PREFACES
I
The following work is by no means the fruit of some "inward
compulsion," quite the contrary.
When three years ago, Herr Duehring suddenly challenged the world, as
a scholar and reformer of socialism, friends in Germany frequently
expressed the wish that I should throw a critical light upon these new
socialist doctrines, in the central organ of the Social Democratic
Party, at that time the "Volkstaat." They held it as very necessary
that new opportunity for division and confusion should not be afforded
in a party so young and so recently definitely united. They were in a
better condition than myself to comprehend the condition of affairs in
Germany, so that I was compelled to trust to their judgment. It
appeared furthermore that the proselyte was welcomed by a certain
portion of the socialist press, with a warmth, which meant nothing
more than kindliness to Herr Duehring, but it was seen by a portion of
the party press that a result of this kindly feeling towards Herr
Duehring was the introduction unperceived of the Duehring doctrine.
People were found who were soon ready to spread his doctrine in a
popular form among the workingmen, and finally Herr Duehring and his
little sect employed all the arts of advertisement and intrigue to
compel the "Volksblatt" to change its attitude respecting the new
teachings which put forth such tremendous claims.
However, a year elapsed before I could make up my mind to engage in so
disagreeable a business to the neglect of my other labors. It was the
sort of thing one had to get through as quickly as possible, once it
was begun. And it was not only unpleasant but quite a task. The new
socialist theory appeared as the last practical result of a new
philosophic system. It therefore involved an investigation of it in
connection with this system and therefore of the system itself. It was
necessary to follow Herr Duehring over a wide expanse of country where
he had dealt with everything under the sun, yea, and more also. So
there came into existence a series of articles which appeared from the
beginning of 1877 in the successor of the "Volkstaat," the "Vorwaerts"
of Leipsic, and are collected here.
It was my object which extended the criticism to a length out of all
proportion to the scientific value of the matter and, therefore, of
Herr Duehring's writings. There are two further reasons in extenuation
of this lengthiness. In the first place it gave me an opportunity of
developing my views, in a positive fashion, with respect to matters
which are connected with this, though very different, and which are of
more general scientific and practical interest to-day. I have taken
the opportunity to do so in every chapter, and, as this book cannot
undertake to set up a system in opposition to that of Herr Duehring,
it is to be hoped that the reader will not overlook the real
significance of the views which I have set forth. I have already had
sufficient proof that my labors have not been altogether in vain in
this regard.
On the other hand the "system-shaping" Herr Duehring is by no means an
exceptional phenomenon in Germany these days. Nowadays in Germany
systems of cosmogony, of natural philosophy in particular, of
politics, of economics, etc., are in the habit of shooting up over
night like mushrooms. The most insignificant Doctor of Philosophy,
nay, even the student, has no further use for a complete "system." In
the modern state, it is predicated that every citizen is able to pass
judgment on all the questions upon which he is called upon to vote; in
political economy it is assumed that every consumer is thoroughly
acquainted with all commodities, which he has occasion to buy to
maintain himself withal, and the same idea is also held as regards
knowledge. Freedom of knowledge demands that a person write of that
which he has not learned and proclaim this as the only sound
scientific method. But Herr Duehring is one of the most conspicuous
types of those absurd pseudo-scientists, who to-day occupy so
conspicuous a place in Germany and drown everything with their noisy
nonsense. Noisy nonsense in poetry, in philosophy, in political
economy, in writing history: noisy nonsense in the professor's chair
and tribune; noisy nonsense too in the claims to superiority and
intellectuality above the vulgar noisy nonsense of other nations,
noisy nonsense the most characteristic and mightiest product of German
intellectual activity, cheap and bad, like other German products,
along with which, I regret to say, they were not exhibited at
Philadelphia.
So, German socialism, particularly since Herr Duehring set the
example, beats the drum, and produces here and there one who prides
himself upon a "science" of which he knows nothing. It is this, a sort
of child's disease which marks the first conversion of the German
university man to social democracy and is inseparable from him, but it
will soon be thrust aside by the remarkable sound sense of our working
class.
It is not my fault that I am obliged to follow Herr Duehring into a
realm in which I can at the very most only claim to be a dilettante.
