specific commodity labor-force finds 
 its value like that of other wares in the social labor 
 time necessary for its production. In the value form 
 of the product there is already in embryo the entire 
 capitalistic form of production, the antagonism between 
 the capitalists and the wage-workers, the industrial re- 
 serve army, the crisis. The capitalistic system will be 
 abolished by the restoration of true value (just as 
 Catholicism will be abolished by the restoration of the 
 true Pope), or by the restoration of a society in which 
 the producer finally dominates his product, by the doing 
 away of an economic category which is the most com- 
 
256 LANDMARKS Of' SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 prehensive expression of the slavery of the producer to 
 his own product. 
 
 When the society producing commodities has devel- 
 oped the inherent value form of the commodities, as 
 such, to the gold-form, various germs of value hitherto 
 hidden thereupon begin to sprout. The next substan- 
 tial step is the generalising of commodity forms. Gold 
 makes objects directly produced for use into commod- 
 ities by driving them into exchange. Thereupon the 
 commodity and the gold smite the community which is 
 engaged in social production, break one social tie after 
 another and finally dissolve the society into a mass of 
 private producers. Gold establishes, as in India, indi- 
 vidual cultivation of the land in the place of communal 
 cultivation, then it destroys the system of regular dis- 
 tribution of communal lands among individuals and 
 makes ownership final, and lastly it leads to the division 
 of the communal wood land. Whatever other causes 
 arising from the industrial development may work along 
 with it, gold is always the most ppwerful instrument for 
 the destruction of the communal society. 
 
 The State, the Fqmily, and Education 
 
 (Herr Duehring says " In the free society there will be 
 no religion, since, in all its degrees, it tends to destroy 
 the originality of the child, in that it places something 
 above nature or behind it, which may be affected by 
 means of works or prayers " also " a properly constituted 
 socialist state will do away with all the paraphernalia of 
 spiritualistic magic, and all the actual forms of reli- 
 gion." Engels proceeds — ) 
 
 Religion will be forbidden. Now, religion is nothins; 
 but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of the externat 
 forces which dominate their every day existence, a rellcc- 
 
SOCIALISM ' 257 
 
 tion in which earthly forces take the form of the super- 
 natural. In the beginning of history it is the forces 
 of nature which first produce this Reflection and in the 
 course of development of dififerent peoples give rise to 
 manifold and various personification. This first process 
 is capable of being traced, at least as far as the Indo- 
 European peoples are concerned, by comparative 
 mythology, to its source in the Indian Vedas and its 
 advance can be shown among the Indians, Greeks, Per- 
 sian, Romans, and Germans, and, as far as the material 
 is available, also among the Celts, Lithuanians, and 
 Slavs. But, besides the forces of nature, the social 
 forces dominated men by their apparent necessity, for 
 these forces were, in reality, just as strange and unac- 
 countable to men as were the forces of nature. The 
 imaginary forms in which, at first, only the secret forces 
 of nature were reflected, became possessed of social at- 
 tributes, became the representatives of historical forces. 
 By a still further development the natural and social 
 attributes of a number of gods were transformed to one 
 all-powerful god, who is, on his- part, only the reflection 
 of man in the abstract. So arose monotheism,, which 
 was historically the latest product of the Greek vulgar 
 philosophy, and found its impersonation in the Hebrew 
 exclusively national god, Jahve. In this convenient, 
 handy and adaptible form religion can continue to 
 exist as the direct, that is, the emotional form of the 
 relations of man to the dominating outside, natural, and 
 social forces, as long as man is under the power of these 
 forces. But we have seen over and over again in modern 
 bourgeois society that man is dominated by the condi- 
 tions which he has himself created and that he is con- 
 trolled by the same means of production which he him- 
 -sel has made. The fundamental facts which give rise 
 
258 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 to~ the reflection by religion therefore still persist and 
 with them the reflection persists also. And just because 
 bourgeois economy has a certain insight into the relations 
 of the original causes of this phenomenon, it does not 
 alter it a particle. Bourgeois economy can neither pre- 
 vent crises, on the whole, nor' can it stop the greed of the 
 individual capitalists, their disgrace and bankruptcy, nor 
 can it prevent the individual laborers from suffering 
 deprivation of employment and poverty. Man proposes 
 and God (to wit, the outside force of the capitalistic 
 method of production) disposes. Mere knowledge even 
 though it be broader and deeper than bourgeois econom- 
 ics is of no avail to upset the social forces of the master 
 of society. That is fundamentally a social act. Let us 
 suppose that this act is accomplished and society in all 
 its grades freed from the slavery to the means of pro- 
 duction which it has made but which now dominate it as 
 an outside force. Let us suppose that man no longer 
 merely proposes but that he also disposes. Under such 
 conditions the last vestiges of the external force which 
 now dominates man are destroyed, that force which is 
 now reflected in religion. Therewith, the religious re- 
 flection itself is destroyed»owing to the simple fact that 
 there is nothing more to reflect. 
 
