Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 4

As I wrote recently, the social-imperialists have led workers to disaster once more, and no Marxist should have had any problem in anticipating what lay ahead for Ukraine, or Palestine. As Trotsky wrote, in the 1930's, in relation to Ukraine.

“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score...

The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”

(Problem of the Ukraine)

The reality is, of course, as Trotsky infers, above, that any deal in relation to Ukraine will be done between the US and Russia, and the lines of that deal, which amounts to, basically, carving up Ukraine once again, are already to be seen in outline. Whatever the petty-bourgeois nationalists and idealists might think ought to be the case, according to their morality, and belief in abstract, absolute and eternal rights, US imperialism and Russian imperialism will settle those details between them, and present the result as a fait accompli to both Ukraine and the EU alike.

No such deal will have any place for NATO “peacekeepers”, dressed up as British and EU forces, because there is no reason that Putin would accept such a condition, and as Trump needs to get a deal as quickly as possible, there is, also, no way he will insist on it. The reality is that, if not Trump, then his advisors, know that, despite all of the propaganda to the contrary, there is no reason why Russia would want to expand out of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, into the rest of Ukraine, militarily, and couldn't even if it wanted to. It would be the kind of overreach that NATO has been trying to draw it into. The same is true about the even more ridiculous claims about Russia preparing to invade the rest of Europe, which are being used simply to ramp up military spending in the EU and UK, even as those countries cut welfare and other spending to finance it. One of the most ludicrous examples of that has been the French government sending out leaflets to households about how to prepare for an invasion!

That is what Trump's regime is already saying, and in the process destroying all of the hot air being put out by Blue Labour, Brexiters and the British Brexit media, about its special relationship, its unique position between the US and EU, and so on. Just as with the Nordstream pipeline, the US has blown up Brexit Britain's Bridge to nowhere, leaving it even more isolated somewhere in mid-Atlantic. Already, Britain's mini-Trump has had to row back on his statements about leading (of course not him or his children) brave young British and European soldiers into danger, by putting their “boots on the ground”, in Ukraine, as Trump made clear what he thought about it. The face-saving idea about, instead, having aerial or naval presence, is equally absurd. For one thing, most of that technology for those forces depends on US support. For another, if Russia shot them down, what, then?

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 8 of 14

Engels notes that there is contradiction in the fact that the definition of parallel lines never meet or cross, and, yet, in the real world we see parallel lines that do, indeed, cross. In fact, the Mobius Strip, which also provides the solution to the three utility puzzle, also has practical application, in relation, for example, to the wear and tear of conveyor belts, ensuring even wear on both sides of the belt.

Even in relation to lower mathematics, it relies on contradiction, as, for example, with the use of imaginary numbers based on the root of -1.

“And yet √-1 is in many cases a necessary result of correct mathematical operations. Furthermore, where would mathematics — lower or higher — be, if it were prohibited from operation with √-1 ?” (p 154)

In the realm of computer programming, the use of variable numbers is fundamental. Just to undertake a simple counting operation, the line of code reads X = X +1. That is, itself, an expression of expansion, and movement, of X being simultaneously itself and not itself. The use of variable magnitudes in maths was introduced by Descartes, himself a dialectical philosopher.

“The relation between the mathematics of variable and the mathematics of constant magnitudes is in general the same as the relation between dialectical and metaphysical thought. Which by no means prevents the great mass of mathematicians from recognising dialectics solely in the sphere of mathematics, and a good many of them from continuing to work in the old, limited, metaphysical way with methods that were obtained dialectically.” (p 154)

In contrast to this unacknowledged use of results obtained by dialectical methods, Duhring, whilst vocally condemning dialectics, provides no actual examples of results obtained from the use of his own alternative based on “antagonism of forces and his antagonistic world schematism.” (p 154)

“When Hegel’s “Doctrine of Essence” has in fact been reduced to the platitude of forces moving in opposite directions but not in contradictions, surely the best thing to do is to avoid any application of this commonplace.” (p 155)

Having attacked dialectics, this leads Duhring into his attack on Marx's theory, and its application in Capital. As with most such attacks on Marx, it is based on misrepresentation, either from ignorance or malice. Engels quotes Duhring's statement,

“The absence of natural and intelligible logic which characterizes these dialectical frills and mazes and arabesques of ideas... even to the part that has already appeared we must apply the principle that in a certain respect and also in general (!), according to a well-known philosophical prejudice, all must be sought in each and each in all, and that therefore, according to this hybrid and hobbled idea, everything is all the same in the end.” (p 155)

The attack on Capital, referring to the publication of Volume I, and an implication that the promised further volumes did not exist, and the project had been abandoned, was also a common theme of Marx's critics. Engels focuses on the last part of Duhring's statement that “everything is all the same in the end.”

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 3

In the midst of all that, the proponents of Brexit, and particularly those within Blue Labour, now seek to claim that the sovereignty obtained was significant, after all, because it provides the ability for an independent Britain to act as a bridge between the EU and Trump, as well as allowing Britain to escape the effects of Trump's tariff war against the EU. The British media, also, played a large part in Brexit, by providing a huge megaphone for the likes of Farage, over the preceding twenty years, that was totally out of proportion to the amount of support he had, as seen in his repeated failure, during all of that time, to win a parliamentary seat. No matter how much that media might want to amplify it once more, it is, of course, total nonsense and delusion.

The media have fawned over the role of Starmer, following in the footsteps of Thatcher, replete in his military camouflage, and flanked by soldiers that towered above him, and the claim that Britain was to take a leading role in Europe, in the new drive to war with Russia. And, of course, that encouraged the likes of Glasman to try to rescue his project, following his success in ensuring that Blue Labour continued its role in supporting Zionism and its genocide in Gaza, to find another reason to express his pride in his Prime Minister, as well as leading other Blue Labour Ministers to talk in the most Blimpish and ridiculous terms, threatening Russia with the potential of Britain's nuclear deterrent, should it fire upon British troops in Ukraine!

Of course, the reality is that British troops have been in Ukraine, since near the start of the war, as the leaked US Defence Department papers showed, not as “peacekeepers”, but as active combatants on the side of Ukraine. But, its also an indication of the vile reactionary nature of Blue Labour that not only is it engaged in its obnoxious, racist attacks on migrants, its support for and complicity in, genocide against Palestinians, but now threatens innocent Russian men, women and children with being incinerated with its nuclear weapons! Its no surprise that this reactionary government, now, seeks to attack pensioners, children and young people, the sick and disabled, and to revive the hated Tory scheme for sending migrants to Rwanda, but now to the Balkans instead!

