As Marx set out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9, this observation of the fact that progress takes place on the basis of the advantage of certain individuals, at the expense of the species, is what leads to the reactionary moralism of Sismondi. It can also be seen in the pessimism of other similar petty-bourgeois trends, manifest in environmentalism and so on.
But, Marx set out why this process, ultimately, leads to the resolution, and why it is reactionary to seek to stop it or reverse it. Engels continues, the narrative presented by Rousseau, which can also be found in Hobbes.
““It is an incontestable fact, and the basic maxim of all constitutional law, that the peoples gave themselves chieftains to safeguard their liberty and not to enslave them.”
Nevertheless the chiefs necessarily become the oppressors of the peoples, and intensify their oppression to the point at which inequality, carried to the utmost extreme, is again turned into its opposite and becomes the cause of equality: before the despot all are equal — equally ciphers.” (p 178)
As Lenin noted, it is only during this period, prior to bourgeois society, that the term “the people” has any real legitimacy, because it is then that “the people” did constitute this more or less homogeneous mass, as against the rulers. However, bourgeois society arises on the basis of the differentiation of this mass of “the people” into bourgeois and proletarians. Hence, we have, not the equality that Rousseau envisaged, but a further negation.
Rousseau continues,
“Here we have the final measure of inequality, the last point which completes the circle and meets the point from which we set out: here all private individuals become equal once more, just because they are nothing, and the subjects have no other law than their master's will.” But the despot is only master so long as he possesses force and therefore, he cannot “complain of the use of force“ as soon as he is driven out”... Force alone maintained him, force alone overthrows him; and thus everything takes its natural course”. (p 178)
Again, we are not concerned with the validity of Rousseau's argument, but with the development of the argument itself, which proceeds on the basis of the dialectic. In other words, as Engels demonstrates later, the idea that ruling classes rely solely on force, also put forward by Duhring, is false. Rousseau, as an advocate of the ideas of bourgeois individualism, also sees the culmination of this process as the equality arising from The Social Contract, whereas it results in a new inequality, as the people differentiate into bourgeois and proletarians. At best, it results in a superficial equality of political and legal rights.
But, what Engels is setting out is not the accuracy of Rousseau's account, but this same method. Rousseau could not have applied Hegel's logic to determine that account, because Hegel had not been born, yet his account proceeds on this same basis of the negation of the negation, the negation – equality – becomes inequality – becomes equality at a higher level.
“So, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general, and for this very reason extremely far-reaching and important, law of development of nature, history, and thought; a law which, as we have seen, holds good in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history and in philosophy, and which even Herr Dühring, has to follow unwittingly and in his own way in spite of all his huffing and puffing.” (p 179-80)
The application of this law, of course, does not remove the need to analyse every phenomena in its particular specificity. If I notice that apples, oranges, stones, feathers and aircraft are all drawn towards the Earth by gravity, the recognition of this does not remove the need to examine how each of these are affected by this law differently. It is, in fact, the observation of this commonality, underlying the particularity, that enabled the development of The Law of Gravity to be formulated.
“It is self-evident that I am not say anything concerning the particular process of development of, for example, a grain of barley from germination to the death of the fruit-bearing plant, if I say it is a negation of the negation. For, as the integral calculus is also a negation of the negation, if I said anything of the sort I should only be making the nonsensical statement that the life-process of a barley plant was integral calculus or for that matter even that it was socialism. That, however, is precisely what the metaphysicians are constantly accusing dialectics of. When I say that all these processes are a negation of the negation, I am bringing them all together under this one law of motion, and for this very reason I am leaving out of account the specific peculiarities of each individual process. In fact, dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.” (p 180)
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