Duhring had criticised Marx for his analysis of capital and capitalism as being merely a historical phase of human social development. In other words, capital is not simply “produced means of production” as Duhring insisted, but is a social relation. The peasant's plough, after all, is “produced means of production”, but is not capital. However, Engels notes,
“But not content with ascribing a historical beginning to the social function through which alone a sum of values becomes capital, Herr Dühring prophesies that it will also have a historical end. It is “precisely this which must disappear”. In ordinary parlance it is customary to call a phenomenon which arose historically and again disappears historically, “a historical phase”. Capital, therefore, is a historical phase not only in Marx but also in Herr Dühring, and we are consequently forced to the conclusion that we are among Jesuits here.” (p 265-6)
In other words, as seen previously, Duhring attacks the concepts and arguments of others, but, then, frequently uses the same concepts and arguments himself, but simply using other words and phrases.
Engels sets out the Marxian concept of capital.
““Capital,” says Marx, “has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production.” Surplus-labour, labour over and above the time required for the worker's own maintenance, and appropriation by others of the product of this surplus-labour, the exploitation of labour, is therefore common to all forms of society up to now, in so far as these have moved in class antagonisms. But it is only when the product of this surplus-labour assumes the form of surplus-value, when the owner of the means of production finds himself facing the free worker — free from social fetters and free from possessions of his own — as an object of exploitation, and exploits him for the purpose of the production of commodities—it is only then, according to Marx, that the means of production take on the specific character of capital. This first took place on a large scale at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.” (p 266-7)
For Duhring, however, all means of production are capital, but, even here, he runs into contradiction. He says,
“every sum of means of production which “forms shares in the fruits of the general labour-power” , that is, yields surplus-labour in any form, is capital.” (p 267)
On that basis, Engels notes, it is not only “produced means of production”, as Duhring had claimed earlier, but all means of production, produced or not produced.
“So Herr Dühring himself does not hold “the accepted view of capital, according to which it is a means of production”, but rather a diametrically opposite one, a view which includes in capital even unproduced means of production namely the earth and its natural resources. But the idea that capital is simply “produced means of production” is once again the accepted view only in vulgar economics. Outside of this vulgar economics, so dear to Herr Dühring, the “produced means of production” or any sum of values whatever, becomes capital only by yielding profit or interest, i.e., by appropriating the surplus-product of unpaid labour in the form of surplus-value, and that, moreover, in these two definite subforms of surplus-value. It is of no importance whatever that the whole of bourgeois economy is still chained to the idea that the characteristic of yielding profit or interest is inherent in every sum of values which is employed under normal conditions in production or exchange.” (p 267-8)
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