It is worth noting that in this department of knowledge pretended final truths of last instance are met with most frequently. Only the person who wishes to show that there are eternal truth, eternal morality, and eternal justice in human history, and that these are similar in scope and application to those of mathematics, will proclaim that twice two is four and that birds have beaks and the like to be eternal truths. We can also certainly rely upon the same friend of humanity taking the opportunity to explain that all former inventors of eternal truths have been more or less a.s.ses or charlatans, that they have been circ.u.mscribed by error and have made mistakes. The fact of their error, however, is natural and proves the existence of the truth, and that it can be reached, and the newly arisen prophet has a ready-to-hand stock of final truths of last instance, eternal law and eternal justice. This has happened hundreds, nay, thousands of times, so that it is a wonder that men are still sufficiently credulous to believe it not only of others, but even of themselves. Here we find a prophet clad in the armour of righteousness who proclaims in the old-fashioned way that whoever else may deny there is still one left to declare final truths of last instance.
Denial, nay, doubt even, is a weakness, barren confusion, mole-like scepticism, worse than blank nihilism, confusion worse confounded and other little amiabilities of this sort. As with all prophets, there is no scientific investigation, but merely off-hand condemnation.
We might have made mention of the sciences which investigate the laws of human thought, logic and dialectics. Here we are, however, no better off as regards eternal truths. Herr Duehring explains that the dialectic proper is pure nonsense, and the many books which have been and are still being written on logic prove clearly that final truths of last instance are more spa.r.s.ely distributed than many believe.
Moreover, we are not at all alarmed because the step of science upon which we to-day stand is not a bit more final than any of the preceding steps. Already it includes an immense amount of material for investigation and offers a great chance for specialisation and study to anyone who desires to become expert in any particular branch.
Whoever expects to find final and immutable truths in observations which in the very nature of things must remain relative for successive generations, and can only be completed piecemeal, as in cosmogony, geology and human history, which must always be incomplete owing to the complexity of the historical material, shows perverse ignorance even where he does not, as in the present case, set up claims of personal infallibility.
Truth and error, like all such mutually antagonistic concepts, have only an absolute reality under very limited conditions, as we have seen, and as even Herr Duehring should know by a slight acquaintance with the first elements of dialectics, which show the insufficiency of all polar antagonisms. As soon as we bring the antagonism of truth and error out of this limited field it becomes relative and is not serviceable for new scientific statements. If we should seek to establish its reality beyond those limits we are at once confronted by a dilemma, both poles of the antagonism come into conflict with their opposite; truth becomes error and error becomes truth. Let us take, for example, the well-known Boyle"s law, according to which, the temperature remaining the same, the volume of the gas varies as the pressure to which it is subjected. Regnault discovered that this law does not apply in certain cases. If he had been a realist-philosopher he would have been obliged to say, "Boyle"s law is mutable, therefore it does not possess absolute truth, therefore it is untrue, therefore it is false." He would thus have made a greater error than that which was latent in Boyle"s law, his little particle of truth would have been drowned in a flood of error; he would in this way have elaborated his correct result into an error compared with which Boyle"s law with its particle of error fastened to it would have appeared as the truth.
Regnault, scientist as he was, did not trouble himself with such childish performances. He investigated further and found that Boyle"s law is only approximately correct, having no validity in the case of gases which can be made liquid by pressure when the pressure approaches the point where liquefaction sets in. Boyle"s law therefore is shown only to be true within specific bounds. But is it absolute, a final truth of last instance within specific bounds? No physicist would say so. He would say that it is correct for certain gases and within certain limits of pressure and temperature, and even then within these somewhat narrow limits he would not exclude the possibility of a still narrower limitation or change in application as the result of further investigation. This is how final truths of last instance stand in physics, for example. Really scientific works as a rule avoid such dogmatic expressions as truth and error, but they are constantly cropping up in works like the Philosophy of Reality, where mere loose talking vaunts itself the supreme result of sovereign thought.
