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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