(The former part of this section is taken up with a criticism of Herr Duehring's knowledge of law of which he had boasted. It is a purely technical discussion and is of merely local interest. Having disposed of Duehring's juristic claims Engels proceeds to discuss "Freedom and Necessity" as follows.)
One cannot deal properly with the question of morals and law without a discussion of free will, human responsibility, and the limits of necessity and freedom. The realistic philosophy has not only one but two solutions of these questions.
"One must substitute for false theories of freedom the actual conditions in which reason on the one hand and instinct on the other unite upon a middle ground. The fundamental facts of this sort of dynamics are to be learned from observation and as regards the calculation in advance of phenomena which have not yet occurred, we must judge of them in general terms according to their special qualities. In this way the silly speculations with respect to the freedom of the will which have wasted thousands of years are not only entirely removed but are replaced by something positive, something useful for practical life." So freedom of the will consists in this that reason impels men to the right and irrationality to the left and according to this parallelogram of forces the true direction is that of the diagonal.Freedom would therefore be the average between insight and impulse, between understanding and lack of understanding, and its degree would to use an astronomical expression be empirically established by the "personal equation." But a few pages later we read "We establish moral responsibility upon freedom by which we only mean susceptibility to known motives according to the measure of natural and acquired reason. All such motives in spite of antagonism realise themselves in action with the inevitability of natural law, but we count upon this inevitable necessity when we deal with morals."
This second definition of freedom which is quite opposed to the first is nothing but a very weak paraphrase of Hegel's notions on the subject. Hegel was the first man to make a proper explanation of the relations of freedom and necessity. In his eyes freedom is the recognition of necessity. "Necessity is blind only in so far as it is not understood." Freedom does not consist in an imaginary independence of natural laws but in a knowledge of these laws and in the possibility thence derived of applying them intelligently to given ends. This is true both as regards the laws of nature and of those which control the spiritual and physical existence of man himself,—two classes of laws which we can distinguish as an abstraction but not in reality. Freedom of the will consists in nothing but the ability to come to a decision when one is in possession of a knowledge of the facts. The freer the judgment of a man then in relation to a given subject of discussion so much the more necessity is there for his arrival at a positive decision. On the other hand lack of certainty arising from ignorance which apparently chooses voluntarily between many different and contradictory possibilities of decision shows thereby its want of freedom, its control by things which it shouldin reality control. Freedom, therefore, consists in mastery over ourselves and external nature founded upon knowledge of the necessities of nature, it is, therefore, necessarily a product of historical development. The first human beings to become differentiated from the lower animals were in all essentials as devoid of freedom as these animals themselves but each step in human development was a step towards freedom. At the threshold of human history stands the discovery of the transformation of mechanical motion in heat, the generation of fire by friction; at the close of development up to the present stands the discovery of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion, the steam engine. In spite of the tremendous revolution in the direction of freedom which the steam engine has produced in society it is not yet half complete. There is no question that the production of fire by friction still surpasses it as an agent in the liberation of humanity. Because the production of fire by friction for the first time gave man power over the forces of nature and separated him for ever from the lower animals. The steam engine can never bridge so wide a chasm. It appears however as the representative of all those productive forces by the help of which alone a state of society is rendered possible in which no class subjection or pain will be produced by reason of the lack of means for the sustenance of the individual, in which moreover it will be possible to speak of real human freedom as arising from living in accordance with the recognised laws of nature. But considering the youth of humanity it would be absurd to wish to impute any universal absolute validity to our present philosophical views, and it follows from the mere facts that the whole of history up to the present time is to be regarded as the history of the period extending from the time ofthe practical discovery of the transformation of mechanical movement into heat to that of the transformation of heat into mechanical movement.
(The above constitutes a reply to the view which regards history simply as the record of human error and is followed by a discussion of Duehring's opinions in that regard.)
(Here Herr Duehring contends "The first and most important statement with respect to the foundation logical properties of existence points to the exclusion of contradiction. Contradiction is a category which can belong to thought alone but which can pertain to nothing real. There are no contradictions in things; in other words the law of contradiction is itself the crowning point of absurdity." To which Engels replies as follows):
The thought content of the foregoing passages is contained in the statement that contradiction is an absurdity and cannot occur in the actual world. This statement will have for people of average common sense the same self-evident truth as to say that straight cannot be crooked nor crooked straight. But the differential calculus shows in spite of all the protests of common sense that under certain conditions straight and crooked are identical, and reaches thereby a conclusion which is not in harmony with the common sense view of the absurdity of there being any identity between straight and crooked. Considering moreover the significant role which the so called Dialectic of the Contradiction played in the ancient Greek philosophy, a stronger opponent than Herr Duehring would be obliged to meet it with better arguments than a mere affirmation and a number of epithets.
