Atnti Duhring- distibution

Anti Duhring DISTRIBUTION

We have already seen that Dühringian economics comes down to the following proposition: the capitalist mode of production is quite good and can remain in existence, but the capitalist mode of distribution is evil and must disappear.* We now find that Herr Dühring's "socialitarian" system is nothing more than the application of this principle in fantasy. In fact, it turned out that Herr Dühring has practically nothing to take exception to in the mode of production -- as such -- of capitalist society, that he wants to retain the old division of labour in all its essentials, and that he consequently has hardly a word to say in regard to production within his economic commune. Production is indeed a sphere in which sturdy facts are dealt with and in which, consequently, "rational fantasy" should give but little scope to the winged soaring of its free soul, because the risk of disgrace is too great. It is quite otherwise with distribution, which in Herr Dühring's view has no connection whatever

* See p. 239 above. --Ed.

page 389

with production and is determined not by production but by a pure act of the will -- distribution is the predestined field of his "social alchemy".

To the equal obligation to produce there corresponds the equal right to consume, exercised in an organized way in the economic commune and in the trading commune embracing a large number of economic communes. Here "labour . . . is exchanged for other labour on the basis of equal valuation. . . . Here service and counter-service represent real equality between quantities of labour." This "equalization of human energies" applies "whether the individuals have in fact done more or less, or perhaps even nothing at all ", for all activities, in so far as they involve time and energy -- therefore even playing bowls or going for a walk -- can be regarded as labour performed. But this exchange does not take place between individuals, as the community is the owner of all means of production and consequently of all products; on the one hand, it takes place between each economic commune and its individual members and, on the other, between the various economic and trading communes themselves. "The individual economic communes in particular will replace retail trade within their own areas by completely planned sales." Wholesale trade will be organized on the same lines: "The system of the free economic society . . . consequently remains a vast exchange institution whose operations are carried out on the monetary basis provided by the precious metals. It is insight into the inevitable necessity of this fundamental property which distinguishes our scheme from all those nebulous notions which cling even to the most rational forms of current socialist ideals."
For the purpose of this exchange, the economic commune, as the first appropriator of the social products, has to determine "a uniform price for each type of article", based on the average costs of production. "The significance which the so-called costs of production have for value and price today will be provided" (in the socialitarian system) "by the estimates of the quantity of labour to be employed. By virtue of the principle of equal rights for each individual applying in the economic sphere too, these estimates can, in the last analysis, be traced back to consideration of the number of participants; they will give the relation of prices corresponding both to the natural relations of production and to the social right of realization of value. The output of the precious metals will continue, as now, to determine the value of money. . . . It can be seen from this not only that the basis of the determination and the measure of value and thus the exchange relations between products are not lost in the changed constitution of society but that they are properly won for the first time,"

page 390

The famous "absolute value" is finally realized.

But on the other hand, the commune must also put its individual members in a position to buy from it the articles produced, by paying to each, in compensation for his labour, a certain sum of money, daily, weekly or monthly, but necessarily the same for all. "From the socialitarian standpoint it is consequently a matter of indifference whether we say that wages must disappear, or that they must become the exclusive form of economic income." Now equal wages and equal prices establish "quantitative, if not qualitative, equality of consumption", and thus the "universal principle of justice" is realized in the economic sphere.

As to how the level of these wages of the future is to be determined, Herr Dühring tells us only

that here too, as in all other cases, there will be an exchange of "equal labour for equal labour". For six hours of labour, therefore, a sum of money will be paid which also embodies in itself six hours of labour.

Nevertheless, the "universal principle of justice" must in no way be confounded with that crude equalitarianism which makes the bourgeois so indignantly oppose all communism, and especially the spontaneous communism of the workers. It is by no means so inexorable as it would like to appear.

The "equality in principle of economic rights does not exclude the voluntary addition of an expression of special recognition and honour to what justice requires. . . . Society honours itself by conferring distinction on the higher types of work by a modest additional allocation for consumption."

And Herr Dühring is also honouring himself, when, combining the innocence of a dove with the wisdom of a serpent, he displays such touching concern for the modest additional consumption of the Dührings of the future.