In fact, the threat to respond to any Russian action against British troops in Ukraine, by an immediate use of Britain's nuclear deterrent shows just how impotent Brexit Britain really is. When Argentina was at war with Britain, in the Falklands, in 1982, that did not prompt any threat of a nuclear strike. Britain's threat of nuclear strikes, is a similar kind of empty threat as those used during the Brexit negotiations, of a “No Deal” Brexit, if the EU did not concede to its demands, which would have devastated Britain. The EU did not concede, and, rather, it was Britain that had to comply, whilst trying to present its compliance as being in some way a victory.

If British troops are more overtly stationed in Ukraine, and they are attacked by Russian troops, Britain would have little it could do about it. Today, it would not even be able to have defeated Argentina in the Falklands, let alone beat Russia with conventional weapons. Hence the empty threat of a resort to nuclear weapons. Certainly, a nuclear strike would, as Healey said, cause severe damage to Russia (he didn't of course, admit that what that really means is incinerating millions of innocent Russian civilians), but it would provoke an inevitable retaliatory nuclear strike on Britain, which, with the size of Russia's nuclear arsenal, would reduce it to a smouldering radioactive cinder. Hardly something people in Britain would encourage Starmer and Blue Labour to invite, though it would put them out of their current misery, as Blue Labour engages in even more austerity and attacks on workers to finance its Brexit chaos, and its foreign wars!

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Greenland

J.D Vance and his wife are in Greenland, visiting US troops already based there, and opening his first salvo against Denmark, as the colonial power, for which read, first salvo against the EU.  At the same time, Trump has reiterated his earlier comments, at the State of the Union, that US imperialism "must have", Greenland, one way or another.  

In my predictions for 2025, I noted that I had been watching the Guy Martin series, "Arctic Warrior", in which he had joined NATO forces in Norway, preparing for war with Russia, which was supposedly preparing to invade, so as to get control of sea routes, and valuable minerals.  Nonsense, of course, because most of the sea routes are already Russian, given the huge coastline of Siberia, and for the same reason, most of the minerals, are also Russian, contained within the massive land mass of Siberia.  The real purpose of the manoeuvres, is both propagandistic, as NATO steps up the drive to war, to rally populations behind the flag, and justify increased military spending, but, also, because any incursion is likely to be against Russia, in order to gain access to those routes and minerals, rather than by Russia, which already has them!

Well, the reality of that didn't take long to manifest itself, following Trump's arrival in the Whitehouse.  First he crapped on Zelensky, forcing him into recognising that Ukraine is dependent on, and a vassal to US imperialism, for which it will pay by handing over half a trillion dollars in revenues from exploitation of its minerals, and most importantly, giving the US access to its rare earth minerals, required for the new technologies of batteries and so on.  And, Trump's colonial grab for Canada and Greenland, is simply a continuation of that.

But, having said all that, where does that leave us?  As I also, wrote a while ago, there is no more logic in Greenland being a part of Denmark than there was, or is, of the Falklands being a part of Britain.  Its true that Denmark is disliked by Greenlanders, as their colonial master.  But, just as with those parts of the Tsarist Empire, the answer to that, for the colonised people, never comes from seeking rescue in the arms of another colonial oppressor, simply on the basis of dealing with the immediate condition, and the hope of a lesser-evil.

In general, the answer to colonial oppression, does not reside in seeking the support of some other colonial or imperial power, nor even, in the petty-bourgeois, nationalist delusion of "national self-determination".  It can only reside, in proletarian revolution, and the support for the oppressed nations to be rolled into the international proletarian revolution, as part of the process and logic of permanent revolution.

In the age of imperialism, it is quite rational for capital in North America to drive towards a single North American state, combining the US, Canada, Mexico, and Greenland, just as in Europe, the former nation states were driven to combine in the EU.  Brexit was not just a catastrophe, but was inevitably a catastrophe, precisely because it sought to ignore that logic, and to turn the clock backwards to a previous time in human history and social development that of the nation state, which became a fetter on development, more than century ago.

The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, essentially renamed during Trump's first Presidency, the Mexico-Canada-America agreement, illustrates the point, and, across the globe, regional, politico-economic blocs, which are the form of embryonic new multinational states, show that this is not some aberration or accident, but the normal course of development, which leads ultimately to a single world state, though capitalism/imperialism, with its own continued rivalries is never likely to bring that about, as in each case, one or more of the existing nation states within such formations seeks to dominate it, much as Prussia did in creating Germany, and periodically, these larger multinational states, also, come into conflict with each other, as, now, with NATO and Russia/China/BRICS+.

As Trotsky wrote, in The Programme of Peace, as Marxists, we recognise this development as historically progressive.  It creates the material conditions required for socialism.  It is why we do not advocate national self-determination, which seeks to hold back that development, and to constrain it within the fetters of the outmoded nation state.  Nor do we support the idea of "bourgeois defencism", or "revolutionary defencism", which are simply covers to line up workers behind their own ruling class in wars between competing bourgeois states, i.e. social-patriotism.  We do not want workers to fight each other in such wars, fought for the interest of their rulers, not for their interests, but want workers, whatever their nationality, to fight jointly for their common interests, against their common enemy, their own ruling classes.

But, the fact that we see the creation of larger multinational states, as progressive, and the inevitable path of evolution of capital that does not mean that we are indifferent to the way this is brought about.  As Trotsky says in the above article, 

"Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome, of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps...

Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle."

In place of the militaristic, thievish expression of this progressive tendency and development, we seek to bring about the voluntary association of existing states, into ever larger units, and the only progressive basis for doing that is via the leading role of the international working-class.  As Trotsky notes, we fight against the imperialist imposition of such development based upon force, but not on the basis of defending the nation state, which is, now, reactionary and a fetter on development, but via the logic of permanent revolution, the creation of voluntary associations, and defeat of imperialist aggressors, not by some other imperialist aggressor, but by the combined struggle of the international working-class itself.

But, in the case of Greenland, unlike with, say Canada, there is a simple solution that avoids war. Its population is 56,000. They don't like Denmark that has historically oppressed them, and want independence, which would be totally ridiculous and utopian. If the US offered every Greenlander, personally,  $10 million that would be a cost of only $560 billion to the US, and would seem like a great deal for both. Certainly, if I were a Greenlander and Trump offered me $10 million I would snap his hand off, and start packing for the sunny climes of California!

Northern Soul Classics - Hey Girl You've Changed - The Vondells

 

Friday Night Disco - We're Rolling On - The Impressions

 

Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 7 of 14

The true situation is indicated, not by taking the historic prices paid for inputs, and comparing them with the value of output, but taking the value of output, and, then, looking at how that value resolves into the reproduction of the capital, so that production continues on the same scale. In other words, the capital gain appears to create a higher mass and rate of profit, but, strip out the capital gain, and the mass of profit is unchanged, whilst, to reproduce the capital on the same scale, involves a portion of that profit, now, being tied up for that purpose, whereas, previously, it could have been consumed unproductively or accumulated. The true situation is, then, not a rise, but a fall in the rate of profit.