As long as we regard things as static and without life,each by itself, separately, we do not run against any contradictions in them. We find certain qualities sometimes common, sometimes distinctive, occasionally contradictory, but in this last case they belong to different objects and are hence not self contradictory. While we follow this method we pursue the ordinary metaphysical method of thought. But it is quite different when we consider things in their movement, in their change, their life and their mutually reciprocal relations. Then we come at once upon contradictions. Motion is itself a contradiction since simple mechanical movement from place to place can only accomplish itself by a body being at one and the same moment in one place and simultaneously in another place by being in one and the same place and yet not there. And motion is just the continuous establishing and dissolving the contradiction.
Here we have a contradiction which is "objective, and so to speak corporeal in things and events." And what does Herr Duehring say about it? He affirms that "in rational mechanics there is no bridge between the strictly static and the dynamic." Finally the reader is able to see that there is behind this pretty little phrase of Herr Duehring nothing more than this—that the metaphysical mode of thought can absolutely not pass from the idea of rest to that of motion because the aforesaid contradiction intervenes. Motion is absolutely inconceivable to the metaphysician, because a contradiction. And as he affirms the inconceivability of motion he admits the existence of this contradiction against his will and therefore admits that it constitutes an objective contradiction in actual facts and events, and is moreover an actual fact.
But if simple mechanical motion contains a contradiction in itself still more so do the higher forms of motionof matter and to a high degree organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists chiefly in this that a being is at one and the same time itself and something different. Life itself then is likewise a contradiction contained in things and events, always establishing and dissolving itself, and as soon as the contradiction ceases life also ceases, death comes on the scene. Thus we saw also that we cannot put an end to the Contradictions in the realm of thought, and how for example the contradiction between the intrinsically unlimited possibilities of human knowledge and its actual existence in the persons of human beings with limited faculties and powers of knowledge, is dissolved in the, for us at least, practically endless progression of the race, in unending progress.
We stated just now that higher mathematics holds as one of its basic principles that straight and crooked may be identical under certain circumstances. It shows another contradiction, that lines which apparently intersect yet are parallel from five to six centimeters from the point of intersection, should be such as should never intersect although indefinitely produced, and yet, notwithstanding these and even greater contradictions, it produces not only correct results but results which are unattainable by lower mathematics.
But even in the latter there is a host of contradictions. It is a contradiction, for example, that a root of A should be and actually is a power of A. A to the power of one-half equals the square root of A. It is contradiction that a negative magnitude should be the square of anything, since every negative magnitude multiplied by itself gives a positive square. The square root of minus one is therefore not only a contradiction but an absurd contradiction, a veritable absurdity. And yet the squareroot of minus one is in many instances the necessary result of correct mathematical operations, nay further, where would mathematics higher or lower be if one were forbidden to operate with the square root of minus one.
Mathematics itself enters the realm of the dialectic and significantly enough it was a dialectic philosopher, Descartes, who introduced this progressiveness into mathematics. As is the relation of the mathematics of variable magnitudes to that of invariable quantities, so is the relation of the dialectic method of thought to the metaphysical. This does not prevent the great majority of mathematicians from only recognising the dialectic in the realms of mathematics, a condition of things satisfactory to those who operate in the antiquated, limited, metaphysical fashion by methods attained by means of the dialectic.
(Duehring having made an attack upon Marx's "Capital" because of its reliance upon the dialectic, and having indulged in the epithets to which he is too prone with respect to this work, Engels takes up its defence in that respect as follows):
It is not our business to concern ourselves at this point with the correctness or incorrectness of the investigations of Marx as regards economics, but only with the application which he makes of the dialectic method. So much is certain, that it is only now that the readers of "Capital" will by the aid of Herr Duehring understand what they have read properly, and among them Herr Duehring himself, who in the year 1867 was still in a position, as far as possible to a man of his calibre, to review the book rationally. He did not then, it may be noted, first translate the arguments of Marx into Duehringese, as now seems indispensable to him. Even if he at thattime made the blunder of identifying the Marxian dialectic with that of Hegel he had not altogether lost the ability to distinguish methods from the results attained by them and to comprehend that an abuse of the former is no contradiction of the latter.
Herr Duehring's most astonishing observation is that from the Marxian standpoint, "in the last analysis everything is identical," that therefore in the eyes of Marx, for example, capitalists and wage workers, feudal, capitalistic and social methods of production are "all one." In order to show the possibility of such sheer stupidity it only remains to point out that the mere word "dialectic" makes Herr Duehring mentally irresponsible and makes what he says and does so inaccurate and confused as to be in the last analysis "all one."
