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Anti DuhringDIALECTICS. QUANTITY AND QUALITY
"The first and most important principle of the basic logical properties of being refers to the exclusion of contradiction. The contradictory is a category which can only appertain to a combination of thoughts, but not to reality. There are no contradictions in things, or, in other words, contradiction accepted as reality is itself the apex of absurdity. . . . The antagonism of forces measured against each other in opposite directions is in fact the basic form of all actions in the life of the world and its creatures. But this opposition of the directions taken by the forces of elements and individuals does not in the slightest degree coincide with the absurd idea of contradictions. . . . We can be content here with having cleared the fogs which generally rise from the supposed mysteries of logic by presenting a clear picture of the actual absurdity of contradictions in reality, and with having shown the uselessness of the incense which has been wasted here and there in honour of the dialectics of contradiction -- the very clumsily
page 151
carved wooden doll which is substituted for the antagonistic world schematism."
This is practically all we are told about dialectics in the Course of Philosophy. In his Critical History, on the other hand, the dialectics of contradiction, and with it particularly Hegel, are treated quite differently.
"Contradiction, according to the Hegelian logic, or rather the doctrine of the Logos, is objectively present not in thought, which by its nature can only be conceived as subjective and conscious, but in things and processes themselves and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form, so that absurdity does not remain an impossible combination of thought but becomes an actual force. The reality of the absurd is the first article of faith in the Hegelian unity of the logical and the illogical. . . . The more contradictory a thing, the truer it is, or in other words, the more absurd, the more credible it is. This maxim, which is not even newly invented but is borrowed from the theology of the Revelation and from mysticism, is the naked expression of the so-called dialectical principle."
The thought contained in the two passages cited can be summed up in the statement that contradiction = contra-sense and therefore cannot occur in the real world. People who in other respects show a fair degree of common sense may regard this statement as having the same self-evident validity as the statement that a straight line cannot be a curve and a curve cannot be straight. But, regardless of all protests made by common sense, the differential calculus assumes that under certain circumstances straight lines and curves are nevertheless identical, and thus obtains results which common sense, by insisting on the absurdity of straight lines being identical with curves, can never attain. And in view of the important role which the so-called dialectics of contradiction has played in philosophy from the time of the earliest Greeks up to the present, even a stronger opponent than Herr Dühring should have felt obliged to attack it with other arguments besides a single assertion and a good many abusive epithets.
True, so long as we consider things as at rest and lifeless, each one by itself, side by side and in succession, we do not run up against any contradictions in them. We find certain qualities which are partly common to, partly different from, and even contradictory to, each other, but which in this case are distributed among different objects and therefore contain no contradiction in them. Within the limits of this sphere of observation we can get along on the basis of the usual metaphysical mode of thought. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence. Then we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction: even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body being both in one place and in another place at one and the same moment of time, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continual assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is.
Here, therefore, we have a contradiction which "is objectively present in things and processes themselves and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form". What has Herr Dühring to say about it? He avers that
up to the present there has been "no bridge" whatever "in rational mechanics from the strictly static to the dynamic".
The reader can now at last see what is hidden behind this favourite phrase of Herr Dühring's -- it is nothing but this: the mind which thinks metaphysically is absolutely unable to pass from the idea of rest to the idea of motion, because the contradiction pointed out above blocks its path. To it, motion is simply inconceivable because it is a contradiction. And in asserting the inconceivability of motion, it admits against its will the existence of this contradiction, and thus admits that there is a contradiction objectively present in things and processes themselves, a contradiction which is moreover an actual force.
If simple mechanical change of place contains a contradiction, this is even truer of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this -- that a living thing is at each moment itself and yet something else.[*] Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly asserts and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that we could not escape contradictions in the sphere of thought as well, and that for example the contradiction between man's intrinsically unlimited cognitive faculty and its actual presence in men who are all extrinsically limited and possess limited knowledge finds its solution in what is practically -- at least for us -- an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.**
We have already noted that one of the main foundations of higher mathematics is the contradiction that in certain circumstances straight lines and curves may be identical. It also achieves this other contradiction: that lines which intersect before our eyes can nevertheless be shown to be parallel only five or six centimetres from their point of intersection, that is, that they will never meet even if extended
* See p. 103 above. --Ed.
** See pp. 46 and 107 ff. above. --Ed.to infinity. Yet, working with these and even with far greater contradictions, it attains results which are not only correct but also quite unattainable for lower mathematics.
But even lower mathematics teems with contradictions. For example, it is a contradiction that a root of A should be a power of A, and yet. It is a contradiction that a negative magnitude should be the square of anything, for every negative magnitude multiplied by itself gives a positive square. The square root of minus one is therefore not only a contradiction, but even an absurd contradiction, a real absurdity. And yet is in many cases a necessary result of correct mathematical operations. Furthermore, where would mathematics -- lower or higher -- be, if it were prohibited from operating with ?
