Anti-Dühring
반뒤링론
The polemic Friedrich Engels serialised in Vorwärts in 1877–1878 and published as a book in 1878 against Eugen Dühring, the Berlin philosopher and economist then gaining ground inside the German Social Democratic Party. Its full title is Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science. Following Dühring through three parts, Philosophy, Political Economy and Socialism, it gave the first systematic account of dialectics, the materialist conception of history, the theory of surplus value and scientific socialism as one world outlook. Marx heard the whole manuscript before publication and wrote one chapter of the economics part, and together with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, drawn from three of its chapters, it became the most widely read introduction to Marxism.
In depth
Why did a polemic against one man become a Marxist textbook?
Eugen Dühring is remembered today largely because of this book, yet the reply Engels wrote to him became the most influential introduction to Marxism. Because Dühring put forward a "system" covering everything from philosophy through economics to socialism, Engels had to follow him into every field and set his own views against Dühring's. In the 1885 preface to the second edition Engels wrote: "The negative criticism thus became positive; the polemic changed into a more or less connected exposition of the dialectical method and communist world outlook represented by Marx and myself, and this over a fairly comprehensive range of subjects."
Die negative Kritik wurde damit positiv; die Polemik schlug um in eine mehr oder minder zusammenhängende Darstellung der von Marx und mir vertretenen dialektischen Methode und kommunistischen Weltanschauung …
Where Marx's Capital was long and difficult, this book set out philosophy, history, economics and socialism in a single, relatively accessible volume. The English Wikipedia records that August Bebel, Georgi Plekhanov, Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky were all strongly influenced by it. Kautsky recalled that only through Anti-Dühring did they learn to read Capital properly, and David Riazanov called the book "epoch-making" in the history of Marxism.
Who was Dühring and why did Engels take him on?
Dühring, a blind lecturer at the University of Berlin, published one thick book after another on philosophy, economics and socialism. After the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers merged into the German Social Democratic Party at Gotha in 1875, his ideas quickly gained support in the party. According to the English Wikipedia, his practical programme, which rejected economic determinism and looked to strikes and autonomous "economic communes" to improve workers' lives at once, attracted the young Bernstein among others. Dühring called Marx a "scientific figure of fun" and mocked Engels as a factory owner.
When Wilhelm Liebknecht repeatedly asked for a reply, Engels at first hesitated to attack a blind man but took up his pen in the autumn of 1876, setting aside his manuscript of Dialectics of Nature. The articles ran in the party paper Vorwärts from 3 January 1877 to 7 July 1878 and appeared in Leipzig as a book in two parts in 1877 and 1878. The title, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, mocks the title of Dühring's praise of the American economist Henry Carey. When the Anti-Socialist Law came into force in October 1878 the book was banned, which, Engels noted in the preface to the second edition, doubled and trebled its sales. The second edition appeared in Zurich in 1886 and the third, the last revised by Engels, in Stuttgart in 1894.
What do the three parts cover?
The introduction contrasts dialectical with "metaphysical" thinking: "To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, fixed, rigid objects of investigation given once for all. He thinks in absolutely unmediated antitheses. His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil'." Dialectics, by contrast, grasps things in their connection, motion, coming into being and passing away. "Nature is the proof of dialectics," Engels writes, drawing on the results of modern natural science.
Er denkt in lauter unvermittelten Gegensätzen: seine Rede ist ja, ja, nein, nein, was darüber ist, ist vom Übel.
Part One, "Philosophy", covers world schematism, time and space, life, morality and law, and explains the so-called laws of dialectics (quantity and quality, negation of the negation). In the chapter on freedom and necessity Engels follows Hegel: "For him freedom is the insight into necessity." Freedom lies not in a dreamt-of independence from natural laws but in knowing them and being able to make them work towards definite ends. Part Two, "Political Economy", refutes Dühring's "force theory", in which politics determines economics, and explains value and surplus value. Its chapter 10, "From the Critical History", was written by Marx.
Für ihn ist die Freiheit die Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit.
Part Three, "Socialism", covers the history of utopian socialism, the contradictions of capitalism, production and distribution, and state, family and education. Here Engels describes how the state becomes superfluous once society takes possession of the means of production: "The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished', it dies out." He calls this "the leap of humanity from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom". In 1880, at Paul Lafargue's request, Engels arranged the introduction and three chapters of Part Three as the pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The withering away of the state is discussed, together with Lenin's The State and Revolution, under its own entry.
Der Staat wird nicht „abgeschafft“, er stirbt ab.
How involved was Marx, and what is disputed?
In the 1885 preface Engels stressed that the book was not written without Marx's knowledge: "I read the whole manuscript to him before it was printed, and the tenth chapter of the part on economics ('From the Critical History') was written by Marx." The outlook, he explained, had been founded and developed for the most part by Marx and only to the smallest part by himself.
Ich habe ihm das ganze Manuskript vor dem Druck vorgelesen, und das zehnte Kapitel des Abschnitts über Ökonomie („Aus der ‚Kritischen Geschichte‘“) ist von Marx geschrieben …
In the twentieth century, however, the book stood at the centre of controversy. According to the German Wikipedia, Lenin named it, with the Communist Manifesto and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, as a handbook for every class-conscious worker, and Marxism-Leninism took the basic framework of dialectical materialism from it. Against this, as the English Wikipedia summarises, part of Western Marxism beginning with György Lukács charged that by extending dialectics to nature Engels had turned Marx's thought into a rigid scientistic dogma. Engels's biographers reply that Marx was closely involved in the book and accepted it as an expression of their shared outlook.