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
But he who wills the end wills also the means. But he was not so cruel
as to insult 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 philosophers 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 recognises 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 producing 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, 100.)
We may pause here. It would be superfluous to follow Herr Duehring any
further in the piecemeal destruction of his axiomatically established
equality, universal human sovereignty, etc., to observe how he 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 majority 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 beholding 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 individual wills, into wills of
real persons, that is, equality ceases; that childhood, idiocy,
animality so called, superstition, 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 in the
quality of the two wills and in the degree of intelligence
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 Duehring'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
insignificant role in the agitation carried on by the socialist
movement of all countries. The establishment of its scientific
soundness has a value for the proletarian agitation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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