Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/156

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LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

time made the blunder of identifying the Marxian dialectic with that of Hegel he had not altogether lost the ability to distinguish methods from the results attained by them and to comprehend that an abuse of the former is no contradiction of the latter.

Herr Duehring's most astonishing observation is that from the Marxian standpoint, "in the last analysis everything is identical," that therefore in the eyes of Marx, for example, capitalists and wage workers, feudal, capitalistic and social methods of production are "all one." In order to show the possibility of such sheer stupidity it only remains to point out that the mere word "dialectic" makes Herr Duehring mentally irresponsible and makes what he says and does so inaccurrate and confused as to be in the last analysis "all one."

(Herr Duehring remarks, " How comical for example is the declaration based upon Hegel s confused notions that quantity becomes lost in quality and that money advanced [i. e. for productive purposes. Ed.] becomes capital when it reaches a certain limit merely through quantitative increase." To which Engels replies thus):

This seems peculiar when presented in this washed out fashion by Herr Duehring. On page 313 (2nd ed. "Capital") Marx, after an investigation of fixed and variable capital and surplus value, derives from his investigations the conclusion that "not every amount of gold or value capable of being transformed into capital is so transformed; rather a certain minimum of gold or of exchange value is presupposed to be in the possession of the individual owner of gold or goods." He thereupon gives an example, thus, in a branch of industry the worker works eight hours per day for himself, i. e. in order to produce the value of his wages, and the follow-