Duhring's approach is entirely moralistic and subjective. He cannot explain where the surplus value/profit comes from, and no amount of force, on its own, can bring it into existence, as against its ability to appropriate it when it does exist. A modern day equivalent of this petty-bourgeois moralistic and subjective approach is seen in the arguments of the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”. It basically explains the profits of the big, developed capitalist/imperialist economies on the basis of a mercantilist theory of unequal exchange and monopoly. Like Duhring, it fails to identify how these economies arrived at that superior position in the first place. In that respect, they not only go back to a time before Marx, but to before Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations”.
“However we approach the Dühringian economics, we do not get one step further. For every obnoxious phenomenon—profit, ground-rent, starvation wages, the enslavement of the workers, it has only one word of explanation, force, and ever again force, and Herr Dühring's “mightier wrath” finally resolves itself into wrath against force.” (p 277)
As Engels already set out, it is economics which explains the material basis for the mobilisation of superior force, not vice versa. That applies equally in relation to the arguments of the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”. The large companies can mobilise “force” against small capitals precisely because they have become large companies, and have economic power. They did not become large companies because they used force/market power.
“We have seen, first, that this appeal to force is a lame subterfuge, a relegation of the problem from the economic to the political sphere, which is unable to explain a single economic fact; and second, that it leaves unexplained the origin of force itself, and very prudently so, for otherwise it would have to come to the conclusion that all social power and all political force have their source in economic preconditions, in the mode of production and exchange historically given for each society.” (p 277)
Engels, then, turns to Duhring's treatment of wages and gives several of his quotes. But, in these quotes, Duhring, in his own style, simply repeats the historical analysis provided by Marx, in Capital, of the nature of surplus labour in different modes of production.
In the first of these quotes, cited by Engels, Duhring describes wages as “the remuneration for the subsistence of labour-power.” (p 278) He goes on to say,
“Whether it is a slave or a serf, or a wage-worker who has to be maintained, only gives rise to a difference in the mode of charging the costs of production. In every case the net product obtained by the utilisation of labour-power constitutes the master's income.” (p 278)
This net product, or master's income, he describes as a “rent of possession”, i.e. the feudal lord owns land, and obtains rent from the serfs allowed to live on it, just as the capitalist owns means of production, and, in return for allowing workers to use them, obtains profit. Engels notes,
“This net product has a very well-known physiognomy, which no tattooing or feat of whitewashing can conceal. “In order to become quite clear about the relationships obtaining in this field”, let the reader imagine the passages just cited from Herr Dühring printed opposite the passages previously cited from Marx on surplus-labour, surplus-product and surplus-value, and he will find that in his own style Herr Dühring is here directly copying from Capital.” (p 279)
So, Duhring, having railed against Marx, ends up plagiarising him. He accepts, in these statements, that, throughout history, the basis of exploitation, the source of revenue for all ruling classes, is the surplus labour of the labourer. But, what Duhring's version lacks is the historical specificity of Marx's analysis. As described earlier, the nature of this exploitation is different for slave societies, than for feudal societies, which, in turn, is different to capitalist society. The form of the revenues differs.
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