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
We have already seen that Marx does not say that the surplus product
of the industrial capitalist, of which he is the first owner, is
always exchanged for its value, as Herr Duehring points out. Marx
plainly says that trade 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 surplus value transformed into its
subordinate forms, profit, interest, trade-profits, ground rents etc.?
and this question 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 individual 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 a certain law, the
law of value, appears under given conditions in the competitive system
and makes evident its impelling force. Herr Duehring might have
understood that competition plays an important 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.
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