In its operations with variable magnitudes mathematics itself enters the field of dialectics, and it is significant that it was a dialectical philosopher, Descartes, who introduced this advance. The relation between the mathematics of variable and the mathematics of constant magnitudes is in general the same as the relation between dialectical and metaphysical thought. Which by no means prevents the great mass of mathematicians from recognizing dialectics solely in the sphere of mathematics, and a good many of them from continuing to work entirely in the old, limited, metaphysical way with methods that were obtained dialectically.
It would only be possible to go more closely into Herr Dühring's antagonism of forces and his antagonistic world schematism if he had given us something more on this theme than the mere phrase. After he accomplishes this feat, this antagonism is not shown to us in operation even once, whether in his world schematism or in his natural philosophy -- the most convincing admission that Herr Dühring can do absolutely nothing of a positive character with his "basic form of all actions in the life of the world and its creatures". When Hegel's "Doctrine of Essence" has in fact been reduced to the platitude of forces moving in opposite directions but not in contradictions, surely the best thing to do is to avoid any application of this commonplace.
Marx's Capital furnishes Herr Dühring with another occasion for venting his anti-dialectical spleen.
"The absence of natural and intelligible logic which characterizes these dialectical frills and mazes and arabesques of ideas . . . even to the part that has already appeared we must apply the principle that in a certain respect and also in general (!), according to a well-known philosophical prejudice, all must be sought in each and each in all, and that therefore, according to this hybrid and hobbled idea, everything is all the same in the end."
Thus this insight of his into the well-known philosophical prejudice also enables Herr Dühring to prophesy with assurance what will be the "end" of Marx's economic philosophizing, that is, what the following volumes of Capital will contain, and this he does exactly seven lines after he has declared that
"speaking in plain human language it is really impossible to foresee what is still to come in the two" (final) "volumes".
However, this is not the first time that Herr Dühring's writings are revealed to us as belonging to the category of "things" in which "contradiction is objectively present and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form". But this in no wise prevents him from victoriously continuing:
"Yet sound logic will predictably triumph over its caricature. . . . This pretence of superiority and this mysterious dialectical rubbish will tempt no one who has even a modicum of sound judgement left to have anything to do . . . with these deformities of thought and style. With the demise of the last relics of the follies of dialectics this means of duping . . . will lose its deceitful influence, and no one will believe any longer that he has to torture himself in order to get behind some profound piece of wisdom, the kernel of which, when purged of its excrescences, reveals at best the features of standard theories if not of absolute commonplaces. . . . It is quite impossible to reproduce the" (Marxist) "contortions in accordance with the doctrine of the Logos without prostituting sound logic." Marx's method, it would seem, consists in "contriving dialectical miracles for his faithful followers", and so on.
For the moment, we are concerned in no way with the correctness or incorrectness of the economic results of Marx's researches, but only with the dialectical method applied by Marx. But this much is certain: most readers of Capital will have learnt for the first time from Herr Dühring what it is that they have really read. And among them there will also be found Herr Dühring himself, who in the year 1867 (Ergänzungsblätter III, Heft 3)[*] was still able to provide what for a thinker of his calibre was a relatively rational review of the book without being obliged to translate the Marxist argument into Dühringian language, a procedure which he now declares to be indispensable. Though he even then committed the blunder of identifying Marxist with Hegelian dialectics, he had not quite lost the capacity to distinguish between the method and the results obtained by using it, and to understand that the latter are not refuted in particular by vilifying the former in general.
At any rate, Herr Dühring's most astonishing statement is that from the Marxist standpoint "everything is all the same in the end," that therefore to Marx capitalists and wage workers, and the feudal, capitalist and socialist modes of <"fnp">
* Supplementary Sheets, III, No. 3. --Ed.production, for example, are also "all the same" -- no doubt in the end even Marx and Herr Dühring are "all the same". Such utter nonsense can only be explained if we suppose that the mere mention of the word dialectics throws Herr Dühring into such a state of irresponsibility that, as a result of a certain hybrid and hobbled idea, what he says and does is "all the same" in the end.
Here we have a sample of what Herr Dühring calls "my historical treatment in the grand manner", or "the summary procedure which settles with genus and type, and does not condescend to honour what a Hume called the learned mob with an exposure in micrological detail; this treatment in a loftier and nobler style is the only one compatible with the interests of the whole truth and with one's duty to the non-professional public".