This will finally do away with the capitalist mode of distribution. For

"supposing someone actually had a surplus of private means at his disposal under such conditions, he would be unable to find any use for it as capital.

page 391

No individual or group would acquire it from him for production except by way of exchange or purchase, but neither would ever have occasion to pay him interest or profit." Hence "inheritance conforming to the principle of equality" would be permissible. It cannot be dispensed with, for "a certain amount of transmission by inheritance will always be a necessary concomitant of the family principle." But the right of inheritance "will not be able to lead to any amassing of considerable wealth, as the building up of property . . . can never again aim at the creation of means of production and purely rentier existences."

Thus the economic commune is happily established. Let us now have a look at how it works.

We grant the complete realization of all Herr Dühring's hypotheses; we therefore assume that the economic commune pays each of its members, for six hours of labour a day, a sum of money, say twelve shillings, in which six hours of labour are likewise embodied. We grant further that prices exactly correspond to values, and therefore, on our assumptions, cover only the costs of raw materials, the wear and tear of machinery, the consumption of instruments of labour and the wages paid. An economic commune of a hundred working members would then produce commodities to the value of twelve hundred shillings, £60, in a day and £18,000 in a year of 300 working-days. It pays the same sum to its members, each of whom does as he likes with his share, which is twelve shillings a day or £180 a year. At the end of the year, and at the end of a hundred years, the commune is no richer than it was at the beginning. During this period it will never once be in a position to provide that modest additional allocation for Herr Dühring's consumption, unless it cuts into its stock of means of production. Accumulation has been totally forgotten. Even worse. Since accumulation is a social necessity and the retention of money provides a convenient form of accumulation, the organization of the

page 392

economic commune directly requires its members to accumulate privately and consequently leads to its own destruction.

How can this cleavage in the nature of the economic commune be avoided? It might take refuge in his beloved "tax", the price surcharge, and sell its annual production for £24,000 instead of £18,000. But as all other economic communes are in the same position and must therefore act in the same way, each would have to pay just as much "tax" in its exchanges with the others as it pockets itself, and the "tribute" would thus have to fall only on its own members.

Or the economic commune might settle the matter without more ado by paying each member for his six hours of labour the product of less than six hours, say, of four hours, of labour, that is, only eight shillings instead of twelve shillings a day, but leaving the prices of commodities at their former level. In this case it does directly and openly what it strove to do in a hidden and indirect way in the former case: it forms Marxian surplus-value to the amount of £6,000 annually by paying its members, on outright capitalist lines, less than the value of what they produce, and, moreover, by selling them at their full value commodities, which they can buy from it alone. Therefore, the economic commune can only secure a reserve fund by exposing itself as a "refined" truck system* on the broadest communist basis.

So take your choice: either the economic commune exchanges "equal labour for equal labour", in which case it cannot accumulate a fund for the maintenance and extension of pro-

* The truck system in England, also well known in Germany, is that system under which the manufacturers themselves run shops and compel their workers to buy their goods there. [Note by Engels.]

page 393

duction, but only the individual members can do so; or it does form such a fund, in which case it does not exchange "equal labour for equal labour".

Such is the content of exchange in the economic commune. What of its form? Exchange is effected through the medium of metallic money, and Herr Dühring is not a little proud of the "world-historic import" of this improvement. But in the trading between the commune and its members money is not money at all, it does not function as money in any way. It serves as a mere labour certificate; to use Marx's phrase, it "is merely evidence of the individual share of the producer in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption", and in this function it is "no more 'money' than a theatre pass-out check."[*] It can therefore be replaced by any other token, just as in Weitling, who replaces it by a "ledger" in which the labour hours worked are entered on one side and means of subsistence taken as compensation on the other. In a word, in the trade between the economic commune and its members it functions merely as Owen's "labour money", that "phantom" which Herr Dühring so loftily disdains but which he himself is compelled to introduce in his economy of the future. Whether the token indicating the measure of fulfilment of the "obligation to produce" and of the "right to consume" thus acquired is a scrap of paper, a counter, or a gold coin is absolutely of no consequence for this purpose. For other purposes, however, this is by no means the case, as we shall see.