But a nave reader may say, "Where has Herr Duehring expressly stated that the content of his philosophy of reality is final truth of the last instance?" Well, for example, in his dithyramb on his system which we quoted above, and again where he says "Moral truths as far as they are known are as sound as those of mathematics." Does not Herr Duehring explain that by reason of his powers of criticism and searching investigations, the fundamental philosophy has been brought to light and that he has thus bestowed upon us final truths of last instance? But if Herr Duehring does not set up such a claim either on his own behalf or that of his time, if he says that some time in the misty future final truths of last instance will be established, and that therefore his own statements are merely accidental and confused, a kind of "mole-like scepticism" and "barren confusion," what is all the fuss about, and what useful purpose is served by Herr Duehring?
If we gain no ground in the matter of truth and error we gain less in respect of good and evil. Here we have an antagonism of ethical significance, and ethics is a department of human history in which final truths are but slight and few. From people to people, from age to age, there have been such changes in the ideas of good and evil that these concepts are contradictory in different periods and among different peoples. But some one may remark, "Good is still not evil and evil is not good; if good and evil are confused all morality is abolished, and each may do what he will." When the rhetoric is stripped away this is the opinion of Herr Duehring. But the matter is not to be disposed of so easily. If things were as easy as that there would be no dispute about good and evil. Everybody would know what was good and what was evil. How is it to-day, however? What system of ethics is preached to us to-day? There is first the Christian-feudal, a survival of the early days of faith, which is as a matter of fact subdivided into Catholic and Protestant, of which there are still further subdivisions, from the Jesuit-Catholic and orthodox Protestant to loosely drawn ethical systems. There figure also the modern or bourgeois, and still further the proletarian future system of morality, so that the progressive European countries alone present three contemporaneous and coexistent actual theories of ethics. Which is the true one? No single one of them, regarded as a finality, but that system a.s.suredly possesses the most elements of truth which promises the longest duration, which existent in the present is also involved in the revolution of the future, the proletarian.
But if we now see that the three cla.s.ses of modern society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletarian, have their distinctive ethical systems, we can only conclude therefrom that mankind consciously or unconsciously shapes its moral views in accordance with the material facts upon which in the last instance the cla.s.s existence is based--upon the economic conditions under which production and exchange are carried on.
But in the three above mentioned systems of ethics there is much which is common to all three of them, and might not this at least const.i.tute a portion of an eternally stable system of ethics? These ethical theories pa.s.s through three distinct steps in their historical development, they have therefore a common historical basis and hence necessarily much in common. Further, for approximately similar economic stages there must, necessarily be a coincidence of similar stages of economic development, and ethical theories must of necessity coincide with a greater or less degree of closeness. From the very moment when private property in movables developed there had to be ethical sanctions of general effect in all communities in which private property prevailed, thus: Thou shalt not steal. Is this commandment, then, an eternal commandment? By no means. In a society in which the motive for theft did not exist stealing would only be the practice of the weak-minded, and the preacher of morals who proclaimed "Thou shalt not steal" as an eternal commandment would only be laughed at for his pains.
We here call attention to the attempt to force a sort of moral dogmatism upon us as eternal, final, immutable moral law, upon the pretext that the moral law is possessed of fixed principles which transcend history and the variations of individual peoples. We state, on the contrary, that up to the present time all ethical theory is in the last instance a testimony to the existence of certain economic conditions prevailing in any community at any particular time. And in proportion as society developed cla.s.s-antagonisms, morality became a cla.s.s morality and either justified the interests and domination of the ruling cla.s.s, or as soon as a subject cla.s.s became strong enough justified revolt against the domination of the ruling cla.s.s and the interests of the subject cla.s.s. That, by this means, there is an advance made in morals as a whole, just as there is in all other branches of human knowledge, there can be no doubt. But we have not yet advanced beyond cla.s.s morals. Real human morality superior to cla.s.s morality and its traditions will not be possible until a stage in human history has been reached in which cla.s.s antagonisms have not only been overcome but have been forgotten as regards the conduct of life. Now the colossal egotism of Herr Duehring may be understood when it is seen that, on the eve of a revolution which will bring about a state of society devoid of cla.s.ses, he claims from the midst of an old and cla.s.s divided society to proclaim an eternal system of morals independent of time and material change. He himself declares what up to the present has been hid from the rest of us that he understands the structure of this future society at least as regards its salient features.
