Engels summarises Duhring's method.
“It consists in splitting up each group of objects of knowledge into their allegedly simplest elements, applying to these elements similarly simple and allegedly self-evident axioms, and then continuing to operate with the results so obtained. Even a problem in the sphere of social life
“is to be decided axiomatically, in accordance with particular, simple basic forms, just as if we were dealing with the simple ... basic forms of mathematics”” (p 120)
On this basis, every sphere of life can be analysed and understood on the basis of a series of “genuine, immutable truths” (p 120). But, this method, also used by Proudhon, as described by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy, is only an application of the a priori method, by which the nature of an object/phenomenon is not determined by analysing the object itself, but by a process of deduction related to the abstract concept of the object as an “ideal type”, to use Weber's terminology. It starts from Heaven to descend to Earth, rather than vice versa.
This is also the method of the moralist and moral socialist. It develops an “ideal type”, abstract concept of what socialism, or a workers' state should look like, and then compares the real world to it, thereby, necessarily rejecting everything that does not conform to this paragon, and, so, also, removing any possibility of any process of transition from one state of existence to another.
Duhring described his method as the philosophy of reality, but Engels notes,
“The philosophy of reality, therefore, proves here again to be pure ideology, the deduction of reality not from itself but from its representation.” (p 121)
This method, used by Sismondi, could only see, in capitalism, its negative consequences, and not its revolutionary dynamic, which makes possible the transition to Socialism. The same was true of Proudhon, and, later, the Narodniks. As Lenin commented in his polemics against the latter, Marx had noted that the moral socialists only see in poverty poverty. They do not see its revolutionary potential.
Moral socialism was reactionary and utopian, because, in each case – Sismondi, Proudhon, and the Narodniks – their response was to oppose the real capitalist development, because they could only see in the poverty caused by its immediate effects, poverty, and not its revolutionary potential, as it developed the productive forces, and created the industrial proletariat. They sought to cling to the old small-scale production of the independent commodity producer, artisan and self-sustaining peasant, to avoid that poverty which also meant avoiding the revolutionary potential that capitalism brings with it of the transition to Socialism.
This is the same approach as that of today's “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”, who also can only see in poverty poverty, and can only see in the domination of large-scale monopoly capitalism (imperialism) the subordination of small scale capital, and in imperialism/globalisation “super-exploitation”, and so on, and not the revolutionary potential of such development. But, as Marx and Engels, and later Lenin and Trotsky described, not only are such approaches reactionary, but, also, they are utopian.
The process of the concentration and centralisation of capital, operating via competition, is what produces monopolies and oligopolies. They are the inevitable mature form of capital itself, not some anomaly, nor product of distortion, or diversion from a supposed true path of development. In the same way, as Lenin and Trotsky described, this process means that the large-scale capital requires ever larger markets in which to operate, so as to justify the production on ever larger, mammoth scales, which become the minimum scale of production. Imperialist capital, as defined by Lenin as large-scale, monopoly capitalism, tied to the state, in order that the state provides these conditions, including the planning and regulation of the economy, inherently means the expansion of the state itself, either by annexation, or else, as with the EU, voluntary amalgamation of existing states.
Back To IX- Morals and Law. Eternal Truths.
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