(137) So long as we consider things as static and lifeless, each one by itself, alongside of and after each other, it is true that we do not run up against any contradictions in them.… But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence on each other. In the final chapters of Anti-Dühring, Engels gives a materialist history of the development of the ideas of socialism (I), a materialist history of society and of the contradictions of the capitalist era (II), and a refutation of Dühring’s utopian plans for a “new socialitarian system” (III, IV, and V). Marx says: It is the negation of negation. Its full title translates as Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science: this is meant ironically and polemically. « La première grande division du travail elle-même, la séparation de la ville et de la campagne, a condamné la population rurale à des milliers d'années d'abêtissement et les citadins chacun à l'asservissement à son métier individuel. Search for other works by this author on: This content is made freely available by the publisher. Still, early socialist writers were able to make penetrating critiques of the existing social system. (153) Mais, avec l'inégalité apparaît le despotisme.
In this case also it makes no difference that we can obtain the same a² by multiplying the positive a by itself, thus likewise getting a². It was the work of Marx to synthesize German dialectics, English economics, and French materialism into an analysis of the inner process of capitalism.
The so-called primitive accumulation of capital in this case is the expropriation of these immediate producers, that is, in the dissolution of private property based on the labor of its owner. The laws of the market compel each capitalist to constantly revolutionize the means of production, turning “the infinite perfectability of the machine in large-scale industry into a compulsory commandment for each individual industrial capitalist to make his machinery more and more perfect, under penalty of ruin.” (307) These improvements in machinery, “the most powerful instrument for shortening labor-time,” which under different conditions would be a means to free the mass of people from long hours of toil, under capitalism become “the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist.” (308)
(314) The new forces of production have already outgrown the bourgeois form of using them; and this conflict between the productive forces and the mode of production is not a conflict which has arisen in men’s heads, as for example the conflict between original sin and divine justice; but it exists in the facts, objectively, outside of us, independently of the will or purpose even of the men who brought it about.
The process of responding to Dühring’s “system,” Engels explained, “gave me, in connection with the very diverse subject touched on in this book, the opportunity to develop in a positive form my views on questions which are today of wide scientific or practical interest.” (emphasis added) (10) What followed is perhaps the clearest explanation of a Marxist worldview in a single text. [In Capital] he sets out the final conclusions which he draws from the preceding fifty pages of economic and historical investigation into the so-called primitive accumulation of capital. Dühring calls Kant “childish,” Hegel’s ideas “crudities,” and Darwin’s thought “a piece of brutality directed against humanity.” Fourier has a “childish mind,” Lassalle is “pedantic, hair-splitting,” and Marx is noted for his “narrowness of conception…impotence of the faculties of concentration and logical arrangement…barren conceptions…logical fantasy…vile mannerisms…philosophical and scientific backwardness.” (39) We likewise saw that also in the sphere of thought we could not avoid contradictions, and that for example the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited faculty of knowledge and its actual realization in men who are limited by their external conditions and limited also in their intellectual faculties finds its solution in what is, for us at least, and from a practical standpoint, an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress. Historically, private property by no means makes its appearance as the result of robbery or violence. He also points out how different chemical compounds can have radically different properties (one is poisonous, the next is breathable), only because each has a different amount of carbon or hydrogen molecules. It already existed, even though it was limited to certain objects, in the ancient primitive communes of all civilized peoples. [T]he question arises: how did Crusoe come to enslave Friday?
blockquote>Let us take a grain of barley…if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and moisture a specific change takes place, it germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain.
It developed within these communes, at first through barter with strangers, till it reached the form of commodities.
It is the unified synthesis which gave rise to the indivisible idea of the world.” (51) Socialism
The more productive forces it takes over, the more it becomes the real collective body of all the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. Les classes sociales disparaissent. From this standpoint the history of mankind no longer appeared as a confused whirl of senseless deeds of violence…but as the process of development of humanity itself. The absence of natural and intelligible logic which characterizes these dialectical frills and mazes and conceptual arabesques .
This annihilation, the transformation of the individual and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, forms the prehistory of capital.
First the original earth crust brought into existence by the cooling of the liquid mass was broken up by oceanic, meteorological, and atmospheric chemical action, and these fragmented masses were stratified on the ocean bed. It grows, flowers, is fertilized and finally once more produces grains of barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated.
Première négation. Since the world has largely forgotten the writings of Eugene Dühring, what value could there be in reading Engels’ refutation of them?
The purpose of this article is to introduce a new generation to one of the most underutilized texts in the Marxist tradition. This first “negation,” is how the contradictions of early industry work themselves out. Engels explains, Engels shows how Dühring misrepresents Darwin’s ideas about natural selection in order to attack them.
And yet the metaphysicians try to make us believe that this is the right way to carry out a negation of the negation, if we ever should want to do such a thing. The chapter that follows is a remarkably clear explanation of what the utopians could not have understood: that the inner, dialectical process of class society creates its own undoing. Surplus value has been produced; money has been converted into capital.
The occasional wage worker became the wage worker for life.
He tells us that, “the instincts were primarily created for the sake of the sense of pleasure which is associated with their activity.” What is the origin of these instincts?
(151)
“Nor can it come from cheating, though cheating can enrich one person at the expense of another, it cannot increase the total sum possessed by both, and therefore also it cannot augment the sum of the values in circulation.” (231) Engels’ critics have tried to impute to Engels the idea that the dialect is a grand key that unlocks all the secrets of nature.
That is the first negation.
Dans la nature, il évoque la destinée d'un grain d'orge. On the contrary.
Most of Dühring's work remains unavailable in English, aside from his work on the Jewish question. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself.
Dühring even laid out a plan for a future socialist society. However, it will make this process easier for itself if it does not lose sight of the fact that the results in which its experiences are summarized are concepts, that the art of working with concepts is not inborn and also is not given with ordinary everyday consciousness, but requires real thought, and that this thought similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science. Engels counters: We likewise saw that also in the sphere of thought we could not avoid contradictions, and that for example the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited faculty of knowledge and its actual realization in men who are limited by their external conditions and limited also in their intellectual faculties finds its solution in what is, for us at least, and from a practical standpoint, an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress. The almost unclassifiable intermediate links are growing daily more numerous, closer investigation throws organisms out of one class and into another, and distinguishing characteristics which almost became articles of faith are losing their absolute validity; we now have mammals that lay eggs, and, if the report is confirmed, also birds that walk on all fours.