I have discussed this, elsewhere, in relation to the release and tie-up of capital, and in relation to the TSSI and historic prices.

“Motion itself is a contradiction: even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body being both in one place and in another place at the same moment of time, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continual assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is.” (p 152)

It is this contradiction, and simultaneity, of inputs being simultaneously outputs, and vice versa, that the TSSI, like Duhring, rejects as being “contra-sense”. Engels quotes Duhring's statement that,

“up to the present there has been “no bridge” whatever “in rational mechanics from the strictly static to the dynamic”. (p 152)

and notes,

“The reader can now at last see what is hidden behind this favourite phrase of Herr Dühring’s — it is nothing but this: the mind which thinks metaphysically is absolutely unable to pass from the idea of rest to the idea of motion, because the contradiction pointed out above blocks its path. To it, motion is simply inconceivable because it is a contradiction. And in asserting the inconceivability of motion, it admits against its will the existence of this contradiction, and thus admits that there is a contradiction objectively present in things and processes themselves a contradiction which is moreover an actual force.” (p 152-3)

As noted earlier, this mechanical motion of objects is observable, but everything that exists is itself subject to change/motion, internally. Matter is comprised of molecules, and those molecules are constantly moving, manifest as heat. A rock is visibly subject to change, as a result of erosion. But, most notably, all organic matter is subject to change within itself. It goes through various stages of growth, and ultimately death.

“We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this — that a living thing is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly asserts and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in.” (p 153)

Even in death, this does not end, because the corpse goes through a process of decomposition. And, it is not just in relation to the material world that this movement and contradiction takes place. So too it arises in the realm of ideas. Ideas are, themselves, a reflection of that material world, and observation of it by the human mind. As the material world changes, so too its reflection in the realm of ideas also changes. But, even where no significant material change occurs, ideas change, because the observation and analysis of that material world continually expands and develops.

“... the contradiction between man's intrinsically unlimited cognitive faculty and its actual presence in men who are all extrinsically limited and possess limited knowledge finds its solution in what is practically — at least for us — an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.” (p 153)

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 2

The idea of “national independence”, “national sovereignty”, or “national self-determination”, in the age of imperialism, is a petty-bourgeois, reactionary and utopian delusion. Rather than gaining “sovereignty”, Britain has lost it since Brexit. In pushing ahead with its actions in conjunction with NATO, Ukraine has also lost, rather than gained, sovereignty, not only having lost 20% of its territory, but, now, also, made itself the vassal, the debt slave of US imperialism, a debt that Trump intends to have honoured in Ukrainian minerals and resources.

In the case of Brexit Britain, yes, it can pass its own laws, set its own regulations and standards and so on, but only at the expense that it, then, finds it comes into conflict with its biggest and closest trading partner, the EU, on which it depends for its economic survival. That was soon manifest in relation to the fishing industry, which was persuaded to back Brexit to “get back control”, of the fishing grounds off Britain's coast. Not only did it fail to achieve that, in the negotiations with the EU, before leaving, because the EU is far more powerful than Britain, but, more significantly, it soon found that, outside the EU, it, now, had a load of fish that it could not sell, because the main markets for that fish were in the EU, and Brexit meant that they, now, had to jump through a whole series of bureaucratic hoops that were both costly, and time consuming.

That was not, as the Brexiters tried to present it, as a result of the EU trying to punish Britain for leaving, but was simply the inevitable consequence of Brexit, as Britain put itself outside the single market. It reduced Britain to the status of any other country seeking to trade with the EU. That's not to say that, as with the US and Cuba, or Russia and Ukraine, or China and Taiwan, if Britain acts in a way that brings it into conflict with the EU, the EU couldn't act in ways to actually punish Britain. Its only to say that, currently, it isn't, which shows just how much Brexit's damage to Britain is self-inflicted, and how much Britain has lost sovereignty from it.

That experience has been replicated in every other area of trade, and also in simple things like British people seeking to travel to go on holiday in the EU. Ordinary British citizens can see that every day, which is why there is a large majority that seek to re-join the EU, but their wishes are being denied by the petty-bourgeois, nationalists of Reform, the Tories and Blue Labour. Support for the Tories collapsed, as the reality of Brexit became manifest, although a large part of it simply moved to Reform, which repackaged the old Brexit nonsense, to claim that the Tories had not really implemented it – true, but only because the reality was that it never could have been implemented in the way Farage etc. claimed – and who have, now, focused on the real basis of support for Brexit, which is a hostility to immigration and immigrants.

Part of the collapse of support for the Conservative Party, also went to the Liberals, but, they too have failed to capitalise on that dynamic by emphasising their anti-Brexit position, which could also win them progressive Labour voters. If they do adopt that stance, then, expect Labour to see an even greater loss of support, as the desire to kick out the Tories, which existed at the General Election, is no longer a factor, working for it. Meanwhile, Blue Labour, which won the 2024 General Election, did so only as a result of the fraudulent nature of the electoral system, which amounts to ballot-rigging. Having shouted from the roof tops, in 2019, that Corbyn's Labour had had the worst result since the 1930's – not actually true, and conveniently ignoring the 2017 result, which was the best since 1945 – the reality of 2024, was that Starmer's Blue Labour did even worse! It got fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour in 2019, and where Corbyn's Labour, in 2017, had obtained 40% of the vote, Starmer's Blue Labour obtained only 32% of the vote in 2024, no better than in 2019. Since then, its vote has collapsed even further, down to around 20%, taking it down to a rump, and around the same level of support for Labour that it had when it was first created at the start of the last century, when it, basically, split from the Liberals.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 6 of 14

According to the Labour Theory of Value, it is only labour that creates new value, and it is the excess of this new value over the value of labour-power/wages of the labourers that create this new value, which is the source of surplus value. In turn, taking capital as a whole, it is this surplus value, alone, which is the source of profit, which is merely distributed, on a proportional basis, to each individual capital, via an average rate of profit, and prices of production.

Yet, in this case, it appears that there is no change in the amount of new value produced by labour, or, therefore, in the amount of of surplus value produced, whilst the amount of profit, and rate of profit has risen. Ramsay, mistakenly, concluded from this that labour is not the sole creator of value and surplus value, and, if the TSSI were consistent, it would have to do so too. For Ramsay, he saw that a rise in the value of corn arose from a rise in the value of one or more components of the constant capital, used in the production of the corn, such as seed, fertiliser, or of the fixed capital etc.