In conclusion he makes a revelation which is essentially original but none the less "fundamental respecting the origin of evil." We have the fact that the type of the cat with its inherent treachery is pictured as the representative animal type, and this also displays a form of character to be found also in man. There is no mystery then about evil if one can detect a mysticism in the cat or any other beast of prey.
Evil is--the cat. Goethe was evidently wrong when he introduced Mephistopheles as a black dog instead of a cat similarly colored. This is ethics suited not only to all worlds but to cats also.
_Equality._
By dint of experience we have come to learn Herr Duehring"s "method."
It consists in separating each department of knowledge into what are a.s.sumed to be its most simple elements, then of making so called self evident axioms with regard to these simple elements, and thereupon operating with the results obtained in this way. Thus a sociological question is to be "decided on simple axiomatic principles just as if it were a matter of elementary mathematics." Thus the application of the mathematical method to history, ethics and law gives mathematical certainty to the final results which appear as pure and immutable truths.
This is only another form of the old ideological, _a priori_ method so called, which learned the properties of an object not from the object itself but derived them by proof from the concept of the object. First you derive a concept of the object from the actual object, then you turn the spit and measure the object in terms of its derivative the concept. The concept is not shaped after the pattern of the object but the object after the pattern of the concept. In Herr Duehring"s method, the simplest elements, the last abstractions to which he can attain do duty for the concept which is unchangeable, the simplest elements are under the best conditions purely imaginary in their nature. The philosophy of realism hence appears to be mere ideology, and has no derivation from real life but is absolutely dependent upon the imagination. When such an ideologist proceeds to construct a system of morals and law from his concept of the so-called simplest elements of society instead of from the real social conditions of the men about him, where does he get his material for construction? The material evidently consists of two kinds--firstly, the slim vestiges of reality which are still present in every fundamental abstraction, and secondly in the actual content which our ideologist evolves from his own consciousness. And what does he discover in his consciousness?
For the most part moral and ethical philosophic ideas and these const.i.tute an expression corresponding more or less closely, whether positive or negative, harmonious or hostile, with the social and political conditions which environ him. Besides he probably has notions derived from literature pertaining to these conditions, and finally he has possibly personal idiosyncrasies. Let our ideologist dodge all that he can, the historical reality which he has thrown out of doors comes in again at the window and although he may fancy that he is employed in the manufacture of moral and legal doctrines good for all worlds and all ages he is actually making a distorted, counterfeit of the conservation or revolutionary tendencies of his time, because torn from its real place, as things seen in a concave mirror are upside down.
Herr Duehring therefore resolves society into its simplest elements and discovers accordingly that the most elementary society consists of at least two human beings. He thereupon operates with these two human beings to produce his axiom. Then he delivers himself of the fundamental maxim of morals, "Two human wills, as such, are entirely identical, and the one can in consequence make no positive demands upon the other." Here the "foundation of moral law" is apparent, so "in order to develop the princ.i.p.al concepts of justice we require two human beings under absolutely simple and elementary conditions."
That two human wills or two human beings are just alike is not only no axiom, it is a glaring exaggeration. In the first place two human beings may differ as regards s.e.x, and this simple fact shows us, if we look at childhood for a moment, that the elements of society are not two men, but a little man and a little woman, which const.i.tute a family, the simplest and earliest form of a.s.sociation for productive purposes. But Herr Duehring cannot by any means agree to this. On the one hand the two const.i.tuents of society might very possibly be made alike and on the other Herr Duehring would not be able to construct the moral and legal equality of man and woman from the original family. Therefore one of two things must take place. Either the molecules of Herr Duehring"s society from the multiplication of which all society is built up is merely _a priori_ and destined to fail, since two men cannot produce a child, or we must consider them as two heads of families. In this case the entire foundation is made its very opposite. Instead of the equality of man we have at the most the equality of two heads of families, and since women are not comprehended we have the consequent subjection of women.