On such occasions I have for the most part limited myself to placing
the plain incontrovertible facts in contrast with the false or crooked
assertions of my opponent, as in relation to jurisprudence and many
instances with regard to natural science. In other places he indulges
in universal views on the subject of natural science theories and
therefore on a field where the professional naturalist must range out
of his own particular specialty to neighboring regions, where he,
according to Herr Virchow's confessions is just as good a
"half-knower" as the rest of us. For slight deficiencies and
unavoidable errors in the publication I hope that the same indulgence
will be extended to me as has been shown the other side of the
controversy.
Just as I was completing this preface I received the publishers'
notice of a new important book by Herr Duehring. "New Foundations for
rational Physics and Chemistry." Although I am very well aware of my
deficiencies in physics and chemistry I still believe that I know my
Duehring well enough, without having read the book, to venture to say
that the laws of physics and chemistry there set forth are worthy of
being placed alongside of Herr Duehring's former discoveries and the
laws of economics, scheme of the universe, etc., examined in my
writings and proved to be misunderstood or commonplace, and that the
rhigometer, an instrument constructed by Herr Duehring for measuring
temperature will be found to serve not only as a measure for high or
low temperature but of the ignorance and arrogance of Herr Duehring.
_London, 11 June, 1878._
II
It came to me as quite a surprise that a new edition of this work was
called for. The special views which it criticised are practically
forgotten to-day. The work itself has not only been placed before many
thousands of readers by its serial publication in "Vorwaerts" of
Leipsic in 1877 and 1878, but it has also been published in large
editions in its entirety. How then can there be any further interest
in what I have to say about Herr Duehring?
In the first place, I fancy, that it is owing to the fact that this
book, as indeed, all my writings at that time, was prohibited in
Germany soon after the publication of the anti-Socialist laws.
Whosoever was not fettered by the inherited officialdom of the
countries of the Holy Alliance should have clearly seen the effect of
this measure--the double and treble sale of the prohibited books, and
the advertisement of the impotence of the gentlemen in Berlin, who
issued injunctions and could not make them effective. Indeed the
amiability of the Government was the cause of the publication of
several new editions of my shorter writings, as I am able to affirm. I
have no time for a proper revision of the text and so allow it to go
to press, just as it is.
But there is still an additional circumstance. The "system" of Herr
Duehring here criticised spreads over a very extensive theoretical
ground and I was compelled to pursue him all over it and to place my
ideas in antagonism to his. Negative criticism thereupon became
positive; the polemic developed into a more or less connected
exposition of dialectic methods and the socialist philosophy, of which
Marx and myself are representative, and this in quite a number of
places. These our philosophic ideas have had an incubation period of
about twenty years since they were first given to the world in Marx's
"Misere de la Philosophie" and the Communist Manifesto until they
obtained a wider and wider influence through the publication of
"Capital" and now find recognition and support far beyond the limits
of Europe in all lands where a proletariat exists together with
progressive scientific thinkers. It seems that there is also a public
whose interests in this matter are sufficient to induce them to
purchase the polemic against Duehring's opinions, in spite of the fact
that it is now without an object, and who evidently derive pleasure
from the positive development.
I must call attention to the fact, by the way, that the views here set
out were, for by far the most part, developed and established by Marx,
and only to a very slight degree by myself, so that it is understood
that I have not represented them without his knowledge. I read the
entire manuscript to him before sending it to press and the tenth
chapter of the section on Political Economy was written by Marx and
unfortunately had to be somewhat abbreviated by me.
It was our wont to mutually assist each other in special branches of
work.
The present edition is with the exception of one chapter an unchanged
edition of the former. I had no time for revision although there was
much in the mode of presentation which I wanted altered. But there is
incumbent upon me the duty of preparing for publication the
manuscripts which Marx left, and this is much more important than
anything else. Then my conscience rebels against making any changes.
The book is controversial and I have an idea that it is unfair to my
antagonist for me to alter anything when he cannot do so. I could only
claim the right to reply to Herr Duehring's answer. But what Herr
Duehring has written with respect to my attack I have not read and
shall not do so, unless obliged. I am theoretically done with him.
Besides I must observe the rules of literary warfare all the more
closely as a despicable wrong has since been inflicted upon him by the
University of Berlin. It has been chastised for this, indeed. A
university which so degrades itself as to refuse permission to Herr
Duehring to teach under the known circumstances should not be
surprised if a Herr Schwenninger is forced upon it under circumstances
just as well known.