In other words, the rise in the value/price of these inputs, over the historic price paid for them, results in the creation of additional profit, and, if profit is equated with surplus value, we have to conclude that more profit equals more surplus value, which, with constant wages, can only mean more new value produced, despite the fact that no additional labour was employed. The new value must, then, have come from somewhere other than labour! But, as Marx points out, this higher profit, seen by Ramsay and the TSSI, is an illusion. It is not, in fact, a profit at all, but, simply, a capital gain. If the farmer were to stop trading, at the end of the year, and sell everything, they would, indeed, reap the benefit of this capital gain. They would be able to treat this year, and their activity, as a discrete period of time in doing so.

But, Marx notes, this does not, at all, represent the reality of capitalist production. Generally, capitalist farmers do not operate on the basis of stopping production at the end of a year, just because they have benefitted from capital gains reflected in higher prices for their output. They operate on the basis of continuous production, in which case they are already buying in the inputs for the next year's production, at the same time as selling this year's production.

Assume that the reason that the value of corn rises, during the year, is because fertiliser prices rise. Having paid, say, £10 per kilo for fertiliser, the farmer sees its price rise to, say, £20 per kilo, and, this additional £10 per kilo is reproduced in the price of the corn, giving the farmer a capital gain of £10 per kilo, which, over, say, 1,000 kilos is equal to a £10,000 capital gain, which, superficially, appears as additional profit. Assume that the capital advanced, on the basis of these historic prices was £100,000, with surplus value produced being £20,000, giving a rate of profit of 20%. Now, with the capital gain of £10,000, the profit appears as £30,000, giving a rate of profit of 30%.

But, Marx notes, the illusion is shattered as soon as we step outside the abstraction of this world comprised of discrete periods of time. The farmer, must, now, replace the fertiliser consumed in this year's production – in reality they would be replacing it, even during the year. Where, last year, it cost them £10,000, it, now, costs them £20,000. So, the £10,000 of capital gain, that superficially appeared as profit/surplus value, is now wholly consumed just to replace the consumed fertiliser, which is why Marx notes that what is significant is not the historic costs of production of commodities, but their current reproduction cost. So, rather than £100,000 of capital being advanced, £110,000 of capital must now be advanced. The corn continues to sell at its higher value of £130,000, but, this year, there is no capital gain, only profit equal to the surplus value of £20,000. Consequently, the rate of profit, rather than having risen, is seen to have fallen to 20/110 = 18.18%.

That, of course, would not affect a farmer, as an individual, who ceased production at the end of the first year, but that does not represent the reality of capitalist production. Even if the farmer sold up, the capitalist who buys the farm from them does so on the basis of these new higher values. It is, then, they that must advance this greater amount of capital, and who suffer the resulting lower rate of profit. Indeed, as Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, because seed is a cost of production, and the amount of it required is determined by use-value, not exchange value, the higher value of corn, also, means a higher value of seed, because a portion of the corn forms the seed to be sown for the next year. In other words, as Marx sets out in Capital III, Chapter 6, what we have is a portion of surplus-value/profit that would have been available for capital accumulation, which must, now be used, simply to ensure reproduction on the same scale – a tie-up of capital – so that what appeared, taken in the abstract world of discrete periods, and, mathematical models, as additional profit, and a rise in the rate of profit, is, in reality, just an illusion of greater profit, and a fall in the rate of profit.

If 10% of the corn is required as seed, the value of seed, used as constant capital, rises from £12,000 to £13,000, meaning a further fall in the rate of profit. As Marx notes, this is the case where the value of output rises, and is realised in its sale, so that this value resolves into these component parts for its reproduction. Again, this indicates the difference between, and significance of the Labour Theory of Value, as against the cost of production theory of value!

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 1

The proponents of Brexit, having seen its total failure, and the collapse of support for it, even amongst those that voted for it, have found another straw to grasp, following the election of Trump, his attacks on the EU, and, more significantly, his seeming alliance with Russia. Given the role of Putin and Trump, in facilitating the vote for Brexit in the first place, that the Brexiters, now, seek to revive their fortunes by claiming a special role for Brexit Britain, by acting as a bridge between the EU and Trump, as they encourage war with Russia, is ironic, as well as moronic. Putin and Trump facilitated Brexit, both with funding and other means, including the links to organisations such as “Spiked”, which, in turn, are linked to Blue Labour, and its guru, Lord Glasman,

Brexit is in tatters, and only the politicians that propounded it now believe, or pretend to believe, otherwise. Around 80%, even of those that voted Leave, now believe that it has made Britain poorer. Okay, as with Trump, who, now, says that his tariffs, rather than making Americans richer, are going to make them poorer for some indefinite period, the proponents of Brexit, now, claim that they always said that, even if it was economically damaging, it would be worth it in order to obtain “sovereignty”.

Except, of course, not only has it, indeed, made Britain poorer, and so, inevitably, made the poorest, in Britain, the greatest victims of it, but it has, also, failed to bring any increase in sovereignty either. Rather it has done the opposite. Of course, Trump's tariffs, his own version of Brexit style protectionism, are, also, making the poorest, in the US, the worst victims of it, too, just as the attendant measures being adopted of cutting welfare, and those sections of the state apparatus, like the Department of Education and so on, also most badly, and immediately affect the poorest in the US. Now, Britain's Mini Trump, wannabe, Starmer, is doing the same, here, attacking pensioners, and the sick and disabled.

Yes, Britain, like any other “sovereign” state can, superficially, and abstractly, plough its own furrow, make its own laws and so on, but the reality is completely different. Any state, particularly the smaller and weaker ones, are subject to simply being invaded, as seen with the Zionist state's invasion of Gaza and the West Bank, and genocide against Palestinians, but, also, its invasion of Lebanon, Syria etc., and also seen in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the US's invasion of numerous countries over the years, and, now, its threats against Greenland, Canada, Panama and so on.

As Marx pointed out to the idealists and bourgeois moralists of his day,

“The bourgeois economists have merely in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g., under club-law. They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””

(A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy)

But, also, every state's ability to plough its own furrow is constrained by its requirement to exist in the real world of other states, and relations with them. Cuba might have thought it was free to plough its own furrow and accept missiles from the USSR, in 1962, but the US's blockade, and threat to start WWIII, soon disabused it of the idea, and the continued actions of the US, to isolate Cuba, has constrained it, economically, to the present day. Likewise, there is no point referring to the abstract right of Ukraine to join NATO, and so on, when, the concrete reality is that any such action would provoke a response from its huge neighbour, and, indeed, nearly 20 years ago, that neighbour openly stated that it would provoke such a response. As Lenin frequently said, “the truth is always concrete”.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 5 of 14

Every living thing grows, and so changes constantly from one thing/state to another. How is that possible without contradiction, without it being, simultaneously, itself and not itself? This is, again, the problem for the TSSI, which similarly rejects the contradiction implied in the fact that inputs are simultaneously outputs and vice versa.