(Herr Duehring remarks, "How comical for example is the declaration based upon Hegel's confused notions that quantity becomes lost in quality and that money advanced [i.e. for productive purposes. Ed.] becomes capital when it reaches a certain limit merely through quantitative increase." To which Engels replies thus):
This seems peculiar when presented in this washed out fashion by Herr Duehring. On page 313 (2nd ed. "Capital") Marx, after an investigation of fixed and variable capital and surplus value, derives from his investigations the conclusion that "not every amount of gold or value capable of being transformed into capital is so transformed; rather a certain minimum of gold or of exchange value is presupposed to be in the possession of the individual owner of gold or goods." He thereupon gives an example, thus, in a branch of industry the worker works eight hours per day for himself, i.e. in order to produce the value of his wages, and thefollowing four hours for the capitalist in producing surplus value to go into their pockets. One must have sufficient values to permit of the setting up of two workmen with raw material, means of labor and wages, in order to live as well as a workman. But since capitalistic production is not undertaken for mere livelihood but for increase of wealth, our individual with his two workmen would still be no capitalist. If he lives twice as well as an ordinary workman and transforms half of the surplus value produced into capital he will have to employ eight workmen and possess four times the aforementioned amount of value, and only after this and other examples for the purpose of illustrating and establishing the fact that not every small amount of value can effect a transformation of itself into capital, but that each period of industrial development and each branch of industry has its own minimum, fixed, Marx remarks "Here, as in nature, the correctness of the law of logic, as discovered by Hegel, is established—that mere quantitative changes at a certain point suddenly take on qualitative differences."
One may remark the elevated and dignified fashion in which Duehring makes Marx say the exact opposite of what he did say. Marx says "The fact that a given amount of value can only transform itself into capital as soon as it has attained a definite minimum, varying with circumstances, in each individual case,—this fact is proof of the correctness of the law of Hegel. Herr Duehring makes him say "Because, according to the law of Hegel, quantity is transformed into quality therefore 'a sum of money when it has reached a certain amount becomes capital.'" He says just the opposite.
We have seen above in the Scheme of the Universe that Herr Duehring had the misfortune to acknowledgeand apply, in a weak moment, this Hegelian system of calculation, according to which at a given point quantitative changes suddenly become qualitative. We then gave one of the best known examples, that of the transformation of the form of water which at 0° C. changes from a liquid to solid and at 100° C. from liquid to gaseous, where thus at both these points of departure a mere quantitative change in temperature produces a qualitative change in the water.
We might have cited from nature and human society a hundred more such facts in proof of this law, thus the whole fourth section of Marx's "Capital" entitled "Production of Relative Surplus Value in the realm of co-operative industry, the Division of Labor, and Manufacture, Machinery and the Great Industry," goes to show innumerable instances in which qualitative change alters the quantity of the thing, and where also, to use Herr Duehring's exceedingly odious expression, quantity is converted and transformed into quality. So also the mere coöperation of large numbers, the melting of several diverse crafts into one united craft, to use Marx's expression, produces a new "industrial power" which is substantially different from the sum of the individual crafts.
Marx, in the interest of the entire truth, has remarked, in complete contrast to the perverted style of Herr Duehring "The molecular theory employed in modern chemistry, first scientifically developed by Laurent and Gerhardt, rests upon no other law." But what does Herr Duehring care for that? He knows that "the eminently modern constructive elements of scientific thought make just the same mistake as was made by Marx and his rival Lassalle; half-knowledge and a touch of pseudo-philosophy furnish the tools necessary for a display oflearning." While with Herr Duehring "elevated notions of exact knowledge in mechanics, physics and chemistry" are, as we have seen, the foundations. But that the public may be in a position to decide we shall examine somewhat more closely the example cited by Marx in his note.
Here we have, for example, the homologous series of compounds of carbon of which many are known and each has its own algebraic formula. If we, for example, according to the practice of chemistry, represent an atom of carbon by C, an atom of hydrogen by H, an atom of oxygen by O and the number of atoms contained in each combination of carbon by n, we can express the molecular formula of each one of this series thus,
CnH2n+2—Series of normal paraffin.
CnH2n+2O—Series of primary alcohol.
CnH2nO2—Series of the monobasic oleic acids.
Let us take, for example, the last of this series and set one after the other n = 1, n = 2, etc., we get the following results omitting the compounds.
CH2O2—Formic Acid—boiling point 100°—melting point 1°.
C2H4O2—Acetic Acid—boiling point 118°—melting point 17°.
C3H6O2—Propionic Acid—boiling point 140°—melting point—.
C4H8O2—Butyric Acid—boiling point 162°—melting point—.
C5H10O2—Valerianic Acid—boiling point 175°—melting point—.
And so on to C30H60O2, Melissic Acid, which melts first at 180°, and which has no boiling point, because it does not evaporate without splitting up.
