Anti-Dühring¶

Core Argument¶

Anti-Dühring is Friedrich Engels's comprehensive defence of Marxism against the eclectic and pretentious system of Eugen Dühring, a figure whose influence threatened to introduce sectarian divisions within the German Social Democratic Party. The book's central thesis is that Dühring's claims to have produced a final and ultimate philosophical, economic, and socialist system are hollow, resting on a vulgarised plagiarism of Hegel, profound ignorance of natural science and political economy, and a metaphysical method that inverts the real relation between thought and the world. Engels sets out to demonstrate that Dühring's "philosophy of reality" is in fact a species of idealism that smuggles God back into nature under the guise of conscious activity, and that his economic theories collapse into the worst vulgar economics.

Engels aims to prove that genuine scientific socialism rests on two theoretical discoveries: the materialist conception of history, which explains human consciousness from material existence rather than the reverse, and the revelation of surplus-value, which lays bare the essential character of capitalist exploitation. Against Dühring's claim to have discovered eternal moral truths and final philosophical principles, Engels argues that all knowledge is historically conditioned, that moral theories are products of class-divided economic conditions, and that the dialectical laws of development—the transformation of quantity into quality, the negation of the negation, and the objective reality of contradiction—operate in nature, history, and thought alike. The work thus serves both as a devastating polemic against a particular adversary and as a positive exposition of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism.

Overview¶

The book opens with Engels explaining that Anti-Dühring was a political necessity, not an inner urge. The recently unified German Social Democrats feared Dühring's system would provoke sectarian divisions, forcing Engels to critique the entire edifice. He compares the task to devouring a large, sour apple completely. The prefaces also establish Engels's intellectual honesty: he acknowledges his own limitations in jurisprudence and natural science, and notes that Morgan's work on primitive society appeared only after his own writing, while his exposition of theoretical natural science was clumsy because he was in the midst of an intensive eight-year "moulting" in mathematics and natural science. This study aimed to confirm that the same dialectical laws operate in nature as in history and thought.

The historical introduction establishes modern socialism as emerging from recognition of the fundamental class antagonism between proprietors and non-proprietors. Engels traces how the great French Enlightenment philosophers' kingdom of reason proved to be merely the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and how the utopian socialists—Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen—inevitably degenerated into eclectic mish-mash because they sought to emancipate all humanity rather than represent the specific interests of the proletariat. The working-class risings of the 1830s and 1840s forced a decisive break with idealist conceptions of history, leading to the recognition that all recorded history is the history of class struggles, and that the economic structure of society forms the real basis for explaining the entire superstructure of legal, political, and ideological institutions.

The philosophical section systematically dismantles Dühring's world schematism, exposing it as a thinly veiled plagiarism of Hegel's Logic despite Dühring's virulent anti-Hegelian polemics. Engels demonstrates that Dühring's apriorism—deriving principles of being from thought alone—is a species of idealism that inverts the real relation between thought and the world. The real unity of the world, Engels insists, consists in its materiality, proved not by juggled phrases but by the long development of philosophy and natural science. The critique extends through Dühring's philosophy of nature, where his attempt to prove a beginning to time and space is shown to be copied from Kant's First Antinomy, and his "self-equal state of matter" is exposed as conceptually incoherent, requiring an external impulse that reintroduces God.

In the economic section, Engels establishes political economy as a historical science, fundamentally opposed to eternal natural laws. He demolishes Dühring's "theory of force," which posits political conditions as primary and economic relations as secondary, by demonstrating that force requires instruments, instruments must be produced, and production depends on economic power. The historical development of warfare—from gunpowder to the modern warship—is traced to show that armament, organisation, tactics, and strategy are determined by the stage of production and communications, not by the free creations of generals' minds. Engels then defends Marx's theory of value and surplus-value against Dühring's distortions, showing that Dühring's own economics is a plagiarism of Marx's discoveries wrapped in bombastic language.

The socialist section presents the materialist conception of history as the foundation for understanding why capitalism must be superseded. The contradiction between socialised production and capitalist appropriation is the germ of all present social antagonisms, manifesting as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie and between the organisation of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society at large. Periodic crises express this fundamental contradiction. The proletariat must seize political power, turn means of production into state property, thereby abolish itself as a class, and render the state unnecessary. The state "dies out," government of persons is replaced by administration of things, and humanity makes the leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