Indeed, historical treatment in the grand manner and the summary settlement with genus and type are very convenient for Herr Dühring, since he can neglect all known facts as micrological and equate them to zero by this means, so that instead of proving anything he need only use general phrases, make assertions and thunder his denunciations. The method has the further advantage that it offers no real foothold to an opponent, who is consequently left with almost no other possibility of reply than to make similar summary assertions in the grand manner, to resort to genera] phrases and finally thunder back denunciations at Herr Dühring -- in a word, as they say, to engage in a slanging match, which is not to everyone's taste. We must therefore be grateful to Herr Dühring for dropping the loftier and nobler style once in an exceptional while, and giving us at least two examples of the detestable Marxist doctrine of the Logos.
"What a comical effect, for example, is produced by the appeal to the confused and nebulous Hegelian notion that quantity changes into quality, and that therefore an advance, when it reaches a certain limit, becomes capital merely by this quantitative increase!"
Certainly it all looks curious enough in Herr Dühring's "expurgated" presentation. Let us see how it looks in the original in Marx (page 313, 2nd edition of Capital [*]). On the basis of his previous examination of constant and variable capital and surplus-value, Marx draws the conclusion that "not every sum of money, or of value, is at pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this transformation, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange-value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or commodities". He then takes as an example the case of a worker in any branch of industry, who works eight hours daily for himself -- that is, in producing the value of his wages -- and the following four hours for the capitalist, in producing surplus-value, which immediately flows into the capitalist's pocket. In this case, a person would have to have at his disposal a sum of value allowing him to provide two workers with raw materials, instruments of labour and wages, in order to pocket enough surplus-value every day to live as well as one of his workers. As the aim of capitalist production is not mere subsistence but the increase of wealth, our man with his two workers would still not be a capitalist. Now in order to live twice as well as an ordinary worker and turn half the surplus-value produced back into capital, he would have to be able to employ eight workers, that is, he would have to possess four times the sum of value assumed above. It is only after this, and in the course of further explanations elucidating and substantiating the fact that not every petty sum of values is enough to be transformable at pleasure into <"fnp158">
* Capital, English ed., Vol. I, pp. 307-08. --Ed.capital but that in this respect each period of development and each branch of industry have their definite minimum sum, that Marx observes: "Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his Logic ), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes."[*]
Now let the reader admire the loftier and nobler style by virtue of which Herr Dühring attributes to Marx the opposite of what he really said. Marx says: The fact that a sum of value can be transformed into capital only when it has reached a certain size, varying according to the circumstances but in each case a definite, minimum size -- this fact is a proof of the correctness of the Hegelian law. Herr Dühring makes him say: Because, according to the Hegelian law, quantity changes into quality, "therefore an advance, when it reaches a certain limit, becomes capital". That is to say, the very opposite.
Herr Dühring's habit of quoting incorrectly in "the interests of the whole truth" and from his sense of "duty to the non-professional public" has already become familiar to us in the matter of his treatment of Darwin. It becomes more and more evident that this habit is an internal necessity of the philosophy of reality, and it is certainly a very "summary procedure". Not to mention the fact that Herr Dühring makes Marx speak of any kind of "advance", whereas Marx refers only to an advance made in the form of raw materials, instruments of labour and wages, and that Herr Dühring thus succeeds in making Marx talk pure nonsense. He then has the cheek to describe as comic the nonsense which he himself has fabricated. Just as he rigged <"fnp159">
* Ibid., p. 309, Engels' italics. --Ed.up an imaginary Darwin to try out his strength on, so here he rigs up an imaginary Marx. "Historical treatment in the grand manner", indeed!
In discussing world schematism we have already seen that Herr Dühring had a little accident and that in a weak moment he himself recognized and used the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations, in which a qualitative transformation suddenly sets in at certain points of quantitative change.[*] We there gave one of the best-known examples -- that of the change of the aggregate state of water, which under normal atmospheric pressure changes at 0ƒ C. from the liquid into the solid state and at 100ƒ C from the liquid into the gaseous state, so that at both these turning-points the mere quantitative change of temperature brings about a qualitative change in the state of the water.
In proof of this law we might have cited hundreds of other similar facts from nature as well as from human society. Thus, for example, the whole of Part IV of Marx's Capital -- "Production of Relative Surplus-Value", relating to co-operation, division of labour and manufacture, machinery and modern industry -- deals with innumerable cases in which quantitative change alters the quality, and qualitative change likewise alters the quantity, of the things under consideration; in which therefore, to use the expression so hated by Herr Dühring, quantity is transformed into quality and vice versa. As for example the fact that the co-operation of a number of people, the fusion of many forces into one single force, creates, to use Marx's phrase, a "new power", which is essentially different from the sum of its separate forces.** <"fnp160">
* See p. 56 above. --Ed.