If, therefore, metallic money functions not as money but as a disguised labour certificate in an economic commune's trade with its members, still less does it function as money in <"fnp393">

* Capital, Vol. I, p. 94, footnote, translation revised. --Ed.

page 394

exchange between the different economic communes. Here metallic money is totally superfluous on Herr Dühring's assumptions. In fact, mere book-keeping would suffice, which would effect the exchange of products of equal labour for products of equal labour far more simply if it used the natural measure of labour -- time, with the labour-hour as unit -- than if it first converted the labour-hours into money. The exchange is in reality simple exchange in kind; all balances are easily and simply settled by drafts on other communes. But should a commune really have a deficit with other communes, all "the gold on hand in the universe", however much it may be "money by nature", could not save this commune from the fate of having to make good this deficit by increasing the quantity of its own labour, if it does not want to be reduced to dependence on other communes by its debt. But let the reader always bear in mind that we are in no way constructing any edifice of the future. We are merely accepting Herr Dühring's assumptions and drawing the inevitable conclusions from them.

Thus neither in exchange between the economic commune and its members nor in exchange between the different communes can gold, which is "money by nature", get to realize this its nature. Nevertheless, Herr Dühring commands it to fulfil the function of money even in the "socialitarian" system. Hence, we must look for another field of action for its monetary function. And there is one. Herr Dühring gives everyone a right to "quantitatively equal consumption", but he cannot compel anyone to exercise it. On the contrary, he is proud that in his world everyone can do what he likes with his money. So he cannot prevent some from setting aside a small money hoard, while others are unable to make ends meet on the wages paid them. He even makes this inevitable

page 395

by explicitly recognizing the family's common property in the right of inheritance, from which there also follows the obligation of parents to maintain their children. But this makes a wide breach in quantitatively equal consumption. The bachelor lives happily like a lord on his eight or twelve shillings a day, while the widower with eight minor children subsists wretchedly on this sum. On the other hand, by accepting money in payment without any question, the commune leaves open the door to the possibility that this money may have been obtained otherwise than by the individual's own labour. Non olet.[*] The commune does not know where it comes from. But in this way all the conditions are given for metallic money, which hitherto played the role of a mere labour certificate, to exercise its real money function. The opportunity and the motive are present both to form a hoard and to run into debt. The needy individual borrows from the hoarder. The borrowed money accepted by the commune in payment for means of subsistence once more becomes what it is in present-day society, the social incarnation of human labour, the real measure of labour, the general medium of circulation. All the "laws and administrative regulations" in the world are as powerless against it as they are against the multiplication table or the chemical composition of water. And since the hoarder is in a position to extort interest from people in need, usury is restored along with metallic money functioning as money.

Up to this point we have only considered the effects of the retention of metallic money within the field of operation of the Dühring economic commune. But beyond this field the wicked outside world meanwhile carries on contentedly in the old way. On the world market gold and silver remain world <"fnp395">

* It (money) does not smell.[123] --Ed.

page 396

money, the general means of purchase and payment, the absolute social embodiment of wealth. This property of the precious metals gives the individual members of the economic communes a new motive for hoarding, enrichment and usury, the motive for operating freely and independently with regard to the commune and beyond its borders, and for realizing their accumulated private wealth on the world market. The usurers are transformed into dealers in the medium of circulation, bankers, controllers of the medium of circulation and of world money, and so into controllers of production, and so into controllers of the means of production, even though these may still be nominally registered for many years as the property of the economic and trading communes. Hence the hoarders and usurers, now become bankers, are also the masters of the economic and trading communes themselves. Herr Dühring's "socialitarian" system is indeed essentially different from the "nebulous notions" of the other socialists. It has no other purpose but the re-creation of high finance, under whose control and for whose coffers it will labour valiantly -- if it should ever happen to be pieced together and hold together. Its one hope of salvation would lie in the hoarders preferring to run away from the commune as fast as possible with the aid of their world money.

Ignorance of earlier socialist thought is so widespread in Germany that an innocent youth might at this point raise the question whether, for example, Owen's labour-notes might not lead to a similar abuse. Although we are not concerned here with elaborating on the significance of these labour-notes, space should be given to the following in order to contrast Dühring's "comprehensive schematism" with Owen's "crude flabby and paltry ideas". First, such an abuse of Owen's labour-notes would require their conversion into real money,