“People who in other respects show a fair degree of common sense may regard this statement as having the same self-evident validity as the statement that a straight line cannot be a curve and a curve cannot be straight. But, regardless of all protests made by common sense, the differential calculus assumes that under certain circumstances straight lines and curves are nevertheless identical, and thus obtains results which common sense, by insisting on the absurdity of straight lines being identical with curves, can never attain.” (p 151)

As noted earlier, those that reject the dialectic and existence of contradiction and simultaneity, are forced to try to escape this contradiction, by defining the the point of tangency as a zero in space, a point that has no dimension, and so which does not, and cannot exist in the real world!

“True, so long as we consider things as at rest and lifeless, each one by itself, side by side and in succession, we do not run up against any contradictions in them. We find certain qualities which are partly common to, partly different from, and even contradictory to each other, but which in this case are distributed among different objects and therefore contain no contradiction within them. Within the limits of this sphere of observation we can get along on the basis of the, usual metaphysical mode of thought. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence. Then we immediately become involved in contradictions.” (p 152)

Again, this is the case with the approach of the TSSI, which makes the same errors as those of Ramsay, examined by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22. If your approach is that of the individual producer, or of the accountant who divides reality into discrete periods of time, typically a year, in order to make rational calculations, and compare one discrete period/year with another, you will be able to get along fine within those limitations. But, such a superficial approach does not, at all, reflect the nature of real life, which does not break down into these discrete period, but is continuous, and so involves contradiction and simultaneity.

Ramsey noted that if a farmer produces corn, and the value of corn rises, during the year, they will, thereby, obtain a larger “profit”, at the end of the year than would otherwise have been the case. But, as Marx notes, the significance, here, is to first understand the nature of where this “profit” comes from.

“Whereas therefore Ricardo arbitrarily seeks to reduce the rate of profit to the rate of surplus-value in order to work out the theory of value consistently, Ramsay seeks to reduce surplus-value to profit. We shall see later that the way he describes the influence of the value of constant capital on the rate of profit is very inadequate, and even incorrect...

But if we only know that the profit depends on the ratio of the surplus to these outlays, then we can acquire the most inaccurate notions about the origin of this surplus, for example we can, like Ramsay, imagine that it originates in part in fixed (constant) capital.”

If we take the costs of production of the corn for the farmer – their historic cost – this has been paid, and can't be changed. If the value/price of corn rises, therefore, a greater “profit” is made apparent in the farmer's books for the year, and this larger profit, also, means a higher rate of profit, when measured against those historic cots of production. However, if accepted on this superficial basis, the Labour Theory of Value is destroyed.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 4 of 14

As Marx notes, Ricardo's conclusion, drawn from Mill, and Say's Law, is wrong, because, unlike a small-scale commodity producer, who basically exchanges their surplus products for others they desire, the commodity producer, under generalised commodity production, only produces in order to sell, to obtain money, and must sell in order to obtain the money required to buy the commodities required for their personal consumption, and to buy the commodities required to continue their own production.

The peasant household that produces the food it requires to consume engages in cottage industry, producing yarn, cloth, clothing and maybe produces its own beer or wine, to consume, can exchange any surplus production for other commodities. If it can't find any takers for its surplus production it won't threaten its existence. It can consume some of this surplus itself, if it can't be exchanged, and may decide to use its available time, in the next year, in other production. But, that is not the case with a commodity producer whose main activity is producing, say, beer, to sell. They may, in the initial stages of generalised commodity production, in the towns, still have a small plot of land to provide some of their needs for food, but they must, now, also, buy clothes and other industrial commodities for personal consumption, as well as paying rents and taxes in money, and finally, to buy the malt, hops and so on required to produce beer. The brewer cannot say I will not sell beer because the current market price is too low, due to an excess of supply. Nor can they say I'll switch to producing wine or furniture!

As Marx notes, by excluding the possibility of contradiction within what is, indeed, the unity of production and consumption, Say's Law inevitably saw generalised overproduction of commodities as impossible. Yet, as Marx notes, the huge expansion of production capacity arising from the introduction of large-scale, machine production, powered by steam engines, made the potential for such overproduction, inherent in commodity production, into an inevitability, as seen in the first such crisis that occurred in 1825.

In his Critical History, Duhring, however, had more to say on dialectics and Hegel. Engels quotes his statement,

“Contradiction, according to the Hegelian logic, or rather the doctrine of the Logos, is objectively present not in thought, which by its nature can only be conceived as subjective and conscious, but in things and processes themselves and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form, so that absurdity does not remain an impossible combination of thought but becomes an actual force. The reality of the absurd is the first article of faith in the Hegelian unity of the logical and the illogical.... The more contradictory a thing the truer it is, or in other words, the more absurd the more credible it is. This maxim, which is not even newly invented but is borrowed from the theology of the Revelation and from mysticism, is the naked expression of the so-called dialectical principle” (p 151)

In short, Duhring asserts that contradiction is equal to “contra-sense”, and so cannot exist in the real world. Everything real that exists, exists in a static, self-identical state, a discrete unit that can only be compared with some other such discrete unit, and only in that context can there be antagonism between these units. Of course, the problem Duhring faces, here, as from the start, is how any of these static, discrete, self-identical, units then become some other, future, static, discrete,, self-identical unit. It only allows for external action upon them to bring about change, and not change from within. Of course, its obvious why nationalists and imperialists like such an idea, as it facilitates notions such as the only way to overthrow a tyrant, or to defend or install democracy, in a given state, is by some other state to go to war with it!

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 3 of 14

Duhring's comment about contradictions is, Engels notes, about all he has to say about dialectics, in The Course of Philosophy, before dismissing it as absurd, and, along with it, Marx's analysis of capital based on it. In fact, as Marx describes, in Theories of Surplus Value, this same idea that there can be no contradiction within any given unity was also represented in the ideas of Mill, Say, and Ricardo – Say's Law – as the basis of their argument that there could be no generalised overproduction of commodities. For them, production takes place for the purpose of consumption. These are simply two poles of a unity, as much as the poles of a magnet may be opposites. Production takes place to produce products to be consumed, either those that produce those products consume them – direct production – or they exchange them with others for other products they want to consume – commodity production and exchange. So, no contradiction between production (supply) and consumption (demand) can exist.

