Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"Engels, Friedrich
Philosophy
Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"
Engels, Friedrich
Dialectical materialism; Dühring, E. (Eugen), 1833-1921; Economics; Philosophy; Socialism
"The historical sketch (of the so called original accumulation 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 future is brought into
existence from the present. The abolition of private property which is
shown to have been going on since the sixteenth century is the first
negation. Another negation must follow which is characterised 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
private property' is called also 'social property' by Herr Marx, the
higher Hegelian unity is here manifested in which the contradiction
will be destroyed, that is, in accordance with this juggling of words,
be destroyed and preserved.... The dispossession of the dispossessor
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 himself 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 catechism with
respect to the Fall, and the second is a higher unity leading to the
Redemption. On these analogies, which pertain to religion no logic of
facts can be established.... Herr Marx consoles himself in the midst
of his simultaneously individual and social property and leaves his
disciples to solve his profound dialectic puzzle." (Thus far Herr
Duehring is quoted.)
So Marx cannot prove the necessity of the social revolution, 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
religion, he comes to the conclusion that in future society a
simultaneously individual and social property will prevail, as the
Hegelian higher unity of the contradiction destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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