Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 15 of 24

There is, then, a difference between equality of being, and equality of rights. As Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, the bourgeoisie established the concept of equality on the basis of the equality of being, and a consequent equality of rights. It was revolutionary, precisely because, at the time, there was no concept of such equality. The higher echelons of society were considered superior beings, only a step down from God, with the rest of society occupying ever lower rungs on that ladder. Similarly, those at the top had rights according to their station, and those at the bottom effectively had no rights at all.

In establishing the idea of equality of being, the bourgeoisie broke down the basis of this ordering of society and the social relations, based on it, along with its political and juridical superstructure. It broke down the privileged position of the feudal guild production, with all of its protectionism and monopolies, for example, and posited all commodity owners as free and equal individuals, meeting on equal terms in the market. And, alongside this, it posited, and demanded, therefore, equal political and legal rights – the right to vote, and to equal standing before the law.

But, whilst this was revolutionary compared to feudal society, it was also based upon the lie set out above. Individuals are not all equal/the same. Some have greater needs than others, some have greater abilities, and, thereby, obligations than others. Yet, as Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, if this is to be acknowledged, and acted upon, as set out in the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, it would require a vast increase in social productivity, so that, indeed, those with the greatest abilities, strength, intelligence and so on contribute fully, but also freely to social production, without concern for proportional recompense, and that those with the greatest needs, for example, those with children, are able to take from social production to meet them, without the requirement to contribute in equal measure.

As Marx notes, even the initial socialist society, emerging from bourgeois society, could not do that. Far from it, which makes all of the moralism of the welfarists and reformists idealist and utopian nonsense that, actually, is, thereby, reactionary, and stands in the way of the transition to Socialism. In The Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx set this out in relation to the demands of the Lassalleans, at that time, for free, universal education and an end to child labour etc. Capitalism itself, in the developed economies, has so raised productivity, and changed the nature of labour that the first not only became possible, but necessary, whilst the second continues, as seen in the thousands of children that provide free social care in the home to parents and others. But, in the developing economies, Marx's argument against he Lassalleans still applies, and yet the liberals and moralists demand the same rights, in those countries as those only now made possible in developed economies, by their much higher productivity and wealth.

This is simply a reflection of the extent to which bourgeois ideology, and its concept of equality of being is pervasive, even though its clear that no such equality is possible or desirable, because if everyone were truly equal/the same, as in Duhring's abstraction, it would mean no diversity of being, with everyone reduced to the same grey clone of everyone else. Here, that equality of being is not viewed from the standpoint of the individual, but of the economy itself. In other words, the economy of Bangladesh is put on the same equal level as the economy of, say, Britain, and, thereby, expected to provide the same rights to its citizens in terms of education, child-labour, wages and conditions and so on, even though this is clearly impossible. The same applies in respect to its obligations in regard to environmental considerations. It, thereby, necessarily disadvantages the Bangladeshi economy compared to developed economies, and is itself a manifestation of imperialism, and of combined and uneven development.

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Engels notes that at least Kaufman had not been so cruel as to claim that he was slaughtering the Yomuds to respect them and return them to the true path.

“Once again in this conflict it is the elect, those who claim to be acting in accordance with truth and science and therefore in the last resort the philosophers of reality, who have to decide what are superstition, prejudice, brutality and perversity of character and when force and subjection are necessary for purposes of equalisation. Equality, therefore, is now — equalisation by force; and the second will is recognised by the first to have equal rights through subjection.” (p 128)

As I have set out, elsewhere, in the same way, the subjectivism and petty-bourgeois moralism of the petty-bourgeois Third Camp is also manifest in the fact that one section of it sets as their guiding principle their categorical imperative, the opposition to imperialism, and the other their opposition to authoritarianism, and, in each case, to will the end is to will the means.  It means politics determined by lesser-evilism.

Engels notes that this concept expressed by Duhring, essentially meaning being forced to be free, or here, “forcible equalisation is only a distortion of the Hegelian theory, according to which punishment is the right of the criminal” (p 128) For Hegel, it means recognising the criminal as also being a rational being, who, as Kant described, in the Categorical Imperative, must recognise that their actions were irrational.

From the basis of two equal, sovereign wills, Duhring concludes the requirement for a third, because otherwise, there is no means of arriving at majority decisions, and it is this which, then, forms the basis of the state to enforce those majority decisions. Duhring, then, proceeds from this basis to elaborate his schema for “the construction of his socialitarian state of the future where one fine morning we shall have the honour to look him up.” (p 129)

As with the pure mathematical abstraction of the point, which cannot exist in the real world, Duhring's pure human will, as an abstraction, cannot exist in the real world. As soon as we examine real human wills, even Duhring is led to set up a series of exceptions in which they are not equal.