But, it can, as Marx describes. What Mill et al failed to recognise was the difference between a product and a commodity. In a product, the use-value and and its value (labour) are inextricably linked. I only expend my labour-time in its production if I consider it is justified by the use-value of the product. But, that is not the case with a commodity. When I produce a commodity, I have no interest in its use-value, on the contrary, it has no use-value for me. I am only interested in its value in exchange for some other commodity that I do obtain use-value from. The inherent and inextricable unity of use-value and value of the product is, therefore, broken apart in the commodity, along with the direct relation between its production and consumption – supply and demand.

Within the confines of small-scale commodity production and exchange, on the basis of barter, this relation of production and consumption, supply and demand, which is the basis of Say's Law, holds, so that no generalised overproduction of commodities occurs. That does not mean, even then, that partial overproduction may not occur, and individual commodity producers may find that they cannot obtain the value of their commodity in exchange for the other commodities they demand. They may have to exchange more of their commodity to obtain the commodities they demand than is represented by the relative values of those commodities – their exchange value.

It may even be that, if this continues, the individual producer is ruined, and becomes a debt slave, servant or pauper. But, this remains an individual failure not a generalised over production of commodities. Mill et al, thereby, took this condition, applying to the nature of the product, and its extension, under barter and small scale commodity production – mostly the exchange of surplus products – as applying, also, to generalised commodity production and exchange within a money economy. As Marx notes, this is also where Ricardo's false theory of money also played a role. Because Ricardo only viewed money as currency, as the means by which this exchange of commodities, C – M – C, is facilitated, he was unable to recognise the difference between this production of commodities for the purpose of obtaining money (exchange-value incarnate, as Marx calls it) as against their production to obtain other commodities, i.e. to exchange use-value in one form for use-value in another.

In Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, Marx notes this failure of Ricardo. Ricardo says,

““One would be led to think.., that Adam Smith concluded we were under some necessity” (this is indeed the case) “of producing a surplus of corn, woollen goods, and hardware, and that the capital which produced them could not be otherwise employed. It is, however, always a matter of choice in what way a capital shall be employed, and therefore there can never, for any length of time, be a surplus of any commodity; for if there were, it would fall below its natural price, and capital would be removed to some more profitable employment” (l.c., pp. 341-42, note).

Productions are always bought by productions, or by services; money is only the medium by which the exchange is effected.””

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, Section 8, p 499)

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 2 of 14

The petty-bourgeois, moral socialists, of the type of Sismondi, Proudhon and the Narodniks, similarly, focused on those vicissitudes and effects of industrial capital on the workers, but did so, not on the basis of seeking a continuation of the rule of the landed aristocracy, but of a utopian expansion of small-scale commodity production and exchange. As Lenin set out, in relation to the Narodniks, this economic romanticism was utopian because of the laws of that commodity production and exchange, set out by Marx, that necessarily leads, via competition, to the development of industrial capital, and consequently leads to a concentration and centralisation of capital into monopoly capitalism/imperialism, which forms the basis of Socialism.

Again, this utopian, petty-bourgeois socialism is seen, today, in the form of the “anti-capitalists”, and “anti-imperialists”, the “anti-monopoly alliances”, and so on. All of these trends subordinate the interests of workers to the interests of capital, in one form or another. As Lenin noted, in relation to the Narodniks, they subordinated workers' interests to the interests of the most backward, reactionary forms of capital, i.e. to small scale capital, but, in so doing, ultimately subordinated workers to the interests of big capital, because, whatever the intentions of the Narodniks/moral socialists, the laws of capital, and the role of the capitalist state, inevitably leads to the domination of that large-scale, monopoly capitalism/imperialism.

As Lenin also pointed out, in relation to the Narodniks, the idea that you could go back to the conditions of small-scale commodity production, and peasant production, i.e. of large-scale direct production, without also the social relations that went with it, i.e. the social relations of feudal society, was a utopian, reactionary, pipe-dream. So, whenever attempts have been made to engineer such a regression, it always involves the petty-bourgeoisie establishing some kind of authoritarian/Bonapartist regime, which, inevitably, even after some period of social chaos, collapses. The regime of Pol Pot is, perhaps, the most obvious example of that, but the attempts of the Brexiters, culminating in the Truss government, is another. All forms of economic nationalism, including the utopian, reactionary notion of “Socialism In One Country”, or national roads to socialism, are simply an extension of this reactionary, utopian, petty-bourgeois socialism.

The Marxist response to the vicissitudes of industrial capitalism is not a desire to hold back that development of capital, i.e. “anti-capitalism”, but to fight for the interests of the working-class that also arises, and grows along with that capital. When that capital grows to mammoth proportions, in the form of large-scale, socialised capital, in the shape of monopoly capitalism/imperialism, the Marxist response is not to advocate for the interests of the small-scale capital being destroyed by it, but to advocate for the workers themselves to insist on their right to control what is, then, their collectively owned capital.

Similarly, as Trotsky pointed out in The Program of Peace, when this monopoly capitalism/imperialism extends this process on a global/international scale, with the more powerful capitalist states annexing the smaller states, the role of Marxists is not to advocate for the bourgeois, and still less the pre-bourgeois, ruling classes of those smaller states, but is to advocate for the unity of the working-class, and for its interests within this new, progressive political entity. As Lenin noted, we are advocates not of the self-determination of nations, which means, in reality, of the ruling-class of those nations, and the continued exploitation and oppression of their workers, but of the self-determination of the workers themselves, across nations.

The same applies with inter-imperialist wars such as WWI and II, and, now, the war between NATO/Ukraine and Russia, which is one part of the developing WWIII between US imperialism/NATO and Russia/China/BRICS+. Marxists do not line the working-class up behind the ruling class of each of these contending imperialist camps, but insist on the primacy of the interests of the working-class, expressed in the form, “The Main Enemy Is At Home!” By these means, the Marxists seek to establish precisely that bridge which takes the working-class from the one condition of being subordinated to the other stage of being the dominant class, a process which, given the size of the working-class, in reality, means only the transformation of its consciousness, a transformation from being a class in itself to being a class for itself.