Here we see therefore a whole series of qualitativelydifferent bodies, produced by single quantitative additions of the elements and always in the same proportions. This occurs absolutely where all elements of the combinations change their quantity in the same proportions, so with normal paraffin, CnH2n+2: the lowest is CH4a gas, the highest known is C16H34, a body forming a hard colorless crystal which melts at 21° and boils at 278°. In both the series each new step is reached through the introduction of CH2, an atom of carbon and two atoms of hydrogen, to the molecular form of the preceding step, and this quantitative change in the molecular form brings about a qualitatively different body.
These series are merely obvious examples. Almost universally in chemistry, particularly in the different oxides of nitrogen, in the oxi-acids of phosphorus or sulphur, one can see how "quantity suddenly changes into quality" and how this so called "confused Hegelianism" is, so to speak, inherent in things and events, and no one is ever confused or beclouded by it, except Herr Duehring. If Marx is the first to observe this, and if Herr Duehring points this out, without understanding it (since he could not let so unheard of a crime pass), he should explain which of the two, Marx or Duehring, is without elementary conceptions of natural science and the established principles of chemistry, and do it without boasting about his own ideas on natural philosophy.
In conclusion, let us call attention to a witness on the change of quantity into quality, namely Napoleon. He describes the conflicts between the French cavalry, bad riders but disciplined, with the Mamelukes who, as regards single combat were better horsemen but undisciplined, as follows—"Two Mamelukes were a match for three Frenchmen, one hundred Mamelukes were equal to one hundred Frenchmen, three hundred Frenchmencould beat three hundred Mamelukes and a thousand Frenchmen invariably defeated fifteen hundred Mamelukes." Just as in the statement of Marx, that a certain amount of money, variable in amount, is necessary as a minimum, to make its transformation into capital possible, so, according to Napoleon, a certain minimum number of cavalrymen is required to bring into being the force of discipline inherent in military organisation, to make them evidently superior to greater numbers of individually better riders and fighters, cavalry at least as brave, though irregular. But what effect has this argument on Herr Duehring? Was not Napoleon utterly defeated in his conflict with Europe? Did he not suffer defeat after defeat? And why? Simply as a result of his introduction of confused Hegelian ideas into cavalry tactics.
"The historical sketch (of the so called original accumulation of capital in England) is comparatively the best part of Marx's book and it would be even better if it had been developed scientifically and not by means of the Dialectic. The Hegelian negation of the negation is called upon to serve here as a midwife, in default of anything better and clearer, and by means of it the future is brought into existence from the present. The abolition of private property which is shown to have been going on since the sixteenth century is the first negation. Another negation must follow which is characterised as the negation of the negation and therefore the restoration of individual private property, but in a higher form, founded on the common ownership of land and instruments of labor. If this new 'individual private property' is called also 'social property' by HerrMarx, the higher Hegelian unity is here manifested in which the contradiction will be destroyed, that is, in accordance with this juggling of words, be destroyed and preserved.... The dispossession of the dispossessor is, as it were, in this case the automatic product of historical reality in its material external form.... It would be difficult for a cautious man to convince himself of the necessity of communism in land and property on the credit of Hegel's shiftiness, of which the negation of the negation is an example.... The confusion of the Marxian philosophic notions will not be strange to him who knows what can be done by means of the Hegelian dialectic or rather what cannot be done. For those who do not know the trick, it must be noted that the first negation of Hegel is the teaching of the catechism with respect to the Fall, and the second is a higher unity leading to the Redemption. On these analogies, which pertain to religion no logic of facts can be established.... Herr Marx consoles himself in the midst of his simultaneously individual and social property and leaves his disciples to solve his profound dialectic puzzle." (Thus far Herr Duehring is quoted.)
So Marx cannot prove the necessity of the social revolution, the restoration of a common property in land and the means of production, except by a reliance upon Hegel's negation of the negation. And, since he founds his socialistic theories upon analogies pertaining to religion, he comes to the conclusion that in future society a simultaneously individual and social property will prevail, as the Hegelian higher unity of the contradiction destroyed.
Let us leave the negation of the negation for a little and look at "the coexistent individual and social property." This will be called by Herr Duehring a "cloudrealm," and, strange to say he is really right in this regard. But sad to say it is not Marx who is found to be in the cloud realm but on the contrary Herr Duehring himself. Since by virtue of his wonderful versatility in the vagaries of Hegel he does not experience any difficulty in telling us the necessary contents of the as yet unpublished volume of "Capital," so, after setting Hegel right, he is able to correct Marx without any trouble in that he ascribes to him a higher unity of a private property of which Marx has not said a word.
