Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"

LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
APPENDIX

The foregoing pages will have given the reader some idea of the infinite care which Engels expended in order to keep abreast of the chief scientific discoveries of his times. He was as painstaking as a genius. On the other hand, his modesty was almost absurd, for he never ventured to claim anything for himself, and such ability as was displayed in the laying of the economic political foundations of the socialist movement was invariably credited by him to the superior talent and comprehension of Marx.

There is no question that the work constitutes a most effective reply to the arguments of Duehring, with whom, poor fellow, we need no longer trouble ourselves. It constitutes, moreover, a very formidable answer to all those who seek for a justification of the socialist movement in those abstract conceptions which the average man finds it so hard to escape. In fact, so removed is the point of view of the writer of the foregoing pages from that of the man in the street that it is doubtful whether it is possible for more than a comparatively few students thoroughly to grasp the significance of the dialectic and to apply it in a satisfactory and effective fashion. Still, there is no question that this understanding of the socialist movement, as a movement, is absolutely required of all who can be considered as taking an intelligent and useful attitude with regard to social and political questions.

The possession of this key gave the two founders of the modern socialist movement such a comprehension of the tendencies of modern civilization as enabled them to make those economic and political predictions which have been so completely fulfilled.

There is little need to call attention to the fact that much of Engels' argument is now antiquated in face of the growth of science and the almost incredible development of mechanical invention and the material progress consequent upon it. It could not have been otherwise. The wonders of Engels' day are the commonplaces of our existence. The machines, which he considered so wonderful and so change-compelling have already been "scrapped" for new machines of greater power and capacity for production. The remark that the battleship had in his time arrived at a point where it was as expensive as it was unfit for fighting sounds almost ridiculous in face of the tremendous development of the engines of naval warfare since he wrote, and the invention and use of the submarine. Still it must be remembered that there has been no really great test of ships of war since Engels' day and that the expense of modern navies is worrying the governments to distraction. Only a few weeks ago Lord Charles Beresford refused to accept the command of the Channel Squadron unless provided with an equipment the expense of which seemed almost intolerable to Great Britain, wealthy as that country is and dependent as she is on the maintenance of the sea power. Great armies are still on the increase and the expense of their support combined with the unsatisfactoriness of their performances is by no means reassuring to those who have the responsibility for national military organization. The Boer War proved the unreliability of the armed forces of one power, at all events, and the performances of great masses of trained men in the Russo-Japanese conflict have not inspired any very great respect for the effectiveness of these colossal and expensive fighting machines. Together with the breakdown of armies and navies, as a material fact, there has grown up a strong prejudice against their employment, and the anti-war attitude of the international proletariat has been supplemented and strengthened by the distinct growth of an international peace spirit in certain sections of the middle class. So that in spite of superficial appearances it does not seem to be so very unlikely that the action of the dialectic will be manifest in the destruction of modern armaments, at least as far as the greater nations are concerned, though there is little doubt that military forces will still be maintained for the purpose of bullying and overawing the smaller and weaker peoples.

Mention has already been made of the fact that Engels never really divested himself of the old "forty-eight" spirit. The notion that a revolution would break out somewhere in the near future finds a curiously fixed, if unexpressed, lodgment in his mind. One cannot help feeling that he expected things to mature earlier than they have done and that he anticipated that changes in the mode of production and the development of industry would have made a stronger impression upon the mind of the proletarian than history shows to have been the case. This latent, but still persistent, notion is in curious contrast to the almost detached way in which, particularly in his later years, he views the course of economic and political events. He never really in fact divested his mind of the notion of the imminence of social revolution, for in his 1892 preface to "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" he says, "I have taken care not to strike out of the text the many prophecies, amongst others that of an imminent social revolution in England, which my youthful ardor induced me to venture upon." His youthful ardor seems never to have really abated in that respect. The dreams of boyhood seem to have haunted him and the old fighter stirred uneasily in his study chair at the echoes of past conflicts in which he also heard the bugles of the coming fight. To those who have watched the development of Engels' thought, as shown in his works, this philosophic, unemotional way of looking at things proves the effect of experience and age upon the fighter. He started with a heart inflamed with the wrongs of the suffering, as the damning pages of the work above cited show; he ends with a calm and dispassionate enquiry (apart from what he considered to be the exigencies of controversy) into the fundamental causes of economic and social progress. The burning enthusiasm and white-hot indignation had died down in him ere he reached the stage of the Duehring controversy. He finds that although not everything that is real is reasonable, to use the phrase against which he has fulminated in "Feuerbach," nevertheless every step in human progress has been an essential step and it is impossible to hurry things. To the proletarian he looks of course as the next great actor in the drama of social development. But the proletarian, while his destiny is indubitable, is still not a being apart from existing conditions. He exists in the conditions, is in fact part of the conditions, and, while at war with them, takes on the color of his surroundings. The facts of life have driven him to an unconscious rejection of old faiths and old philosophies but they have not forced him to take up the sword against the actual realities of modern life, to which he appears, in fact, to submit himself with a humility which is at least provoking to the eager and enthusiastic revolutionist.

What wonders of economic organization, what triumphs in mechanical production have been achieved since Engels gave the last revision to this book in 1894 we in the United States at least have cause to know. The entire structure of production has been modified from top to bottom, the old individual doctrine has fallen victim to its dialectic, and concentrated industry and collective capital now rise supreme over the ruins of that individualism which gave them birth and to which they owe their existence. In the name of the individual the individual is denied. The courts hand down decisions in the name of individual liberty which have for their result the dethroning and extermination of the individual. The conglomeration of individual states which was considered the very foundation of the American government, and the outward and visible sign of collective sovereignty is already in its death throes. The dialectic of the United States is in course of development and there comes about in consequence the birth of the United Imperial Republic, a republic which is so only in name, which is, in fact, as little of a republic as were those oligarchies of the Middle Ages whose very existence defamed the name of republic. The old things have passed away, all things have become new.

Still there is one factor which has not really appreciably changed, one factor which is always confronted by the same necessity, the necessity of maintaining its existence. This factor is the working class. The dialectic is at work with the working class also, and that which according to the individualistic notion consisted of isolated units seeking their daily bread in meek conformity with the laws of contract and property will disappear into that great collective organized body of labor which spurns the theories of contract and thereby makes itself no longer subject but master.

Austin Lewis.