The petty-bourgeois socialist can never achieve that, because they only see the world in terms of a series of discrete events (stages), in which the working-class is enrolled only to support a “lesser-evil”. The working-class is, thereby, reduced to always being not a class for itself, but only a class for some other more powerful class, even though this other class only appears to be so, because it acts as a class for itself, whereas the workers do not.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality - Part 1 of 14

Part I, Philosophy Dialectics, XII – Quantity and Quality

Engels quotes Duhring,

“The first and most important principle of the basic logical properties of being refers to the exclusion of contradiction. The contradictory is a category which can only appertain to a combination of thoughts, but not to reality. There are no contradictions in things, or, in other words, contradiction accepted as reality is itself the apex of absurdity ... The antagonism of forces measured against each other in opposite directions is in fact the basic form of all actions in the life of the world and its creatures. But this opposition of the directions taken by the forces of elements and individuals does not in the slightest degree coincide with the absurd idea of contradictions.” (p 150)

In other words, Duhring, much as with the TSSI, referred to previously, sees the world in terms of discrete units, be it of time or space, or of things existing within that time and space. These discrete units exist separated from one another (i.e. are each self-identical, and so static), and can only, thereby, be antagonistic to, or complementary to one another. In a different context, this same philosophical method, leads to “lesser-evilism”, and “campism”. In other words, the working-class may, indeed, be seen as such a discrete “self-identical” unit, but its role becomes one of being antagonistic to or complementary to some other, discrete, self-identical unit, such as the bourgeois state, “democratic imperialism”, or else “anti-capitalist”, or “anti-imperialist” forces, dependent upon a subjective determination of what represents the “lesser-evil”.

On this basis, the interests of the working-class can only be given primary consideration (though this is far from what those that operate on this basis say, abstractly, in their literature) when it, as such a self-identical static unit has, somehow, already become the dominating force in society. This is much like the way that Stalin argued that it was only legitimate to support and call for the creation of workers' soviets at the point that the proletarian revolution, and seizure of state power, i.e. the insurrection, was under way, as criticised by Trotsky in relation to the Chinese revolution, and Spanish Revolution.

It sees no connection between the two, of insisting, at all times, on the primacy of the interests of the working-class, and its independent activity, in support of those interests, and its own dynamic development, arising from that. It sees the working-class as just a static, self-identical thing, which is, now, not a dominating, but a dominated class, but which, at some other, “discrete” unit of time, in the future, may become, somehow, the dominating force, at which time, it becomes possible to agitate for, and insist on its interests being primary. The continuity, or as Duhring would call it, the “bridge” between these two, “self-identical” states is for them a mystery, just as Duhring could never identify, by his method, any such bridge between two “self-identical” static conditions, i.e. between stasis and motion.

The consequence of such a philosophical method is necessarily opportunism. It subordinates the working-class, in the here and now, to some other social-class, and its immediate interests. As Marx and Engels describe, in The Communist Manifesto, that is what various forms of reactionary socialists did, in the 19th century. Feudal Socialism, sought to attach the working-class to the old landed aristocracy, as it sought to protect its interests against the revolutionary bourgeoisie, by attacking the vicissitudes of industrial capital, and its effect on workers. That is what is still seen, today, in the shape of Toryism, Brexit protectionism and nationalism, and those sections of “the Left” that attach themselves to it.

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Anti-Duhring,Part I, Philosophy, XI – Morals and Law. Freedom and Necessity - Part 6 of 6

As Marx and Engels, and later Lenin, described, the bourgeois revolution does not arise as a product of conscious will. It arises, largely, behind Men's backs. The bourgeoisie do not arise as a class as an act of conscious self-will, but as a result of the fact that a section of a completely different class, the serfs, are released from the land, and, thereby, their means of subsistence, which, in turn, drives them into the towns to become independent commodity producers, which both expands the size of towns, as market places, and expands commodity production and exchange itself.

It is this change in material conditions, as commodity production and exchange expands, relative to direct production, that makes visible and significant the quantitative differences already existent within the class of petty producers. Those quantitative differences meant that previously the more efficient were simply  more affluent.  Each must, now, compete in the market, and, as Lenin explains in detail, this applies not only to the independent commodity producers in the towns, but also to the domestic industrial production of the peasant, who produces commodities in exchange for money, to pay rents and taxes, etc.

The more efficient, independent commodity producers become the winners in the competition between them, and thrive. But, now, the losers, instead of becoming slaves or paupers, see their competitors simply employ them as wage-labourers, and their own means of production taken from them becoming, thereby, transformed into capital. What were previously only quantitative differences are now transformed into a qualitative difference.  The victors become a new bourgeois/capitalist class, the losers a new, industrial proletariat.

Engels notes Duhring's comment, in relation to the stages of life of the individual, and appreciation of different stimuli, relevant to each successive stage.

“The method whereby total interest in life can be kept active” (a fitting task for philistines and those who want to become such!) “consists in allowing the particular and so to speak elementary interests, of which the total interest is composed, to develop or succeed each other in accordance with natural periods of time.” (p 149)

Applied to society, this succession of stages, and the interests relevant to it, can be seen in the “stages theory” of the Mensheviks, and adopted by the Stalinists and other reformists.

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Anti-Duhring,Part I, Philosophy, XI – Morals and Law. Freedom and Necessity - Part 5 of 6

Indeed, Duhring's view of history is rather like that of the TSSI that I have criticised in the past – one based upon comparative statics, of discrete units of time, stitched together, like still photographs rather than a motion picture. As such, it does not comprehend either motion or the role of contradiction, continuity and simultaneity. For it, things are one thing or another, and cannot simultaneously be both, despite the fact that this is, indeed, the nature of of material reality and movement.

“The philosophy of reality’s contempt for all past history is justified as follows:

“The few thousand years, the historical recollection of which has been facilitated by original documents, are, together with the constitution of mankind so far, of little significance when one thinks of the succession of thousands of years to come... The human race as a whole is still very young, and when in time to come scientific recollection has tens of thousands instead of thousands of years to reckon with, the intellectually immature childhood of our institutions becomes a self-evident premise undisputed in relation to our epoch, which will then be revered as hoary antiquity”.” (p 146)

It will, indeed, be the case, if humanity does not destroy itself, via thermonuclear, inter-imperialist war, that, in the millions of years it is able to prosper under a global, socialist society, everything, today, will seem incredibly primitive. But, as Engels noted, earlier, in relation to fire, it remains a more significant development than the use of fire to produce mechanical motion, because, without the ability to produce fire, all of the subsequent developments would have been impossible.

“this “hoary antiquity” will in any case remain a historical epoch of the greatest interest for all future generations, because it forms the basis of all subsequent higher development, because it has for its starting-point the moulding of man from the animal kingdom, and for its content the overcoming of obstacles such as will never again confront the associated men of the future.” (p 146)

But, also, as Engels notes, if humanity does survive into these future millennia, and its socialist foundations open up all of these unconstrained possibilities, not least the development of the truly human aspects of the individual, freed from the constraints of class, and material needs, why choose, as the point at which the “absolute truths” and laws, relating to this future, are established as being the closure of the period of previous history, of its “hoary antiquity”, i.e. up to the appearance on the scene of Herr Duhring?