** Capital, Vol. I, p. 326. --Ed.
What is worse, Marx had added this footnote to the passage which Herr Dühring perverted into its opposite in the interests of the whole truth: "The molecular theory of modern chemistry first scientifically worked out by Laurent and Gerhardt rests on no other law."[*] But what did that matter to Herr Dühring? Of course, he knew that
"the eminently modern educative elements provided by the natural-scientific mode of thought are lacking precisely among those who, like Herr Marx and his rival Lassalle, make a smattering of science and of philosophistics the meagre armour for their parade of learning" --
while Herr Dühring bases himself -- we have seen in what fashion -- on "the main achievements of exact knowledge in mechanics, physics and chemistry", etc. However, in order to enable third persons to judge for themselves, we shall look a little more closely into the example cited in Marx's footnote.
What is referred to here is the homologous series of carbon compounds, a great many of which are already known and each of which has its own algebraic formula of composition. If for example, as is done in chemistry, we denote an atom of carbon by C, an atom of hydrogen by H, an atom of oxygen by O, and the number of atoms of carbon contained in each compound by n, the molecular formulas for some of these series can be expressed as follows:
CnH2n+2 -- the series of normal paraffins
CnH2n+2O -- the series of primary alcohols
CnH2nO2 -- the series of the monobasic fatty acids.<"fnp161">
* Ibid., p. 309, first footnote. --Ed.Let us take as an example the last of these series, and let us assume successively that n= 1, n = 2, n = 3, etc. We then obtain the following results (omitting the isomers):
CH2O2
-- formic acid
boiling
point
100ƒ
melting
point
1ƒ
C2H4O2
-- acetic acid
"
"
118ƒ
"
"
17ƒ
C3H6O2
-- propionic acid
"
"
140ƒ
"
"
--
C4H8O2
-- butyric acid
"
"
162ƒ
"
"
--
C5H10O2
-- valerianic acid
"
"
175ƒ
"
"
--
and so on to C30H60O2, melissic acid, which melts only at 80ƒ and has no boiling point at all, because it does not evaporate without disintegrating.Here therefore we have a whole series of qualitatively different bodies, formed by the simple quantitative addition of elements, and in fact always in the same proportion. This is most clearly evident in cases where the quantity of all the elements of the compound changes in the same proportion. Thus, in the normal paraffins CnH2n+2, the lowest is methane, CH4, a gas; the highest known, hexadecane, C16H34, is a solid body forming colourless crystals which melts at 21ƒ and boils only at 278ƒ. Each new member of both series comes into existence through the addition of CH2, one atom of carbon and two atoms of hydrogen, to the molecular formula of the preceding member, and this quantitative change in the molecular formula produces a qualitatively different body at each step.
These series, however, are only one particularly obvious example; throughout practically the whole of chemistry, even in the various oxides of nitrogen and oxygen acids of phosphorus or sulphur, one can see how "quantity changes into quality" and how this allegedly confused and foggy Hegelian notion is to be found in so to speak corporeal form in things and processes -- and no one but Herr Dühring is confused and befogged by it. If Marx was the first to call attention to it, and if Herr Dühring read the reference without even understanding it (otherwise he would certainly not have allowed this unparalleled outrage to pass unchallenged), this is enough -- even without looking back at the celebrated Dühringian philosophy of nature -- to make it clear which of the two, Marx or Herr Dühring, is lacking in "the eminently modern educative elements provided by the natural-scientific mode of thought" and in acquaintance with "the main achievements in . . . chemistry".
In conclusion we shall call one more witness for the transformation of quantity into quality, namely Napoleon. He describes the combat between the French cavalry, who were bad riders but disciplined, and the Mamelukes, who were undoubtedly the best horsemen of their time for single com bat but who lacked discipline, as follows: <"p163">
"Two Mamelukes were undoubtedly more than a match for three Frenchmen; 100 Mamelukes were equal to 100 Frenchmen; 300 Frenchmen could generally beat 300 Mamelukes, and 1,000 Frenchmen invariably defeated 1,500 Mamelukes."[55]
Just as with Marx a definite, though varying, minimum sum of exchange-value was necessary to make possible its transformation into capital, so with Napoleon a detachment of cavalry had to be of a definite minimum number in order to permit the force of discipline, embodied in close order and planned utilization, to manifest itself and even rise superior to greater numbers of irregular cavalry, who were better mounted, more dexterous horsemen and fighters, and at least as brave as the former. But what does this prove as against Herr Dühring? Was not Napoleon miserably vanquished in his conflict with Europe? Did he not suffer defeat after defeat? And why? Solely in consequence of having introduced the confused and foggy Hegelian notion into cavalry tactics!