Chapter Guide¶

Prefaces — Engels explains the political necessity of critiquing Dühring and acknowledges his own intellectual development in natural science.
1. General — Modern socialism emerges from recognition of class antagonism and the anarchy of capitalist production, transformed into a science by Marx's materialist conception of history and discovery of surplus-value.
1. What Herr Dühring promises — Dühring's self-presentation as the infallible discoverer of final and ultimate truth is exposed through his own bombastic claims.
1. Classification. Apriorism — Dühring's attempt to derive principles of being from thought alone is exposed as idealism that inverts the real relation between thought and the world.
1. World Schematism — Dühring's world schematism is revealed as a thinly veiled plagiarism of Hegel's Logic, despite his anti-Hegelian polemics.
1. Time and Space — Dühring's arguments for a beginning to time and space are shown to be copied from Kant's First Antinomy, suppressing the antithesis.
1. Cosmogony, Physics, Chemistry — Dühring's "self-equal state of matter" is exposed as conceptually incoherent, requiring an external impulse that reintroduces God.
1. The Organic World — Dühring's attack on Darwinism is refuted, and his alternative of independent parallel lines of creation is shown to imply deism.
1. The Organic World. (Conclusion) — Dühring's biological ignorance is exposed as absolute, and Engels offers his own definition of life as the mode of existence of albuminous bodies.
1. Eternal Truths — Moral principles are historically conditioned products of economic relations, not eternal truths; a truly human morality is only possible in a classless society.
1. Equality — The idea of equality is a historical product of bourgeois development, whose real content is the abolition of classes.
1. Freedom and Necessity — Freedom is insight into necessity, and Dühring's legal knowledge is confined to the horizon of Prussian law.
1. Quantity and Quality — The transformation of quantity into quality is a law operative in nature, history, and thought, not a Hegelian mystification.
1. Negation of the Negation — The negation of the negation is a simple, everyday process observable throughout nature, history, and thought, not a mystical proof-tool.
1. Conclusion — Dühring's entire philosophical project is pronounced a complete failure, offering nothing from which anything could be learned.
1. Subject Matter and Method — Political economy is a historical science; confidence in overthrowing capitalism rests on material facts, not abstract justice.
1. Theory of Force — Economic conditions are historically fundamental; political force is derivative and instrumental, as demonstrated by the rise of the bourgeoisie.
1. Theory of Force. (Continuation) — Force requires instruments whose production depends on economic power; the development of warfare illustrates this thesis.
1. Theory of Force. (Conclusion) — Class domination arose from common social functions and from slavery born of economic necessity; force plays a revolutionary role as midwife of new societies.
1. Theory of Value — Dühring's theory of value collapses into wages as production value and profit as distribution value, basing his socialism on the worst vulgar economics.
1. Simple and Compound Labour — Marx's theory that skilled labour counts as multiplied simple labour is defended against Dühring's distortions.
1. Capital and Surplus-Value — Marx's epoch-making discovery that the capitalist purchases labour-power whose use-value is a source of value greater than its own is expounded.
1. Capital and Surplus-Value. (Conclusion) — Dühring's engagement with Marx's theory is exposed as plagiarism wrapped in distortion.
1. Natural Laws of the Economy. Rent of Land — Dühring's "natural laws" are banalities, and his conception of rent is confused and provincial.
1. From Kritische Geschichte — Dühring's history of political economy is a systematic distortion, mangling the proper chronological order and plagiarising Marx.
1. Historical — The utopian socialists were necessarily utopian because capitalist production was too undeveloped; Dühring, constructing from his own head eighty years later, is the latest utopian.
1. Theoretical — The contradiction between socialised production and capitalist appropriation generates periodic crises; the proletariat must seize power and make the state die out.
1. Production — Dühring's socialism is a final truth rooted in justice, not historical development; Fourier and Owen were far ahead of him on the division of labour.
1. Distribution — Dühring's "socialitarian" system abolishes capitalism while retaining its mode of production, inevitably recreating high finance and class antagonism.
1. State, Family, Education — Dühring's future state retains army, police, and gendarmerie; his education is an "ennobled" Prussian grammar school; the final verdict is "mental incompetence due to megalomania."
Fragments — Force is not the primordial creative principle of history but a secondary, often reactionary instrument wielded against already-decaying communal institutions.

Key Concepts¶

Materialist conception of history — The economic structure of society forms the real basis for explaining the entire superstructure of legal, political, and ideological institutions.

Surplus-value — The difference between the value the worker produces and the value of his labour-power, appropriated by the capitalist as unpaid surplus-labour.

Dialectical materialism — The recognition that the same dialectical laws—contradiction, transformation of quantity into quality, negation of the negation—operate in nature, history, and thought.

Theory of force — Dühring's erroneous doctrine that political conditions and direct force are the primary causes of economic relations, which Engels refutes by showing force requires economic instruments.

Socialised production — The historical development by which individual means of production become concentrated, socialised means workable only by a collectivity, conflicting with private capitalist appropriation.

Utopian socialism — The attempt to construct ideal social systems from the human brain rather than from historically developed material conditions, characteristic of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, and revived by Dühring.

Negation of the negation — A general law of development in which an initial state is negated, and that negation is in turn negated, restoring the original at a higher level.

Apriorism — Dühring's idealist method of deriving principles of being from thought alone, which Engels inverts by insisting principles are abstractions from reality.

Commodity production — A system where products are made for exchange by private producers, containing the germ of money, capital, wage-labour, and crises.

Withering away of the state — The process by which the proletariat, having seized political power and abolished classes, renders the state unnecessary; government of persons is replaced by administration of things.

Chapters¶

31 chapters