page 397

while Herr Dühring presupposes real money, though attempting to prohibit it from functioning otherwise than as mere labour certificates. While there would have to be real abuse in the former, the immanent nature of money, which is independent of human volition, asserts itself in the latter; the specific, correct use of money asserts itself in face of the misuse Herr Dühring tries to impose on it owing to his own ignorance of the nature of money. Second, with Owen the labour-notes are only a transitional form to the complete community and the free utilization of the resources of society, and incidentally at most a means designed to make communism plausible to the British public. If therefore any form of misuse should compel the Owenite society to do away with the labour-notes, it would be taking a step forward towards its goal, entering on a more perfect stage of its development. But if the Dühringian economic commune abolished money, it would be destroying its "world-historic import" in one blow, it would be putting an end to its most peculiar beauty, it would cease to be the Dühring economic commune and sink to the level of the nebulous notions, to raise it from which Herr Dühring has devoted so much of the hard labour of his rational imagination.*

What, then, is the source of all the strange errors and entanglements amid which the Dühring economic commune meanders? Simply the fog in Herr Dühring's mind which envelops the concepts of value and money, and finally drives

* It may be noted in passing that the part played by labour-notes in Owen's communist society is completely unknown to Herr Dühring. He knows these notes -- from Sargant -- only in so far as they figure in the Labour Exchange Bazaars, which of course were failures, attempts to pass from existing society into communist society by means of the direct exchange of labour. [Note by Engels.]

page 398

him to attempt to discover the value of labour. But since Herr Dühring doesn't enjoy the German monopoly on this kind of fog and in fact has plenty of competitors, we will "overcome our reluctance for a moment and unravel the knot" he has contrived to make here.

The only value known in economics is the value of commodities. What are commodities? Products made in a society of more or less separate private producers, and therefore in the first place private products. But these private products become commodities only when they are made, not for consumption by their producers, but for consumption by others, that is, for social consumption; they enter into social consumption through exchange. Therefore, the private producers stand in a social relation to each other, constitute a society. Although they are the private products of each individual, their products are therefore simultaneously, but unintentionally and as it were involuntarily, also social products. In what, then, does the social character of these private products consist? Evidently in two characteristics: first, they all satisfy some human want, they all have a use-value not only for the producers but also for others; and second, although they are products of the most varied individual labour, they are at the same time products of human labour as such, of general human labour. In so far as they have a use-value for other persons too, they can generally enter into exchange; in so far as general human labour, the simple expenditure of human labour-power, is embodied in all of them, they can be compared with each other in exchange, be said to be equal or unequal, according to the quantity of this labour embodied in each. Social conditions remaining the same, two equal private products may embody an unequal quantity of individual labour, but they always embody only an equal quantity of general human labour. An unskilled

page 399

smith may make five horseshoes in the same time as a skilful smith makes ten. But society does not make the accidental lack of skill of an individual the basis of valuation; it recognizes as general human labour only labour of a normal average degree of skill at the particular time. Therefore, one of the five horseshoes made by the first smith has no more value in exchange than one of the ten made by the other in the same time. Individual labour contains general human labour only in so far as it is socially necessary.

Consequently, when I say that a commodity has a particular value, I say (1) that it is a socially useful product; (2) that it has been produced by a private individual for private account; (3) that, although it is a product of individual labour, it is at the same time and as it were unwittingly and involuntarily, also a product of social labour and, be it noted, of a definite quantity of this labour, established in a social way through exchange; and (4) that I express this quantity not in labour itself, in such and such a number of labour-hours, but in another commodity. If, therefore, I say that this clock is worth as much as that piece of cloth and each is worth fifty shillings, I say that an equal quantity of social labour is contained in the clock, the cloth and the money. I therefore assert that the social labour-time represented in them has been socially measured and found to be equal. But not directly, absolutely, as labour-time is usually measured, in labour-hours or days, etc., but in a roundabout way, through exchange, relatively. That is why I can express this definite quantity of labour-time not in labour-hours -- how many remains unknown to me -- but only in a roundabout way, relatively, in another commodity, which represents an equal quantity of social labour-time. The clock is worth as much as the piece of cloth.

But the production and exchange of commodities, while compelling the society based on them to take this roundabout way, likewise compel it to make the detour as short as possible. They single out from the commonalty of commodities one sovereign commodity in which the value of all other commodities can be expressed once and for all, a commodity which is recognized as the immediate incarnation of social labour and is therefore immediately and unconditionally exchangeable for all commodities -- money. Money is already contained in embryo in the concept of value, it is only value developed. But since the value of commodities, as against the commodities themselves, assumes an independent existence in money, a new factor appears in the society which produces and exchanges commodities, a factor with new social functions and effects. We need only state this point at the moment, without going more closely into it.