The one chapter in which I have permitted myself any explanations is
the Second of the Third Section "Theory." Here where the sole concern
is the presentation of a most important part of the philosophy which I
represent, my antagonist cannot complain if I put myself to some
trouble to speak popularly and to generalise. This was undoubtedly a
special occasion. I had made a French translation of three chapters of
the book (the First of the Introduction and the First and Second of
the Third Section) into a separate pamphlet for my friend Lafargue,
and the French edition afterwards served as a basis for one in Italian
and one in Polish. A German edition was provided under the title "The
Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science." The latter has
exhausted three editions in a few months and has also made its
appearance translated into Russian and Danish. In all these
publications only the chapter in question was added to and it would
have been pedantic in me if I had confined myself to the actual
wording of the original in the new edition in spite of the later and
international form which it had assumed.
Where I wished to make changes had particular reference to two points.
In the first place with regard to primitive history, as far as known,
to which Morgan was the first to give us the key in 1877. In my book
"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," Zurich,
1884, I have since had an opportunity of working up material more
lately accessible which I employed in this later work. In the second
place, as far as that portion which is concerned with theoretical
science is concerned, the presentation of the subject is very
defective and a much more definite one could now be given. If I did
not allow myself the right of improving it now, I should be in duty
bound to pass criticism on myself instead of the other.
Marx and I were probably the first to import the well known dialectic
of the German idealistic philosophy into the materialistic view of
nature and history. But to a dialectical and at the same time
materialistic view of nature there pertains an acquaintance with
mathematics and natural science. Marx was a sound mathematician but
the sciences we only knew in part, by fits and starts, sporadically.
After I retired from mercantile pursuits and went to London and had
time, I made as far as possible a complete mathematical and scientific
"molting," as Liebig calls it, and spent the best part of eight years
on it. I was occupied with this molting process when it chanced that I
was called upon to busy myself with Herr Duehring's so-called
philosophy. If, therefore, I often fail to find the correct technical
expression, and am a little awkward in the field of natural science it
is only too natural. On the other hand the consciousness of
insecurity which I have not yet got over has made me cautious. Actual
blunders respecting facts up to the present known, and incorrect
presentations of theories thus far recognised cannot be proved against
me. In this relation just one great mathematician, who is laboring
under a mistake, has complained to Marx in a letter that I have made a
mischievous attack upon the honor of the square root of minus one.
As regards my review of mathematics and the natural science it was
necessary for me to reassure myself on some special points--since I
had no doubts about the truth of the general proposition--that in
nature the same dialectic laws of progress fulfill themselves amid all
the apparent confusion of innumerable changes as dominate the
apparently accidental in nature; the same laws whose threads traverse
the progressive history of human thought, and little by little come to
the consciousness of thinking men. These were first developed by Hegel
in a comprehensive fashion but in a mystical form. Our efforts were
directed towards stripping away this mystical form and making them
evident in their full simplicity and universal reality. It was self
evident that the old philosophies of nature--in spite of all their
actual value and fruitful suggestiveness--could be of no value to us.
There was an error in the Hegelian form, as shown in this book, in
that it recognised no progression of nature in time, no "one after
another" (Nacheinander) but merely "one besides another"
(Nebeneinander). This was due on the one hand to the Hegelian system
itself which ascribed to the Spirit (Geist) alone a progressive
historical development, but on the other hand, the general attitude of
the natural sciences was responsible. So Hegel fell far behind Kant in
this respect for the latter had already by his nebular hypothesis
proclaimed the origin and, by his discovery of the stoppage of the
rotation of the earth through the tides, the destruction of the solar
system. And finally, I could not undertake to construct the
dialectical laws of nature but to discover them in it and to develop
them from it.
To do this entirely and in each separate division is a colossal task.
Not only is the ground to be covered almost immeasurable but on this
entire ground natural science is involved in such tremendous changes
that even those who have all their time to give can hardly keep up
with it. Since the death of Marx however my mind has been occupied by
more pressing duties and so I had to interrupt my work. I must, for
the moment, confine myself to the hints in the work before us and wait
for a later opportunity to correct and publish the results obtained,
probably together with the most important manuscripts on mathematics
left behind by Marx.
