II -What Herr Duhring Promises
“The writings of Herr Dühring with which we are here primarily concerned are his Kursus der Philosophie, his Kursus der National- und Sozialökonomie, and his Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus. The first of these particularly claims our attention now.” (p 35)
Engels emphasises the pompous nature of Duhring and his intellectual claims. Thus, on the first page of this work, Duhring proclaimed himself to be,
“the man who claims to represent this power” (philosophy) “in his age and for its immediately foreseeable development” (p 35)
This is not the claim of a mere mortal, who might consider that they have uncovered some important truth about the world they live in, but the claim of a God, or Superman, to have unlocked all truth, absolute truth, for all time.
“Many people, even before Herr Dühring, have thought something of this kind about themselves, but — except for Richard Wagner — he is probably the first who has calmly blurted it out. And the truth to which he refers is,
“a final and ultimate truth”. (p 35)
As such, Duhring cannot limit his scope to current reality, but extends it to all possible realities. He presents it as a materialist philosophy, and yet this presents an obvious contradiction in terms of these other, potential, future realities, i.e. realities that do not physically exist.
“the natural system or the philosophy of reality... In it reality is so conceived as to exclude any tendency to a visionary and subjectively limited conception of the world”. (p 35)
Every philosophy is subjectively limited by the individuals that develop it, because their own thoughts and mental processes are influenced by their own perception of reality. A scientific method seeks to, objectively, identify facts, and laws of motion, but must, itself, be subject to this same limitation. Moreover, as Marx describes, a distinction must be made between Natural Laws, such as The Law of Gravity, The Law of Natural Selection, or The Law of Value, as against laws that are themselves historically limited and conditioned, such as the laws of capital, or wages, or commodity production and exchange.
Duhring seeks to present his philosophy as free from any such limitations, and to have identified Absolute Truth, “although so far we do not see how this miracle should come to pass.” (p 36)
The basic element of this, for Duhring, is to seek only scientific truth. As he puts it,
“From its “really critical standpoint” it provides “the elements of a philosophy which is real and therefore directed to the reality of nature and of life, a philosophy which cannot allow the validity of any merely apparent horizon, but in its powerfully revolutionising movement unfolds all earths and heavens of outer and inner nature” . It is a “new mode of thought”, and its results are “from the ground up original conclusions and views ... system-creating ideas ... established truths”.” (p 36)
In which case, there would be no place for social laws, or historically specific laws. Yet, modern natural science has identified that, even truths about this reality, this Universe, are not, necessarily, true for alternative realities, other universes. Even within this universe, things once thought to be absolute, such as time, are now known to be relative. The latest science even conceives that, at the start of the universe, the speed of light may have been different to what it is now.
Having identified this key to absolute truth, therefore, Duhring felt able to present his own fully worked out schema of the future socialist society, conforming to it, and which could only conform to it, according to Duhring.
“We have given the above anthology only for the purpose of showing that we have before us not any ordinary philosopher and socialist, who merely expresses his ideas and leaves it to the future to judge their worth, but quite an extraordinary creature, who claims to be not less infallible than the Pope, and whose doctrine is the one way to salvation and simply must be accepted by anyone who does not want to fall into the most abominable heresy.” (p 37)
Unfortunately, combined with those traits of the other main strand of socialist thought, that of Lassalle, who Marx described as the model of the future socialist dictator, we have many of those elements to be found in Stalinism, but, also, in many of the small socialist micro-sects that have proliferated.
This was not an example of one of the many works of well-meaning individuals, Engels says, who set down their ideas on paper, with varying degrees of lucidity, as they themselves sought to make sense of the world, and offer some solutions to its problems.
“On the contrary, Herr Dühring offers us principles which he declares are final and ultimate truths and besides which any other views views are, therefore, false from the outset; he is in possession not only of the exclusive truth but also of the sole strictly scientific method of investigation, in contrast with which all others are unscientific. Either he is right — and in this case we have before us the greatest genius of all time, the first superhuman, because infallible, human being. Or he is wrong, and in that case, whatever our judgment may be, benevolent regard for his possibly good intentions would nevertheless be the most deadly insult to Herr Dühring.” (p 37-8)
Duhring's pomposity was also manifest in his dismissal of all those that had preceded him. Engels quotes his statements in respect of the few even considered worthy of his mention.
““Leibniz, devoid of any better sentiments ... that best of all courtier-philosophisers”
Kant is barely tolerated; but after Kant everything got into a muddle;
there followed the “wild ravings and equally inane and windy stupidities of the immediate epigoni, namely, a Fichte and a Schelling ... monstrous caricatures of ignorant natural philosophising ... the post-Kantian monstrosities” and “the delirious fantasies” crowned by “a Hegel”. The latter used a “Hegel jargon” and spread the “Hegel pestilence” by means of his “method which was unscientific even in form” and by his “crudities”.” (p 38)
Of Darwin, he wrote,
“Darwinian semi-poetry and dexterity in metamorphosis, with gross-minded narrowness of comprehension and blunted power of differentiation ... In our view what is specific to Darwinism, from which of course the Lamarckian elements must be excluded, is a piece of brutality directed against humanity.” (p 38)
Not surprisingly, for someone who believed they had the only true version of socialism, it was the socialists who fared worst in Duhring's criticism.
“With the exception at most of Louis Blanc — the most insignificant of them all — they are sinners all and sundry, and they fall short of the reputation which they should have before (or behind) Herr Dühring.” (p 38-9)
Duhring did not just dismiss their ideas, but also engaged in character assassination, and an almost Trumpian play on their names.
“Herr Dühring characterises the utopians according to their names, with devastating wit; Saint-Simon — saint (holy), Fourier — fou (crazy), Enfantin — enfant (childish); he only needs to add: Owen — o woe! and a very important period in the history of socialism has been condemned - in four words, and anyone who has any doubts about it “should himself be classed under some category of idiot”.” (p 39-40)
And, Duhring, of course, had to address the socialists of his time, the most notable being Lassalle and Marx, which he did in similar vein. And, of these characterisations, Engels note,
“For the moment — we will guard against voicing any doubt as to their deep-rootedness, as we might otherwise be prohibited from trying to find the category of idiot to which we belong. We only thought it was our duty, on the one hand, to give an example of what Herr Dühring calls
“the select language of the considerate and, in the real sense of the word, moderate mode of expression”
and on the other, to make it clear that to Herr Dühring the worthlessness of his predecessors is no less established a fact than his own infallibility. Whereupon we sink to the ground in deepest reverence before the mightiest genius of all time — if that is how things really stand.” (p 40-41)
No comments:
Post a Comment