We are sorry to warn the reader that these two notorious men cannot be got rid of, for a long time. They take up in the realm of social conditions the role heretofore played by the dwellers in the other world with whom it is to be hoped we have now finished. Should any question of political economy, of politics or any other such matter require solution, out come the two men and make the thing axiomatic forthwith. This is a remarkable, clever, and system-shaping discovery of our system-shaping philosopher. But to give the truth its due we are regretfully bound to say that he did not discover the two men.
They are common to the whole of the eighteenth century. They appear in Rousseau"s Treatise on Equality, 1754, where, by the way, they serve to prove axiomatically the direct opposite of Herr Duehring"s contentions. They play an important part in political economy from Adam Smith to Ricardo, but here they are so far unequal that they follow different trades, princ.i.p.ally hunting and fishing, and they exchange their mutual products. They serve through the entire eighteenth century princ.i.p.ally as mere ill.u.s.trative examples, and the originality of Herr Duehring consists in the fact that he elevates this method of ill.u.s.tration to a fundamental method for all social science and to a measure of all historical instruction. There is no easier way to arrive at "a really scientific philosophy of things and men."
In order to create the fundamental axiom the two men and their wills are mutually equal and neither has any right to lord it over the other. We cannot find two suitable men. They must be two men who are so free from all national, economic, political and religious conditions, from s.e.x and personal peculiarities that nothing remains of either of them but the mere concept "man" and then they are entirely equal. They are therefore two fully-equipped ghosts conjured up by that very Herr Duehring who particularly ridicules and denounces "spiritistic" movements. These two phantoms must of course do all that their wizard wants of them and so their united productions are a matter of complete indifference to the rest of the world.
Now let us follow Herr Duehring"s axiomatic utterances a little further. These two men cannot make positive demands upon each other.
The one who does so and enforces his demand thereupon performs an unjust act, and with this idea as a foundation Herr Duehring explains the injustice, the tyranny, the servitude, in short all the evil happenings of history up to the present time. Now Rousseau has in the work above mentioned proved the contrary just as axiomatically, by means of two men. A. cannot forcibly enslave B. except by putting B.
in a place where he cannot do without A. This is far too materialistic an idea for Herr Duehring. He has accordingly put the same matter somewhat differently. Two shipwrecked men being by themselves on an island form a society. Their wills are, theoretically speaking, entirely equal and this is acknowledged by both. But in reality the inequality is tremendous. A. is resolute and energetic, B. inert, irresolute and slack. A. is sharp, B. is stupid. How long will it be before A. imposes his will upon B., first by taking the upper hand, and keeping it habitually, under the pretence that B."s submission is voluntary. Whether the form of voluntariness continues or force is resorted to slavery still is slavery. Voluntary entering into a state of slavery lasted all through the Middle Ages in Germany up to the Thirty Years War. When serfdom was abolished in Prussia after the defeats of 1806 and 1807 and with it the duty of the n.o.bility to take care of their subjects in need, sickness and old age the peasants thereupon pet.i.tioned to be allowed to remain in slavery--for who would care for them when they were in trouble? The concept of the two men is just as applicable to inequality and slavery as it is to equality and mutual aid, and since, under the penalty of extinction, men must a.s.sume the headship of a family, hereditary slavery may be foreseen in it.
Let us put this view of the case on one side for a moment. We a.s.sume that we are convinced by Herr Duehring"s maxim and that we are zealous for the full equalisation of the two wills, for the "universal sovereignty of man" for the "sovereignty of the individual,"
magnificent expressions, in comparison with which Stirner"s "individual" with his private property is a mere bungler though he might claim his modest part therein. Then we are all free and independent. All? No, not even now. There are still "occasional dependent relations" but these are to be explained "on grounds which must be sought not in the action of two wills as such but in a third consideration, in the case of children, for example, in the inadequateness of their self-a.s.sertion."