Marx says "It is the negation of the negation. This reestablishes private property but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalistic era, of the cooperation of free laborers and their common ownership of the land and the means of production. The transformation of the private property of individuals, depending upon the labor of individuals, into capitalistic property is naturally a process much more tedious, hard and difficult than the transformation of capitalistic private property, as it now exists, resting upon social production, into social property." That is all. The condition attained by the dispossession of the dispossessor is here shown as the restoration of individual private property resting however on a basis of social property in the land and means of production. For people who can understand English, the meaning of this is that social property extends to the land and means of production, and private property to the products, therefore to consumption. And that the matter should be evident even to infants Marx shows on page 56. "A society of free men who labor with social means of production, and consciously expend their individual labor power as social labor power," therefore a socialistically organised society, and he says further "The total product of the society is a social product.A portion of this product serves again as a means of production. It remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members of the society. It must therefore be distributed among them." And that ought to be clear, even to Herr Duehring, in spite of his having Hegel on the brain. The coexistent individual and social property, this confused and indefinite thing, this nonsense proceeding from the Hegelian dialectic, this misty world, this deep dialectic puzzle which Marx leaves his pupils to solve is merely a creation of Herr Duehring's imagination. Marx, as a so-called Hegelian, is obliged, as a result of the negation of the negation, to furnish a correct higher unity, and since he does not do this in accordance with the taste of Herr Duehring, the latter has to take a lofty stand and to smite Marx in the interests of the full truth of things upon which Herr Duehring holds a patent.
What attitude did Marx take to the negation of the negation? On page 761 and following he states the conclusion with respect to his economic and historical investigations into the so-called accumulation of original capital, extending over the fifty preceding pages. Before the capitalistic era in England, at least, small production existed, based upon the private property of the worker in his tools. The so-called accumulation of capital consists in the expropriation of these immediate producers, that is in the abolition of private property resting on the labor of individuals. This was possible because the aforesaid small production is only compatible with a narrow and primitive stage of production and of society and at a certain grade of development furnishes the means of its own suicide. This suicide, the transformation of individual and divided modes of production into social production, constitutes the early historyof capitalism. As soon as the workers are transformed into proletarians and their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalistic methods of production are firmly established, the growing association of labor and the further transformation of the land and other means of production and hence the further expropriation of the owners of private property takes on a new form, "there is no longer the self-employing worker to expropriate, but the capitalist who expropriates many workers. This expropriation fulfils itself through the play of laws immanent in capitalistic production itself, through the concentration of capital. One capitalist kills many. Hand in hand with this concentration, or the expropriation of many capitalists by a few, there develop continually the conscious technical application of science, the deliberate organised exploitation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor which can only be employed collectively, and the economising of all means of production through their employment as the common means of production of combined social labor. With the constantly diminishing numbers of capitalist magnates who usurp and monopolise all the advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, pressure, slavery, degradation and robbery but there grows also revolt and the constant progress in union and organisation of the working class brought about through the mechanism of the capitalistic process of production. Capitalism becomes an impediment to the methods of production developed with and under it. The concentration of the means of production and the organisation of labor reach a point where it comes into collision with its capitalistic covering. It is broken. The hour of capitalistic private property strikes. The expropriators are expropriated."
And now I ask the reader, where are the dialectic twists and twirls, the intellectual arabesques, where the confused thought the result of which is the identity of everything, where the dialectic mystery for the faithful, where the dialectic hocus pocus, and the Hegelian intricacies, without which, Marx, according to Herr Duehring, cannot develop his own ideas? Marx simply pointed to history and showed briefly that just as the small industry necessarily produced the conditions of its own downfall, by its own development, that is to say by the expropriation of the small holders of private property so now the capitalistic method of production has itself developed likewise the material circumstances which must cause its downfall. The process is a historical one and, if it is at the same time dialectic, it is not to the discredit of Marx, that it happens to be so fatal to Herr Duehring.
In the first place, since Marx is ready with his historical economic proof, he proceeds "The capitalistic method of production and method of appropriation, that is to say capitalistic private property is the first negation of individual private property founded on labor of individuals, the negation of capitalistic production will be self-produced with the necessity of a natural process, etc." (as quoted above).
Although Marx therefore shows the occurrence of this event as negation of the negation, he has no intention of proving by this means that it is a historical necessity. On the contrary "After he has shown that the actual fact has partially declared itself, and has, as yet partially to declare itself, he shows it also as a fact which fulfils itself in accordance with a certain dialectic law." That is all. It is therefore again merely supposition on Herr Duehring's part to assert that the negation of thenegation must act as a midwife by whose means the future is brought out of the womb of the present, or that Marx wants to convince anyone of the necessity of social ownership of land and capital upon the credit of the negation of the negation.
