“But we see too that if Herr Dühring does not want to be unfaithful to the basic principles “established” by him in his interpretation of morals, law and history, he must deny this elementary economic fact, especially if he is to smuggle his indispensable twosome into economics. This great event can come to pass once distribution has been happily released from all connection with production and exchange,.” (p 195-6)
And, that, too, is the position of social-democracy, and reformist socialism. In fact, if shareholders did not control the industrial capital, which is the collective property of the workers – associated producers – they would still be entitled to revenues, in the form of dividends, but those dividends would, then, reflect only a competitive market rate of interest. If workers used the profits they produced to accumulate additional capital, rather than paying excessive dividends to shareholders, and excessive payments to the executives appointed by those shareholders, then share prices, and other massively inflated asset prices would fall significantly.
The role of the ruling-class as suppliers of money-capital would, also, quickly disappear, as the role of the landlords in production disappeared, with the rise of the capitalist farmer. But, the landlords did not voluntarily give up their revenues, or their control of the state, and nor will the ruling-class of capitalist money-lenders and speculators. It is why they have used their control of the state, everywhere, to give them control over the capital they do not own.
Engels refers back to how Duhring sets out his theory in relation to these laws and morals. He starts with an Adam, alone and without original sin, but, then, along comes another Adam.
“And Adam instantly acquires obligations and—breaks them. Instead of clasping his brother to his bosom as his equal in rights, he subjects him to his domination, he enslaves him—and it is the consequences of this first sin, the original sin of enslavement, from which the whole of world history has suffered down to the present day—which is also precisely why according to Herr Dühring it is not worth threepence.” (p 196)
There are obvious problems with this narrative, besides those already discussed, earlier, by Engels. If the two Adams are equal, how does one overpower and subjugate the other? Either, it requires an assumption of inequality to begin with, or it requires a three person society, so that two subjugate the other one. But, then, a look at class societies shows the ruling-class is invariably a small minority, not a majority. Moreover, even if the two subjugate the third, for what benefit unless the third is so productive that they are able not only to reproduce their own labour-power, but also to provide for the needs of the other two?
Engels quotes Duhring's transference of this morality tale into the realm of economics, in which the role of Adam is now undertaken by Robinson Crusoe.
“If need be, we can get an appropriate conceptual schema for the idea of production from the conception of a Robinson Crusoe who is facing nature alone with his own resources and has nobody else to share anything with ... The conceptual schema of two persons who combine their economic forces and must evidently come to some form of mutual understanding as to their respective shares, is equally appropriate for the illustration of what is most essential for the idea of distribution.” (p 197)
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