“... that childhood, madness, so-called bestiality, alleged superstition, assumed prejudice and putative incapacity on the one hand, and pretensions to humanity and knowledge of truth and science on the other — that therefore every difference in the quality of the two wills and in that of the intelligence associated with them justifies an inequality which may go as far as subjection.” (p 129)

Individuals, clearly, are not equal/the same, as Engels, here, and Marx, in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, establish. Some are strong, others weak, some clever, some not, some have children others do not. As Marx sets out in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, therefore, to treat them as though they are all equal/the same is actually to treat them differently. It is to expect the weak individual to work as hard as the strong, in manual labour, the not so clever as hard as the clever in mental labour, and for the individual with children to be able to live on the same wages as the individual with no children.

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Duhring's third retreat relates to the mental faculties of individuals. He says,

“If one man acts in accordance with truth and science, and the other in accordance with some superstition or prejudice, then ... as a rule mutual interference must occur... At a certain degree of incompetence, brutality or perversity of character, conflict is always inevitable... It is not only children and madmen in relation to whom the ultimate resource is force. The character of whole natural groups and cultural classes of human beings may inexorably necessitate the subjection of their will, which is hostile because of its perversity, if it is to be led back to the common social ties. Even in such cases the alien will is still recognised as having equal rights; but the perversity of its injurious and hostile activity has provoked an equalisation, and if it is subjected to force, it is only reaping the reaction to its own unrighteousness”. (p 127)

Again, this merges with the racist nature of the second retreat, because the enslavement of millions in the colonial empires, created from the 17th century onwards, by mercantilism, was justified on the basis that those enslaved and denied equality was that they were sub-human, either morally or intellectually.

“So not only moral but also mental inequality is enough to remove the “complete equality” of the two wills and to call into being a morality by which all the infamous deeds of civilised robber states against backward peoples, down to the Russian atrocities in Turkestan, can be justified. When in the summer of 1873, General Kaufmann ordered the Tatar tribe of the Yomuds to be attacked, their tents to be burnt and their wives and children butchered — “in the good old Caucasian way”;, as the order was worded — he, too, declared that the subjection of the hostile, because perverted, will of the Yomuds, had become an inexorable necessity if it were to be led back to the common social ties, that the means he employed were best suited to the purpose, and that whoever willed the end had also to will the means.” (p 127-8)

And, today, the same morality denies equality to Palestinian lives, and defends Zionist genocide committed against them, on the basis of a right to self-defence by the imperialist, Zionist state in Israel, and, whoever wills that end, also wills the means. The Zionist state, backed by NATO imperialism, also proclaims that its genocide against Palestinians is really, also, for their own good, protecting their own rights against the restriction of those rights by Hamas. Imperialist military intervention is always cloaked in these kind of terms of “liberation from above”, as Trotsky described in relation to the Balkan Wars.

“Our agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against enslavement of the Balkan masses.”

(Trotsky – The Balkan Wars, p 293-4)

“'Free'! And to whom, pray, are the Macedonians to pay the costs of their 'liberation'? And exactly how much do these costs amount to? How easily people operate with words, and now with living concepts, when they are not involved themselves! You, Ivan Kirillovich, say that peace is not an end in itself and so on, but you are letting your vision of reality be obscured. 'Free'! Have you any idea what the areas that were recently the theatre of war have been turned into? All through those places a terrible tornado has raged, which has torn up, broken, mangled, reduced to ashes everything that man's labour had created, has maimed and crushed man himself, and mortally laid low the young generation, down to the baby at the breast and even further to the foetus in the mother's womb. The Turks burned and massacred as they fled. The local Christians, where they had the advantage, burned and slaughtered as the allied armies drew near. The soldiers finished off the wounded, and ate up or carried off everything they could lay their hands on. The partisans, following at their heels, plundered, violated, burned. And, finally, along with the armies, epidemics of typhus and cholera advanced across the 'liberated' land.”

(ibid, p 330)

The same was seen a few years later, as Trotsky predicted, in WWI, and, then, after a brief pause, its continuation in WWII. When US imperialism destroyed much of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, including the use of Agent Orange, whose effects continued for decades, and even considered the use of atomic bombs, they also claimed it was done for the benefit of the Vietnamese, a claim that the mentors of today's petty-bourgeois Third Camp endorsed. So, too with the slaughter of a million Iraqis, the destruction of Libya, the death of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, and Palestinians.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 12 of 24

But, even if we set all that aside, and assume a state of general equality and uniformity, Duhring is still left with the need to recognise that not all are equal. He says,

“There are also cases of “permissible dependence”, but these can be explained “on grounds which are to be sought not in the activity of the two wills as such, but in a third sphere, as for example in regard to children, in the inadequacy of their self-determination”.” (p 125)