It shows a complete lack of comprehension of the nature of the dialectic to regard it as Herr Duehring does, as an instrument of mere proof, just as one can after a limited fashion employ formal logic or elementary mathematics. Formal logic is itself more than anything else a method for the discovery of new results, for advancing from the known to the unknown, and so, but in a much more distinguished sense, is the dialectic, which, since it transcends the narrow limits of formal logic, attains a more comprehensive philosophical position. It is the same with mathematics. Elementary mathematics, the mathematics of constant quantities, proceeds within the limits of formal logic, at least as a rule: the mathematics of variable quantities which is peculiarly concerned with calculations running to the infinite, is substantially nothing but the application of the dialectic in mathematics. Mere proof becomes secondary before the manifold application of the method to new fields of investigation. But nearly all the proofs of higher mathematics from the first of the differential calculus, are, strictly speaking, false from the standpoint of elementary mathematics. This cannot be otherwise, if one, as is here the case, wishes to establish results won in the realm of dialectics by means of formal logic. For a crass metaphysician like Herr Duehring to want to prove anything by means of the dialectic would be the same wasted labor as Leibnitz and his pupils went through when they tried to establish the thesis of calculation to infinity by meansof the mathematics of their time. The differential gave them the same spasms as the negation of the negation gives Herr Duehring and it played a role in it as we shall see. They admitted it at last, at least as many as did not die first, not because they were convinced but because it always worked out right. Herr Duehring, is, as he says, just in his forties, and if he attains old age, as we hope he will, he may also experience the same.
But what is this dreadful negation of the negation which makes life so bitter to Herr Duehring and which is to him what the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, is to Christianity? It is a very simple process, and one, moreover, which fulfils itself every day, which any child can understand when it is deprived of mystery, under which the old idealistic philosophy found a refuge, and beneath which it will pay unprotected metaphysicians to take refuge from the stroke of Herr Duehring. Let us take a grain of barley. Millions of such grains of barley will be ground, cooked and brewed and then consumed. But let such a grain of barley fall on suitable soil under normal conditions; a complete individual change at once takes place in it under the influence of heat and moisture, it germinates. The grain, as such disappears, is negated, in its place arises the plant, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal course of life of this plant? It grows, blossoms, bears fruit and finally produces other grains of barley and as soon as these are ripe the stalk dies, and becomes negated in its turn. As the result of this negation of the negation, we have the original grains of barley again, not singly, however, but ten, twenty or thirty fold. Forms of grain change very slowly and so the grain of barley remains practically the same as a hundred years ago. But let us take a cultivated ornamental plant, like the dahlia ororchid. Let us consider the seed and the plants developed from it by the skill of the gardener, and we have in testimony of this negation of the negation, no longer the same seeds but qualitatively improved seed which produces more beautiful flowers, and every repetition of this process, every new negation of the negation, increases the tendency to perfection. Similarly this process is gone through by most insects, butterflies, for example. They come out of the egg by a negation of the egg, they go through certain transformations till they reach sex maturity, they copulate and are again negated, since they die as soon as the process of copulation is completed, and the female has laid her innumerable eggs. That the matter is not so plainly obvious in the case of other plants and animals, seeing that they produce seeds, plants, and animals not once but oftener, does not affect us in this case, we are now only concerned in showing that the negation of the negation actually does occur in both kingdoms of the organic world. Besides, all geology is a series of negated negations, one layer after another following the destruction of old and the establishment of new rock foundations. First, the original crust of the earth, through the cooling of the fluid mass, and through oceanic, meteorological, and chemical atmospheric action, being broken up into small parts, these broken masses form layers in the seas. Local elevations of the seas, through the ebb and flow of the waters, bring portions of these layers afresh under the influence of rain, the warmth of the seasons, and the oxygen and carbon in the atmosphere: melted and almost cooled masses of rock from the interior of the earth underlie these and break through the layers. Through millions of centuries new layers are continually being formed, always to a large extent destroyed and serving again asbuilding materials for new layers. But the result of the process is always positive, the restoration of a piece of ground made up of exceedingly diverse chemical elements to a condition of mechanical pulverisation, which is the cause of a most abundant and diverse vegetation.
