More than a century before the existence of internet trolls, Engels writes of Duhring's approach,
“The method has the further advantage that it offers no real foothold to an opponent, who is consequently left with almost no other possibility of reply than to make similar summary assertions in the grand manner, to resort to general phrases and finally thunder back denunciations at Herr Dühring — in a word, as they say, to engage in a slanging match, which is not to everyone's taste.” (p 157)
Duhring, however, did lapse from this method and provided “two examples of the detestable Marxist doctrine of the Logos.” (p 157)
As with Burnham, in Science and Style, Duhring attacks the “nebulous Hegelian notion that quantity changes into quality.” (p 157) In fact, science has itself, most forcefully, demonstrated the validity of that proposition, before our eyes, as liquids go from clear to coloured and back again, solely as a result of quantum level changes in their atomic structure, explained by chaos theory, and also set out in the Butterfly Effect. Long before that, the theory of evolution is based on the accumulation of small, quantitative changes in the genetic structure of species, which, at a certain point, results in a qualitative break, and creation of a new species.
Duhring presents this representation, in Marx's Capital, as “an advance, when it reaches a certain limit, becomes capital merely by this quantitative increase!”, (p 158).
Of course, Marx says no such thing. The closest to it is Marx's account of the quantitative increase of commodity production and exchange, as the serfs and former feudal retainers move to the towns, in the 15th century, and become independent, small scale producers of industrial commodities. It is this development of the market, which makes larger-scale industrial production possible, whilst competition between these producers leads to the ruin of some of them, who, then, become wage-labourers in the employ of their successful competitors. It is that fact, and that they no longer have their own means of production, depending upon that of their employers, which means that those means of production become capital.
Engels summarises Marx's actual position, set out in Capital.
“On the basis of his previous examination of constant and variable capital and surplus-value, Marx, draws the conclusion that “not every sum of money, or of value, is at pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this transformation, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange-value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or commodities.””. (p 158)
He goes on to explain that, if the rate of surplus value is 50%, it would require two workers to produce enough surplus-value, as the equivalent of a day's wages/value of labour-power. If someone employed these two workers, they would need enough money to pay their wages, but also to buy the instruments of labour, and materials for them to process. Even then, it would only enable the employer to obtain the same standard of living as if they were, themselves, a labourer.
“As the aim of capitalist production is not mere subsistence but the increase of wealth, our man with his two workers would still not be a capitalist. Now in order to live twice as well as an ordinary worker, and turn half the surplus-value produced back into capital, he would have to be able to employ eight workers, that is, he would have to possess four times the sum of value assumed above.” (p 158)
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