 But Herr Duehring cannot wait until religion dies 
 a natural death. He treats it after a radical fashion. 
 He out Bismarcks Bismarck, he makes severe " May 
 laws " not only against Catholicism but against all re- 
 ligion. He sets his gendarmes of the future on religion 
 and thereby gives it a longer lease of life by martyr- 
 dom. Wherever we look we find that Duehring's social- 
 ism has the Prussian brand. 
 
 After Herr Duehring has blithely got rid of religion 
 he says "Man can now, since he is dependent upon him- 
 
SOCIALISM ) 259 
 
 self, and nature alone, intelligently direct the social forces 
 in tvery way which open to him the course of things 
 and his own existence." Let us look for a little while 
 at -that course of things to which the self-reliant human 
 can give direction. 
 
 The first in the course of things by which man^ be- 
 comes self-reliant is being born. Then during the time 
 of his immaturity his education is in the hands of his 
 mother. " This period may, as in the old Roman law, 
 reach to the age of puberty, that is to about fourteen 
 years of age." Only where the older boys do not respect 
 the authority of the mother does the father's assistance 
 play a part and the public method of education robs 
 this of all harm. With puberty the boy comes under the 
 natural care of his father, where this is exercised in 
 a truly fatherly manner, in other cases society takes 
 charge of his education. 
 
 As Herr Duehring has already maintained the posi- 
 tion that it is possible to. convert the capitalistic methpds 
 of production into social methods without disturbing 
 the mode of production itself, so he here seems to think 
 that one can separate the modern bourgeois family from 
 its entire economic foundations without any change in 
 the whole form of the family. This form is so perma- 
 nent in his estimation that he thinks of the old Roman 
 jurisprudence, in an " improved " form, as the model 
 of the family for ever, and he does not conceive of the 
 family otherwise than as a permanent unit. The 
 Utopists have the superiority over Herr Duehring here. 
 In their estimation a really free mutual condition would 
 arise in all the family relations as a result of the free 
 association and the public ownership of the instruments 
 of production together with the institution of a system 
 of public education. And Marx has shown furthermore 
 
26o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 in his " Capital " how " the greater industry, which takes 
 widows, young persons and children of both sexes from 
 the home, and employs them in organized social produc- 
 tive processes, lays the foundation for a higher form of 
 the family and better conditions for people of both 
 sexes." 
 
LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The foregoing pages will have given the reader some. 
 idea of the infinite care which Engels expended in order 
 to keep abreast of the chief scientific discoveries of his 
 times. He was as painstaking as a genius. On the 
 other h^nd, his modesty Was almost absurd, for he never 
 ventured to claim anything for himself, and such ability 
 as was displayed in the laying of the economic political 
 foundations of the socialist movement was invariably 
 credited by him to the -superior talent and comprehension 
 of Marx. 
 
 There is no question that the work constitutes a most 
 effective reply to the (arguments of Duehring, with 
 whom, poor fellow, we need no longer trouble our- 
 selves. It constitutes, moreover, a very formidable an- 
 swer to all those who seek for a justification of the so- 
 cialist movement in those abstract conceptions which 
 the average man finds it so hard to escape. In fact, 
 so removed is the point of view of the writer of the 
 foregoing pages from that of the man in the street that 
 it is doubtful whether it is possible for more thin a 
 comparatively few students thoroughly to grasp the 
 significance of the dialectic and to apply it in a satis- 
 factory and effective fashion. Still, there is no question 
 that this understanding of the socialist movement, as 
 « movement, is absolutely required of all who can be 
 
 961 
 
262 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 considered as taking an intelligent and useful attitude 
 with regard to social and political questions. 
 
 The possession of this key gave the two founders of 
 the modern socialist movement such a comprehension 
 of the tendencies of modern civilization as enabled them 
 to make those economic and political predictions which 
 have been so completely fulfilled. 
 
 There is little need to call attention to the fact that 
 much of Engels' argument is now antiquated in face 
 of the growth of science and the almost incredible de- 
 velopment of mechanical invention and the material 
 progress consequent upon if. It could not have been 
 otherwise. The wonders of Engels' day are the com- 
 monplaces of our existence. The machines, which he 
 considered so wonderful and so change-compelling have 
 already been "scrapped" for new machines of greater 
 power and capacity for production. The remark that 
 the battleship had in his time arrived at a point where 
 it was as expensive as it was unfit for fighting ■ sounds 
 almost ridiculous in face of the. tremendous development 
 of theengines of naval warfare- since he>wrote, and the 
 invention and use of the submarine. Still it must be 
 remembered that there has been no really great test of 
 ships of war since Engels' day and that the expense 
 of modern navies is worrying the governments to dis- 
 traction. Only a few weeks ago Lord Charles Beres- 
 ford refused to accept the command of the Channel 
 Squadron unless provided with an equipment the ex- 
 pense of which ' seemed almost intolerable to Great 
 Britain, wealthy as that country is and dependent as 
 she is on the maintenance oi the sea power. Great 
 armies are still on th^ increase and the expense of their 
 support ..combined with the unsatisfactorine^s -.of 'theic 
 performances is by no means reassuring to those who 
 