It is the same also in mathematics. Let us take an ordinary algebraic quantity a. Let us negate it, then we have-a (minus a). Let us negate this negation, that is let us multiply —a by —a and we have + a², that is the original positive quantity but in a higher form that is to the second power. It does not matter that we can attain the same a² by the multiplication of a positive by itself. The negated negation is established so completely in a² that under all circumstances it has two square roots a and —a. And this impossibility, the negated negation, the getting rid of the negative root in the square has much significance in quadratic equations. The negation of the negation is more evident in the higher analyses, in those "unlimited summations of small quantities," which Herr Duehring himself explains as being the highest operations of mathematics and which are usually called the differential and integral calculus. How do these forms of calculation fulfil themselves? I have for example in a given problem two variable quantities x and y, of which one cannot vary without causing the other to vary also under fixed conditions. I differentiate x and y, that is I consider x and y as being so infinitesimally small that they do not represent any real quantities, even the smallest, so that, of x and y nothing remains, except their reciprocal relations, a quantitative relation without any quantity; therefore dx/dy, the relationof the two differentials of x and y, is 0/0 but 0/0 is fixed as the expression of y/x. That this relation between two vanished quantities, the fixed moment of their vanishing, is a contradiction I merely mention in passing, it should give us as little uneasiness as it has given mathematics for the two hundred or so years past. What have I done except to negate x and y; not as in metaphysics so as not to trouble myself any further about them, but in a manner demanded by the problem? Instead of x and y, I have therefore their negation dx and dy in the formulæ or equations before me. I now calculate further with these formulæ. I treat dx and dy as real quantities, as quantities subject to certain exceptional laws, and at a certain point I negate the negation, that is, I integrate the differential formula. I get instead of dx and dy the real quantities x and y again, and am thereby no further forward than at the beginning, but I have thereby solved the problem over which ordinary geometry and algebra would probably have gnashed their teeth in vain.
It is not otherwise in history. All civilised peoples began with common property in land. Among all peoples which pass beyond a certain primitive stage the common property in land becomes a fetter upon production in the process of agricultural development. It is cast aside, negated, and, after shorter or longer intervening periods, is transformed into private property. But at a higher stage, through the development still further of agriculture, private property becomes in its turn a bar to production, as is to-day the case with both large and small land proprietorship. The next step, to negate it in turn,to transform it into social property, necessarily follows. This advance however does not signify the restoration of the old primitive common property, but the establishment of a far higher better developed form of communal proprietorship, which, far from being an impediment to production, rather, for the first time is bound to put an end to its limitations and to give it the full benefit of modern discoveries in chemistry and mechanical inventions.
But again; ancient philosophy was primitive naturalistic materialism. In the state of thought at that period it was, as such, incapable of clear conceptions of matter. But the necessity of clearness on this point led to the doctrine of a soul which could leave the body, then to the idea of the immortality of the soul, finally, to monotheism. The old materialism was therefore negated by idealism. But in the further development of philosophy idealism became untenable, and is negated by modern materialism. This, the negation of negation, is not the mere reestablishment of the old, but unites, with the surviving foundations, the whole thought content of a two thousand years' development of philosophy and science, as well as the history of these two thousand years. It is in a special sense no philosophy but a single concept of the universe which has to prove and realise itself not in a science of sciences apart, but in actual science. Philosophy is here also cast aside, that is "destroyed and preserved," destroyed as to its form, preserved as to its real content. Where Herr Duehring only sees word-jugglery a more real content is brought to light by the newer point of view.
Finally, even the Rousseau doctrine of equality, of which that of Herr Duehring is only a feeble and false plagiarism, has no existence unless the Hegeliannegation of the negation serve it as a midwife, although it originated twenty years prior to the birth of Hegel. Far from being ashamed of this it bears in plain sight the stamp of its dialectic derivation in its earliest manifestation. In a state of nature and savagery men were equal, and, since Rousseau regards speech as a falsifying of natural conditions, he is quite right in predicating equality of animals of one species as far as this reaches, and the same also with regard to those speechless animal-men, recently hypothetically classified by Haeckel as Alali. But these equal animal men had one quality beyond the other animals,—perfectibility, the power of further development and this was the reason of inequality. Rousseau sees therefore in the existence of equality a step forward. But this advance was self contradictory, it was at the same time a retrogression. "All further advances (beyond the primitive stage) were so many steps, seemingly in the development of individual men, but actually in the decay of the species. Working in metals and agriculture were the two arts whose discovery brought about this great revolution" (the transformation of the primitive forests into cultivated lands, but also the introduction of poverty and slavery together with private property). "The poets hold that gold and silver, the philosophers that iron and corn have civilised men and ruined the human race." Each new advance of civilisation is at the same time an advance of inequality. All contrivances with which society endows itself by means of civilisation are in direct opposition to their original purpose. "It is beyond question and a foundation principle of the entire public law that people made rulers to defend their liberties, not to destroy them." And yet these rulers become of necessity the oppressors of the people and they carry the oppression to the pointwhere inequality is brought to a climax and, then, transformed into its opposite, again becomes the reason of equality, for to despots all are equal, that is equally of no account. Here is the extreme of inequality, the crowning point which closes the circle, and touches the point from which we have proceeded; here all private individuals are equal, since they are of no account, and subjects have no law other than the will of their master. "But the despot is master only as long as he has the power, and for this reason he cannot complain of the use of force if he is banished.... Force upholds him, force throws him down, everything goes according to a straight and naturally appointed path." And thus again inequality is transformed into equality, but not into the old materialistic equality of speechless, primitive men, but into the higher equality of organised society. The oppressor is oppressed, it is negation of the negation.