The political economy of commodity production is by no means the only science which has to deal with factors known only relatively. In physics, too, we do not know how many separate gas molecules are contained in a given volume of gas, pressure and temperature also being given. But we do know that, so far as Boyle's Law is correct, such a given volume of any gas contains as many molecules as :3n equal volume of any other gas at the same pressure and temperature. We can therefore compare the molecular content of the most diverse volumes of the most diverse gases under the most diverse conditions of pressure and temperature; and if we take one litre of gas at 0ƒ C and 760 mm. pressure as the unit, we can measure the above molecular content by this unit.

In chemistry the absolute atomic weights of the various elements are likewise unknown to us. But we know them

relatively by knowing their reciprocal relations. Hence, just as commodity production and its economics obtain a relative expression for the quantities of labour contained in the various commodities -- quantities unknown to it -- by comparing these commodities on the basis of their relative labour content, so chemistry obtains a relative expression for the magnitude of the atomic weights unknown to it by comparing the various elements on the basis of their atomic weights and expressing the atomic weight of one element in multiples or fractions of the other (sulphur, oxygen, hydrogen). And just as commodity production elevates gold into the absolute commodity, the universal equivalent of all other commodities, the measure of all values, so chemistry elevates hydrogen into the chemical money commodity by fixing its atomic weight at I and reducing the atomic weights of all other elements to hydrogen, expressed in multiples of its atomic weight.

Commodity production, however, is by no means the only form of social production. In the ancient Indian communities and in the family communities of the southern Slavs, products are not transformed into commodities. The members of the community are directly associated for production, the work is distributed according to tradition and needs, and so are the products to the extent that they are destined for consumption. Since direct social production and direct distribution preclude any exchange of commodities, they also preclude the transformation of the products into commodities (at any rate within the community) and consequently into values as well.

From the moment society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character, becomes social labour straight away and

directly. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be first established in a roundabout way; daily experience will show in a direct way how much is required on the average. Society will be able to calculate in a simple way how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of the last crop of wheat, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a specific quality. It could therefore never occur to it to go on expressing the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and absolutely, in yet a third product, in a measure which, moreover, is only relative, fluctuating and inadequate, though it was formerly unavoidable as an expedient, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. Just as little as it would occur to chemical science to go on expressing atomic weights relatively and in a roundabout way by means of the hydrogen atom, if it were able to express them absolutely in their adequate measure, namely in actual weights, in billionths or quadrillionths of a gramme. Hence, on the above assumptions, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required, say, a thousand hours of labour for their production in the oblique and meaningless way involved in stating that they are worth a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-power. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage

everything very simply, without the intervention of the much-vaunted "value".[*]

The concept of value is the most general and therefore the most comprehensive expression of the economic conditions of commodity production. Consequently, the concept of value contains the germ, not only of money, but also of all the more developed forms of the production and exchange of commodities. The very fact that value is the expression of the social labour contained in private products creates the possibility of a difference between this social labour and the individual labour contained in the same product. This difference will therefore become palpably evident to a private producer if he goes on producing in the old way with the advance of the social mode of production. The same thing happens as soon as all the private manufacturers of a particular kind of commodity produce it in an amount exceeding social needs. The fact that the value of a commodity is expressed only in terms of another commodity and can be realized only in exchange against it involves the possibility that the exchange will not take place at all, or at least will not realize the correct value. Finally, when the specific commodity labour-power appears on the market, its value is determined, like that of any other commodity, by the labour-time socially necessary for its production. The value form of products therefore already contains in embryo the whole capitalist form of production, the an- <"fnp403">

* As long ago as 1844 I stated that this balancing of useful effects and expenditures of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left of the politico-economic concept of value in a communist society. [See Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Appendix, "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy" by Engels, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1969, pp. 175-209. --Ed.] But the scientific justification for this statement, as can be seen, only became possible with Marx's Capital. [Note by Engels.]

tagonism between capitalists and wage-workers, the industrial reserve army and crises. Seeking to abolish the capitalist form of production by establishing "true value" is therefore tantamount to attempting to abolish catholicism by establishing the "true" Pope, or to setting up a society in which one day at last the producers exercise mastery over their products by consistently applying an economic category which is the most comprehensive expression of the enslavement of the producers by their own product.