But the advance of theoretical science makes my work in all
probability, in a great measure, or altogether, superfluous. Since the
revolution which overturned theoretical science the necessity of
arranging the accumulation of purely empirical discoveries has caused
the opposing empiricists to pay more and more attention to the
dialectical character of the operations of nature. The old stiff
antagonisms, the sharp impassable frontier lines are becoming more and
more abolished. Since the last "true" gases have been liquefied, since
the proof that a body can be put in a condition in which liquid and
gaseous forms cannot be differentiated, aggregate conditions have to
the last remnant lost their earlier absolute character. With the
statement of the kinetic theory of gases that, in gases, the squares
of the speeds with which the separate gas molecules move are in
inverse ratio to the molecular weights, under the same temperature,
heat takes its place directly in the series of such measurable forms
of motion. Ten years ago the newly discovered great fundamental law of
motion was still understood as a mere law of the conservation of
energy, as a mere expression of the indestructibility and
uncreatibility of motion, and therefore merely on its quantitative
side. That narrow negative expression has been more and more
subordinated to the transformation of energy, in which the qualitative
content of the process is duly recognised and the last notion of an
extramundane Creator is destroyed. That the quantity of motion (of
energy, so called) is not changed when it is transformed into kinetic
energy (mechanical force, so called), into electricity, heat,
potential static energy need not now be preached any longer as
something new, it served as the foundation, once attained, of many
valuable investigations of the process of transformation itself, of
the great fundamental process, in the knowledge of which is
comprehended the knowledge of all nature. And since biology has been
treated in the light of the theory of evolution it has abolished one
stiff line of classification after another in the realm of organic
nature. The entirely unclassified intermediate conditions increase in
number every day. Later investigations throw organisms out of one
class into another, and marks of distinction which have become
articles of faith lose their individual reality. We have now mammals
which lay eggs and, if the news is established, birds also which go on
all fours. It was already observed, before the time of Virchow, as a
conclusion of the discovery of the cell, that the identity of the
individual creature is lost, scientifically and dialectically
speaking, in a federation of cells, so the idea of animal (and
therefore human) individuality is still further complicated by the
discovery of the amoeba in the bodies of the higher animals
constituting the white blood corpuscles. And these are just the things
which were considered polar opposites, irreconcilable and insoluble,
the fixed boundaries and differences of classification, which have
given modern theoretical science its limited and metaphysical
character. The knowledge that these distinctions and antagonisms
actually do occur in nature, but only relatively, and that on the
other hand that fixity and absoluteness are the products of our own
minds--this knowledge constitutes the kernel of the dialectic view of
nature. The view is reached under the compulsion of the mass of
scientific facts, and one reaches it the more easily by bringing to
the dialectic character of these facts a consciousness of the laws of
dialectic thought. At all events, the scope of science is now so great
that it no longer escapes the dialectic comprehension. But it will
simplify the process if it is remembered that the results in which
these discoveries are comprehended are ideas, that the art of
operating with ideas is not inborn, moreover, and is not vouchsafed
every day to the ordinary mind, but requires actual thought, and this
thought has a long history crammed with experiences, neither more nor
less than the accumulated experiences of investigation into nature. By
these means, then, it learns how to appropriate the results of fifteen
hundred years development of philosophy, it gets rid of any separate
natural philosophy which stands above or alongside of it and the
limited method of thought brought over from English empiricism.
_London, 22nd September, 1885._
III
The following new edition is, with the exception of a very few changes
in form of expression, a reproduction of the former. Only in one
chapter, namely in the Xth. of the Second Section (that on Critical
History) I have allowed some important emendations, for the following
reasons. As has been stated already in the preface to the second
edition, this chapter is in all its essentials, the work of Marx. In
its first form, which was intended as an article in a review, I was
compelled to abbreviate the manuscript of Marx very much, particularly
in those points in which the criticism of Herr Duehring's propositions
is subordinate to the particular development of the history of
economics. But these are just the portions of the manuscript which
constitute the greatest and most important of, as regards its
permanent interest, part of the work. The places in which Marx gives
their appropriate place in the genesis of political economy to such
writers as Petty, North, Locke and Hume, I consider myself obliged to
give as literally and completely as possible, and still more so, his
explanation of the "economic tableaux" by Quesnay, the insoluble
riddle of the sphinx to all economists. I have omitted however that
part which dealt solely with the writings of Herr Duehring as far as
the connection permitted. For the rest, I am perfectly well satisfied
with the extent to which the views represented in this work, have made
their way into the minds of the working class and the scientists
throughout the world since the publication of the former edition.
F. ENGELS.
_London, 23d May, 1894._