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
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 prosperity the introduction of foreign
labor power. This was particularly the case in countries where the old
common ownership of the soil had disappeared or where at least the old
system of common cultivation had become supplanted by the cultivation
of separate plots by individual 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 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 men 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 service
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 agriculture 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 intellectual
development 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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