Once the commodity-producing society has further developed the value form, which is inherent in commodities as such, to the money form, various seeds still hidden in value break through to the light of day. The first and most essential effect is the generalization of the commodity form. Money forces the commodity form even on the objects which have hitherto been produced directly for self-consumption, and drags them into exchange. As a result the commodity form and money penetrate the internal economy of communities which are directly associated for production, they break one communal tie after another and dissolve the community into a mass of private producers. At first, money replaces joint tillage of the soil by individual tillage, as can be seen in India; at a later stage it puts an end to the common ownership of the tillage area, which was still being manifested in periodical redistribution, by a definitive division (for example, in the village communities on the Moselle, and now also in the initial phase in the Russian village communes); finally, it forces the dividing-up of the remaining woodland and pasturage still owned in common. Whatever other causes arising in the development of production are contributing here, money always remains the most powerful medium for their influence on the communities. And if ever the Dühring economic commune came into ex-

istence, money would inevitably break it up with the same natural necessity, despite all "laws and administrative regulations".

We have already seen above ("Political Economy", VI) that it is self-contradictory to speak of the value of labour. Since labour produces not only products but also value under certain social conditions, and since this value is measured by labour, the latter can no more have a separate value than weight, as such, can have a separate weight or heat a separate temperature. But it is the characteristic peculiarity of all social confusionists ruminating on "true value" to imagine that the worker does not receive the full "value" of his labour in existing society and that socialism is destined to redress this situation. Hence it is necessary in the first place to discover what the value of labour is, which is done by attempting to measure labour, not by its appropriate measure,<"p505"> time, but by its product. The worker should receive the "full proceeds of labour".[68] Not only the product of labour, but labour itself should be directly exchangeable for products, one hour's labour for the product of another hour's labour. But this at once gives rise to a very "serious" hitch. The whole product is distributed. Accumulation, the most important progressive function of society, is taken from society and put into the hands and at the arbitrary discretion of individuals. The individuals can do what they like with their "proceeds", but at best society remains as rich or poor as it was. The means of production accumulated in the past have therefore been centralized in the hands of society only in order that all means of production accumulated in the future may once again be dispersed in the hands of individuals. That is to slap one's own premises in the face and to arrive at a pure absurdity.

Fluid labour, active labour-power, is to be exchanged for the product of labour. Then labour-power is a commodity, just like the product for which it is to be exchanged. Then the value of this labour-power is in no wise determined by its product, but by the social labour embodied in it, and so is determined according to the present law of wages.

But it is precisely this which must not be, we are told. Fluid labour, labour-power, should be exchangeable for its full product. That is to say, it should be exchangeable not for its value, but for its use-value ; the law of value is to apply to all other commodities, but must be repealed so far as labour-power is concerned. Such is the self-destructive confusion that lies concealed behind the "value of labour".

The "exchange of labour for labour on the principle of equal valuation", in so far as it has any meaning, that is to say, the mutual exchangeability of products of equal social labour, hence the law of value, is the fundamental law precisely of commodity production, and hence also of its highest form, capitalist production. It asserts itself in present-day society in the only way in which economic laws can assert themselves in a society of private producers, as a blindly operating law of nature which is inherent in things and relations, which is independent of the will or actions of the producers. By elevating this law to be the basic law of his economic commune and demanding that the commune should carry it out in all consciousness, Herr Dühring makes the basic law of existing society into the basic law of his imaginary society. He wants existing society, but without its abuses. He is thus moving on the same ground as Proudhon. Like him, he wants to abolish the abuses which have arisen out of the development of commodity production into capitalist production by applying to them the basic law of commodity production, precisely to the operation of which these abuses are

due. Like Proudhon, he wants to abolish the real consequences of the law of value by means of fantastic ones. <"p407">

How proudly our modern Don Quixote, perched on his noble Rosinante, "the universal principle of justice", and followed by his valiant Sancho Panza, Abraham Enss,[124] rides off on his knight errantry to win Mambrino's helmet, "the value of labour", but we are afraid, very much afraid, he will bring home nothing but the old familiar barber's basin.