Engels notes this as “Retreat No. 1” from Duhring's absolute and universal truth, in relation to the construction of a system of morals and laws. There are further such retreats. Duhring's second retreat starts from a peculiar argument relating to “beast” and “man”, in which individuals are a blend of the two in varying proportions. He says,

“Where beast and man are blended in one person the question may be asked, on behalf of a second, entirely human, person, whether his mode of action should be the same as if only human persons, so to speak, were confronting each other ... our hypothesis of two morally unequal persons, one of whom in some sense or other has something of the real beast in his character, is therefore the typical basic form for all relations which may come about in accordance with this difference, ... within and between groups of people”. (p 126)

This argument is particularly objectionable to us, today, because of its racist undertones. It is the basis of colonialism, and, as Engels described, is used by Duhring “to determine casuistically how far the human man can interfere with the bestial man, how far he may show distrust and employ stratagems and harsh, nay terrorist means, as well as deception against him, without himself deviating in any way from immutable morality.” (p 126)

Racists and colonialists, like Churchill, used it to justify the enslavement of millions across the Empire, to argue for machine-gunning, gassing and starving anyone who resisted. Of course, Churchill, also, viewed British workers such as the Welsh miners in Tonypandy, in not much higher regard.

“So, equality also ceases when two persons are “morally unequal”. But then it was surely not worth while to conjure up two completely equal people, for there are no two persons who are completely equal morally. — But the inequality is supposed to consist in this: that one person is human and the other has a streak of the beast in him.” (p 126)

Humans are animals, too, but are separated from the animal kingdom by the power to reason, and, thereby, to develop laws and morals, as well as to change the material conditions of their existence. The less developed the latter, the less able are humans to be truly human, and the more they are conditioned and constrained by their nature as animals. The basic animal instinct is to survive, procreate, eat, dominate. It is not some inherent difference in the morality of individuals, reflecting a difference in the genetic blend of beast and man, but the material conditions of existence that are determinant.

“Apart from the philosophy of reality, a division of mankind into two sharply differentiated groups, into human men and bestial men, into good and bad, sheep and goats, is only to be found in Christianity, which quite logically also has its judge of the universe to make the separation. But who is to be the judge of the universe in the philosophy of reality?” ( p 126-7)

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 11 of 24

This argument, put forward by Engels, is not liked by moral socialists, because, of course, it has similarities to that put by liberals, set out above. But, it is entirely consistent with the materialist method of Marx and Engels. It recognises, as Marx also does in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, that individuals are not all equal. As Marx says, the fact that they are not equal/the same, is what makes them individuals. Some are strong, some are weak, some are clever, others not, some have children, some do not. This question of being equal/the same is not the same as the concept of whether they have equal rights and obligations.

Moreover, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9, and repeated by Lenin, in his critique of the moral socialism of Sismondi, it is precisely these inequalities, these material differences that, in every stage of human social development, means that there are some individuals best adapted to the material conditions, who, thereby, prosper, and, in doing so, drive human social development forward.

“... although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.”

(Marx – Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)

If we consider the dissolution of the primitive commune, and development of class society, it is not force that brings it about, but guile. As Marx set out in Capital, all surplus value is, ultimately, relative surplus value, because, unless productivity is sufficient to reduce necessary labour-time to less than the physical working-day, no individual can produce more than required for their own reproduction. Under these conditions, not even slavery is possible, no matter how much force is applied.

However, as soon as social productivity rises to a level where a social surplus is produced, it does not take long before some individuals see the opportunity to consume without engaging in production. They establish themselves as shaman, with an open line to the gods, required for the protection of the tribe, or a good harvest, and so on. Freed from production, they develop their own intellectual skills and knowledge, which further entrenches their position. Others have prowess in battle, and become military leaders of the tribe.

Over time, these functions and positions become entrenched, not by force, but by voluntary agreement.

“Servitude remains servitude, whether the voluntary form is retained or is trampled underfoot. Voluntary entry into servitude was known throughout the Middle Ages, and in Germany until after the Thirty Years' War. When serfdom was abolished in Prussia after the defeats of 1806 and 1807, and with it the obligation of the liege lords to provide for their subjects in need, illness and old age, the peasants petitioned the king asking to be left in servitude — for otherwise who would look after them when in distress? The scheme of two-men is therefore just as “appropriate” to inequality and servitude as to equality and mutual help; and since we are forced, on pain of extinction, to assume that they are heads of families, hereditary servitude is also foreseen from the start.” (p 124-5)

A similar thing is seen with welfarism. Under capitalism, a large section of the population always exists as a stagnant reserve of labour. It fluctuates in absolute size, dependent on the economic cycle, but declines in size relative to the population, as population grows. It becomes entirely dependent on the capitalist state, and is reduced, by this dependency, to a condition of semi-serfdom, its rights and freedom of movement heavily constrained.

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