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
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 intensity 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 landlordism has begun to obtain possession of waste
and pasture lands and has stolen the old communal lands of the
peasants in this country, as well in England as in Germany. And this
has not happened without a counter-poise. For every acre of common
land which the great 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 Communist Manifesto. We have thus to explain the
existence 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 numerous 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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