Indeed, the foundations of independence are not to be sought in the realisation of the two wills as such. Naturally not, since the realisation of one of the wills is thus interfered with. But they must be sought in a third direction. And what is the third direction? The actual fixing of a subjected will as an inadequate one. So far has our realistic philosopher departed from reality that will, the real content, the characteristic determination of this will serves him as a third ground, for abstract and indefinite speech. However this may be we must agree that equality has its exceptions. It does not apply to a will which is infected with inadequateness of self expression.
Further, "Where the animal and the human are intermingled in one person can one in the name of a second fully developed human being demand the same actions as in the case of a single human being ... our supposition is here of two morally unequal persons of which one has a share of purely animal characteristics in a certain sense the typical fundamental conception which characterises the differences in and between groups of men." Now the reader may see by these modest excuses in which Herr Duehring turns and winds like a Jesuit priest to establish a casuistical position, how far the human human can prevail over the b.e.s.t.i.a.l human, how far he can employ deceit, warlike, keen terrorising means of deceit against the latter without overstepping immutable ethical bounds.
Therefore, if two persons are "morally unequal" there is an end of equality. It was therefore not worth while to conjure up two fully equal men, since there are no two individuals who are morally equal.
But inequality consists in this that one is a human being and the other has some part of the animal in his composition. It is evident that since man is descended from the animal creation he is not free from animality. So that as regards man degrees of animality can only be differentiated to a greater or less degree. A division of men into two sharply differentiated groups, into humans and human beasts, into good and bad, into sheep and goats, even Christianity, let alone the realist philosophy, is aware, implies a judge who makes the distinction. But who shall be judge as regards the realist philosophy?
We must follow the practice of Christians according to which the pious little sheep undertake to act as judges of the universe against their unworthy neighbors the goats, with results which are too well known.
The sect of the realist philosophers supposing it ever comes into existence will certainly not give up anything quietly. This is indeed a matter of small concern to us but we are interested in the confession that as a conclusion of the moral inequality between men equality no longer exists.
Again "If the one acted in accordance with truth and science but the other in accordance with a superst.i.tion or prejudice a mutual disagreement would generally occur. At a certain stage of incapacity barbarism or an evil tendency of character must in all circ.u.mstances produce an antagonism. Force is the last resort not alone with children and incapables. The peculiar characteristics of whole cla.s.ses of men, whether in a state of nature or civilised, may render necessary the subjection of their inimical will, due to their own impotency, in order to bring them into harmony with social arrangements. But such a man has challenged his own equality by the perversity of his inimical and hurtful actions, and if he suffers at the hands of a superior force he only reaps the recoil of his own actions."
Thus not only moral but spiritual inequality is sufficiently potent to do away with the "full equality" of two wills and to furnish an ethical rule by which all the shameful acts of civilised plundering states against backward peoples down to the atrocities of the Russians in Turkestan may be justified. When General Kaufmann, in the summer of 1873, fell upon the Tartar tribes of the Jomuden, burnt their tents, mowed down their wives and families, as the command ran, he explained that the destruction was due to the perversity, the inimical minds of the people of the Jomuden, and was employed for the purpose of bringing them back to the social order, and the means used by him had been the most efficient.
But he who wills the end wills also the means. But he was not so cruel as to insult the Jomuden people in addition and to say that he ma.s.sacred them in the name of equality, that he considered their wills equal to his own. And again in this conflict the select, those who pose as champions of truth and science, the realist philosophers in the last instance must be able to distinguish superst.i.tion, prejudice, barbarism, evil tendencies of character, and when force and subjection are necessary to bring about equality. So that equality now means equalisation by means of force, and the will of one recognises the will of the other as equal by overthrowing it.
The phrase that an external will in its bringing about equalisation by force is only to be regarded as producing equality is nothing but a distortion of the Hegelian theory that punishment is a right of the criminal. "That punishment is to be regarded as implying a right to it in accordance with which the criminal is respected as a rational being." (Rechtsphil, 100.)
We may pause here. It would be superfluous to follow Herr Duehring any further in the piecemeal destruction of his axiomatically established equality, universal human sovereignty, etc., to observe how he brings society into existence with two men and produces yet a third in order to establish the state, because to put the matter briefly, no majority can be had without the third, and without him, that is, without the domination of the majority over the minority, no state can exist.