We have then, as regards Rousseau, not merely a method of thought which is quite analogous to that pursued in Marx's "Capital," but also a whole series of single dialectic turns of which Marx avails himself: Processes, which are antagonistic in their nature, containing a contradiction in themselves, are transformed from one extreme to its opposite, finally, as the quintessence of the whole, negation of the negation. Although Rousseau in 1754 could not speak the jargon of Hegel, he was then, at a period twenty-three years before the birth of Hegel, deeply infected with the Hegel contagion, the dialectic of contradiction, doctrine of logic, theology, etc. And if Duehring in his misapplication of Rousseau's theory of equality, operates with his two victorious men, he having lost his feet, falls, of necessity into the arms of the negation of the negation.
The conditions under which the equality of the twomen flourishes and which is set forth as an ideal condition is shown on page 271 of the Philosophy as the original condition. This original condition on page 279 is of necessity destroyed by the "robber system"—first negation. But we have now, thanks to the philosophy of reality, arrived at the point of abolishing the "robber system" and substituting for it the economic commune discovered by Herr Duehring—negation of the negation, equality on a higher plane.
What is the negation of the negation, therefore? It is a very far reaching, and, just, for this reason, a very important law of development of nature, human history and thought, a law which we see realised in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history, and philosophy, and which Herr Duehring himself, in spite of his opposition and resistance, must follow, after his own fashion. It is evident that I say nothing of the special development of the grain of barley from the germ to the crop bearing plant, if I say it is negation of the negation. Since the integral calculus is likewise negation of the negation, with the other assertion I should only affirm that the life process of a grain of barley is integral calculus or even socialism. But that is just the kind of thing which the metaphysicians push off on the dialectic. If I say that all these processes constitute negation of the negation, I embrace them all under this one law of progress, and leave the distinctive features of each special process without particular notice. The dialectic is, as a matter of fact, nothing but the science of the universal laws of motion, and evolution in nature, human society and thought.
At this point, however, the objection may be urged that the final negation is no true negation, I negate a grain of barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it, apositive quantity when I eliminate it, etc. Or I negate the statement "the rose is a rose" if I say "the rose is no rose" and what happens if I negate this negation again and say "but the rose is a rose"? These objection are, in fact, the chief arguments of the metaphysicians against the dialectic and are quite worthy of this idiotic method of reasoning. To negate in the dialectic is not simply to say "No," or to describe a thing as non-existent, or to destroy it after any fashion that you may choose. Spinoza says "omnis determinatio est negatio," every limitation or determination is at the same time a negation. Furthermore, the sort of negation here is shown first by means of the universal and in the second place by means of the distinctive nature of the process. I must not only negate but I must also restore the negation again. I must therefore so direct the first negation that the second remains possible or shall be so. How? Just according to the peculiar nature of each particular case. I grind a grain of barley, I crush an insect, I have certainly fulfilled the first act but have made the second impossible. Every species of things has therefore its own peculiar properties to be negated in order that a progression may proceed, and every species of properties and ideas is precisely the same in this regard. In infinitesimal calculations the negation is brought about after a different fashion than in the restoration of positive powers from negative roots. That has to be learnt like everything else. With the mere knowledge that the stalk of barley and infinitesimal calculation fall under the principle of the negation of the negation, I cannot cultivate more barley nor can I differentiate and integrate, just as I cannot play the violin by virtue of a mere knowledge of the laws of harmony. But it is evident that a merely childish negation of the negationsuch as writing down a and erasing it, or by affirming that a rose is a rose and that it is not a rose leads to no conclusion other than to show the silliness of the people who undertake processes so tedious. And yet metaphysicians would inform us that that is the right way to carry out the negation of the negation.
Herr Duehring is therefore a mystifier when he asserts that the negation of the negation was an analogy made by Hegel derived from religion and built up on the story of the Fall and the Redemption. Men thought dialectically a long time before they knew what the dialectic really was, just as they spoke prose a long time before the term "prose" was used. The law of the negation of the negation which operates in history and which until it is once learned goes on in our brains unconsciously to ourselves, was first clearly formulated by Hegel, and if Herr Duehring desires to employ it in secret but cannot stand the name, he should discover a better name. But if he insist on expelling it from the processes of thought, he must first be good enough to expel it from nature and from history, and find a system of mathematics in which —a multiplied by —a does not give us + a² and where the differential and integral calculus are both forbidden by law.