APPENDIX 263 
 
 have the responsibility for national military orgainiza- 
 tion. The Boer War proved the unreliability of the 
 armed forces of one power, at all events, and the per- 
 formances of gfeat masses of trained men in the Russo- 
 Japanese conflict have not inspired any very great re- 
 spect for the effectiveness of these colossal and exr 
 pensive fighting machines. Together with the break- 
 down of armies and navies, as a material fact, there has 
 grown up a strong prejudice against their employment, 
 and the anti-war attitude of the international proletariat 
 has been supplemented and strengthened by the distinct 
 growth of an international peace spirit in certain sec- 
 tions of the middle class. So that in spite of superficial 
 appearances it -does not seem to be so very unlikely that 
 the action of the dialectic will be manifest in the de- 
 struction of modern armaments, at least as far as the 
 greater nations are concerned, though there is little 
 dpubt that military forces will still be maintained for 
 the purpose of bullying and overawing the smaller and 
 weaker peoples. 
 
 Mention has already- been made of the fact that Engels 
 never really divested himself of the old " forty-eight " 
 spirit. The notion that a revolution would break out 
 somewhere in the near future finds ia curiously fixed, if 
 unexpressed, lodgmerit in his mind. One cannot help 
 feeling that he expected things to mature °arlier than 
 they have done and that he anticipated that changes 
 in the mode of production and the development of in- 
 dustry would have made a stronger impression upon 
 the mind of the proletarian than history shows to have 
 been the case. This latent, but still persistent, notion 
 is in curious contrast to the almost detached way in 
 which, particularly in his later years, he views the 
 course of economic and political events. He never 
 
264 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 really in fact divested his jjiind of the notion of the 
 imminence of social revolution, for in his 1892 preface 
 to " The Condition of the Working Class in England in 
 1844 " he says, " I have taken care not to strike out of 
 the text the many prophecies, amongst Others that of 
 an imminent social revolution in England, which my 
 youthful ardor induced me to venture upon." His 
 youthful ardor seems never to have really abated in that 
 respect. The dreams of boyhood seem to have haunted 
 him and the old fighter stirred uneasily in his- study chair 
 at the echoes of past conflicts in which he also heard 
 the bugles of the coming fight. To those who have 
 watched the development of Engels' thought, as showri in 
 his works, this philosophic, unemotional way of looking 
 at tilings proves the effect of experience and age upon 
 the fighter. He started with a heart inflamed with the 
 wrongs of the suffering, as the damning pages of the 
 work above cited show ; he ends with a calm and dis- 
 passionate enquiry (apart from what he considered to 
 be the exigencies of controversy) into the fundamental 
 causes of economic and social progress. The burning 
 enthusiasm and white-hot indignation had died down in 
 him ere he reached the stage of the Duehring contro- 
 versy. He finds that although not everything that is 
 real is reasonable, to use the phrase against which he 
 has fulminated in " Feuerbach," nevertheless every step 
 in human progress has been an essential step and it is 
 impossible to hurry things. To the proletarian he looks 
 of course as the next great actor in the drama of so- 
 cial development. But the proletarian, while his destiny 
 is indubitable, is still not a being apart from existing 
 conditions. He exists in the conditions, is in fact part 
 of the conditions, and, while at war with them, takes 
 on the color of his surroundings. The facts of life 
 
APPENDIX 265 
 
 have driven him to an unconscious rejection of old 
 faiths and old ^philosophies but they have not forced hitti 
 to take up the sword against the actual realities of mod- 
 ern life, to which he appears, in fact, to submit himself 
 with a humility which is at least provoking to the eager 
 and enthusiastic revolutionist. 
 
 AVhat wonders of economic organization, what tri- 
 umphs in mechanical production have been achieved 
 since Engels gave the last revision to this book in 1894 
 we. in the United States at least, have cause to know. 
 The entire structure of production has been modified 
 from top to bottom, the old individual doctrine has 
 fallen victim to its dialectic, and concentrated industry 
 and collective capital now rise supreme over the ruins 
 of that individualism which gave them birth and to 
 which they owe their existence. In the name of the 
 individual the individual is denied. The courts hand 
 down decisions in the name of individual liberty which 
 have for their result the d€thfoning and extermination 
 of the individual. The conglomeration of individual 
 states which was considered the very foundation of the 
 American government, and the outward and visible sign 
 of cojltctive sovereignty is already in its death throes. 
 The dialectic of the United States is in course of devel- 
 ment and there comes about in consequence the birth 
 of the United Imperial Republic, a republic which is so 
 only in name, which is, in fact, as little of a republic 
 as were those oligarchies of the Middle Ages whose 
 very existence defamed the name of republic. The old 
 things have passed away, all things have become new. 
 
 Still there is one factor which has not really ap- 
 preciably changed, one factor which is always con- 
 fronted by the same necessity, the necessity of main- 
 taining its existence. This factor is the working class. 
 
266 LANDMARKS OF. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 
 
 The dialectic is at work with the working class also, 
 and that which according to the individualistic notion 
 consisted of isolated units seeking their daily bread in 
 meek conformity with the laws of contract and property 
 will disappear into that great collective organized body 
 of labor which spurns the theories of contract and 
 thereby makes itself no Iwiger subject but master. 
 
 Austin Lewis. 
 
/^^ 
 
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