Duhring has to explain the basis of movement from one “self-identical state” to another, and his basis for this applied both to the individual and to society is his “law of difference”. For the individual, this “law of difference” amounts to this. If we observe the nature of sensation, it amounts to the nervous system transmitting messages to the brain. If the given stimulus is persistent, the nerves become deadened, and it is only in a change of condition, and of stimuli that a change of sensation is noticed. Duhring says,

“At most the torment of boredom also enters into it as a kind of negative life impulse... A life of stagnation extinguishes all passion and all interest in existence, both for individuals and for peoples. But it is our law of difference through which all these phenomena become explicable.” (p 147)

In essence, Duhring is saying that, after long periods of history of doing the same thing, societies, as much as individuals, become bored, and choose to do something different! The fact of individuals and societies doing the same thing, day in day out, does lead to idiocy, as Marx and Engels noted, in relation to the bourgeois revolution rescuing millions from the idiocy of rural life, but that revolution was not the product of society consciously choosing to do something different. Still less was it a consequence of it doing so out of a sense of boredom!

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Anti-Duhring,Part I, Philosophy, XI – Morals and Law. Freedom and Necessity - Part 4 of 6

The more the facts relevant to making any decision are known, the more rationality dictates the necessity of a certain conclusion. If the facts are not known, then the possibility of various conclusions arise, and the validity of any particular conclusion is uncertain.

“Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the facts. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite point in question, the greater the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and contradictory possibilities of decision, shows precisely by this that it is not free, that it is commanded by the very object it should itself command. Freedom therefore consists in the command over ourselves and over external nature, a command founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.” (p 144)

Engels makes the comparison between the discovery of the ability to produce fire by friction (mechanical motion) and the discovery of the ability to produce mechanical motion from fire, via the steam engine. The effect on production and the development of society by the latter is far greater than that of the former. However, the role of the former is far greater, because what it signifies is Man's separation from the animal kingdom for all time. It meant not only the ability to produce heat at will, reducing the constraint imposed by climate, but to cook food, considered important in the ability to consume and absorb sufficient nutrition for the development of the human brain. It also made possible the smelting of metals, production of pottery, glass and so on.

We might, now, draw a comparison with the development of cybernetics, genetics and so on, which offer the means of enabling human consciousness to free itself from the constraints of the human body, not to mention the implications of artificial intelligence.

“True, Herr Dühring's treatment of history is different. In general, as a story of error, ignorance and barbarity, of violence and subjugation, it is a repulsive object to the philosophy of reality; but considered in detail it is divided into two great periods, namely (1) from the self-identical state of matter up to the French Revolution, (2) from the French Revolution up to Herr Dühring; the nineteenth century remains

“still in essentially reactionary, indeed from the intellectual standpoint it is that (!) even more so than the eighteenth”. Nevertheless, it bears socialism in its womb, and therewith “the germ of a mightier regeneration than was imagined (!) by the forerunners and heroes of the French Revolution”. (p 145-6)

Duhring, therefore, sees no historical process, linking one epoch with another, and the creation of material conditions in one epoch, whose further development results in contradiction, and the resolution of that contradiction via social revolution, the replacement of the existing social relations by new ones, the creation of new forms of property, and social classes resting on them, as their personification, i.e. of class struggle, and consequently, also, to political revolution, as the political, ideological and legal superstructure is thrown into the air, and a new one, consistent with the new social relations is erected in its place.

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Anti-Duhring,Part I, Philosophy, XI – Morals and Law. Freedom and Necessity - Part 3 of 6

Engels turns, now, to the question of freedom and necessity. I have discussed this relation, elsewhere. At one extreme, absolute freedom would require the ability to act without any constraint, but that is only possible for a God. Everything else is constrained, at the very least, by natural laws. At the other extreme, an absolute absence of freedom implies no power to act, and only to be acted upon, such as with a rock, eroded by the elements etc. In between there is a gradation. Plants are constrained by the laws of nature, but they evolve, not as an act of conscious will, but purposively, they have a freedom of movement within narrow limits – to adapt to their environment. Animals are constrained by laws of nature, but can operate within them to their advantage. They have much greater freedom of movement and action than plants. Man is also constrained by natural laws, but represents a break from the animals by acting to consciously utilise those laws, and change the material conditions of his existence.

Duhring proposed two solutions to the problem. He writes,

“All false theories of freedom must be replaced by, what we know from experience is the nature of the relation between rational judgment on the one hand and instinctive impulses on the other, a relation which so to speak unites them into a single mean force. The fundamental facts of this form of dynamics must be drawn from observation, and must in general also be estimated, as closely as possible according to their nature and magnitude with regard to the calculation in advance of events which have not yet occurred. In this manner the silly delusions of inner freedom, which people have chewed and fed on for thousands of years, are not only thoroughly cleared away, but are replaced by something positive, which can be made use of for the practical regulation of life”. (p 143)

Duhring, therefore, posits absolute freedom as the expression of rational behaviour, and lack of freedom arising from instinctive behaviour. He doesn't ask what might lead to one or the other of these predominating over the other. For example, suppose I am playing tennis. Will I tend to act instinctively or deliberately over which stroke to play? If I live in a primitive society, where survival is tenuous, will I spend long periods rationalising how best to survive, or act instinctively to find food and shelter, as quickly as possible?

Instead, Duhring simply sees these two impulses always acting within the mind pulling in opposite directions, although recent research, in relation to things like sport, shows that instinctive reactions tend, more often than not, to, also, result in correct decisions.

Engels notes,

“On this basis freedom consists in rational judgment pulling a man to the right while irrational impulses pull him to the left, and in this parallelogram of forces the actual movement follows the direction of the diagonal. Freedom would therefore be the mean between judgment and impulse, between reason and unreason, and its degree in each individual case could be determined on the basis of experience by a “personal equation”, to use an astronomical expression.” (p 143)

How does this relate to morality? Engels quotes Duhring's later comment, which destroys his earlier argument.

“We base moral responsibility on freedom, which however means nothing more to us than susceptibility to conscious motives in accordance with our natural and acquired intelligence. All such motives operate with the inevitability of natural law, notwithstanding an awareness of the possible contradictions in the actions; but it is precisely on this unavoidable compulsion that we rely when we apply the moral levers”. (p 143)

In other words, moral behaviour depends upon freedom, and the ability to make rational decisions. As I have set out, elsewhere, circumstances might prevent rational judgement, and require an instinctive response. Durhing's second definition of freedom is, Engels says, just a vulgarisation of the Hegelian conception in which freedom is the recognition of necessity.

“Freedom does not consist in an imaginary independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility which is thus given of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves — two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality.” (p 144)

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