Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 1

The Enlightenment philosophers appealed to Pure Reason. Only the rational was real.

“A rational state, a rational society, were to be founded; everything running counter to eternal reason was to be remorselessly done away with.” (p 327)

But, what appeared to be rational was only a manifestation of the world view of the rising bourgeoisie. A premature, and inevitably confused, example of that came with the English Civil War. But, the consequence of the, as yet, immature condition of the bourgeoisie meant that, having seized power, it did not know what to do with it, and soon resorted to the Protectorate of Cromwell, as an uncrowned King. It was another 100 years before the bourgeoisie had developed enough to take control of the state, and to install its own constitutional monarch via The Glorious Revolution.

Even then, this was not a total victory for the bourgeoisie. It was a victory for the the commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy, in alliance with the landed aristocracy, based on Mercantilism, and the creation of a colonial empire. As Engels points out, it was only after 1848 that the industrial bourgeoisie asserts its dominance, and, in alliance with the industrial workers, defeats that old alliance of the landed aristocracy, commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy. A similar pattern emerges in France, later, but in a more condensed sequence.

“The state based upon reason completely collapsed. Rousseau’s Social Contract had found its realization in the Reign of Terror, from which the bourgeoisie, after losing faith in its own political capacity, had taken refuge first in the corruption of the Directorate, and, finally, under the wing of the Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peace was turned into an endless war of conquest. The society based on reason had fared no better. Instead of dissolving into general prosperity, the antagonism between rich and poor had become sharpened by the elimination of the guild and other privileges, which had bridged over it, and of the charitable institutions of the Church, which had mitigated it.” (p 327-8)

It was these birth pangs of the new bourgeois society that enabled sections of the old feudal ruling class not only to effectively snipe at their successors, but to periodically appeal to the workers and petty-bourgeoisie against them. It was what enabled the likes of Sismondi to expose in stark tones the inevitability of an overproduction of commodities, in turn, plagiarised by Malthus, to justify his calls for the parasites of the landed aristocracy, church and state to have greater revenues, for the benefit of society, to avert such overproduction. The role of the guilds formed the basis of other forms of reactionary socialism, as with William Morris and the Guild Socialists.

“As far as the small capitalists and small peasants were concerned, the “freedom of property” from feudal fetters, which had now become a reality, proved to be the freedom to sell their small property, which was being crushed under the overpowering competition of big capital and big landed property to these very lords, so that freedom of property turned into “freedom from property” for the small capitalists and peasant proprietors.” (p 328)

Back To Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History