There is no need either for us to observe how he launches his future social state on the more peaceful waters of construction, where we may have the honor some fine morning of beholding it. We have seen so far that the complete equality of two wills only exists as long as they do not will anything. That as soon as they cease to become human wills as such and to be converted into real individual wills, into wills of real persons, that is, equality ceases; that childhood, idiocy, animality so called, superst.i.tion, prejudice, supposed lack of power on the one hand and supposed humanity and insight into truth and science on the other hand, that therefore every difference in the quality of the two wills and in the degree of intelligence accompanying it justifies an inequality which may go as far as subjection. Why should we seek further since Herr Duehring has brought his own edifice of equality which he so laboriously constructed tumbling to the ground?
But if we are now prepared to meet Herr Duehring"s silly and incompetent consideration of equality of rights we are not yet ready to take issue with the idea itself which through the influence of Rousseau has played a theatrical part, and since the days of the great Revolution a practical and political part, and now plays no insignificant role in the agitation carried on by the socialist movement of all countries. The establishment of its scientific soundness has a value for the proletarian agitation.
The idea that all men have something in common as men and that they are equal with respect to that common quality is naturally older than history. But the modern doctrine of equality is something quite different than that. This derives from the property of humanity, common to man, the equality of man, as man, or at least of all citizens of a given state or of all members of a given society. Until the conclusion of equality of rights in the state and society was deduced from the original notion of relative equality, and until this conclusion was to be stated as something natural and self evident, many thousands of years had to pa.s.s and indeed have pa.s.sed. In the oldest and most elementary communities it may be said that equality of rights among the members existed in the highest degree, women, slaves, and foreigners, however, being excluded. Among the Greeks and Romans inequality existed to a greater degree. Greeks and barbarians, freemen and slaves, citizens and subjects, Roman citizens and Roman subjects (to employ a comprehensive expression) that these should have any claim to equality of political rights would have been regarded by the ancients necessarily as madness. Under the Roman Empire there was a complete elimination of all these distinctions with the exception of those of freemen and slaves. There arose therefore as far as the freemen were concerned that equality of private individuals upon which Roman law was founded and developed as the most perfect system of jurisprudence based on private property with which we are acquainted.
But while the contradiction of freemen and slaves existed there could be no statement based upon the universal equality of man as such, as was recently shown in the slave states of the Northern American Union.
Christianity recognised one equality on the part of all men, that of an equal taint of original sin, which entirely corresponded with its character as a religion of slaves and the oppressed. In the next place it recognised completely the equality of the elect but it only declared this at the beginning of its teaching. The traces of common property in possessions which may be found occasionally in the earliest days of the religion was based rather upon the mutual a.s.sistance which persecuted people hold out to each other, than upon any real concepts of human equality. Very soon the establishment of the ant.i.thesis between the priesthood and the laity put an end to even this expression of Christian equality. The inundation of Western Europe by the Germans abolished for centuries all concepts of equality by the creation of a universal, social and political gradation of rank of a much more complicated nature than had existed up to that time.
Contemporaneously with this Western and Middle Europe entered upon a historical development, shaped for the first time a compact civilisation, and a system which was on the one hand dynamic and on the other conservative, the leading national states. Thereupon a soil was prepared for the declaration of the equality of human rights so recently made.
The feudal middle ages moreover developed the cla.s.s in its womb destined to be the apostle of the modern agitation for equality, the bourgeois cla.s.s. In the beginning even under the feudal system the bourgeois cla.s.s had developed the prevalent hand-industry and the exchange of products even within feudal society to a high degree considering the circ.u.mstances, until with the close of the fifteenth century the great discoveries of lands beyond the seas opened before it a new and individual course. The trade beyond Europe which up to that time had been carried on between the Italians and the Levant was now extended to America and the Indies and soon exceeded in amount the reciprocal trade of the European countries as well as the internal commerce of any particular land. American gold and silver flooded Europe and like a decomposing element penetrated all the fissures, crevices and pores of feudal society. The system of hand-labor was no longer sufficient for the growing demand, it was replaced by manufacture in the leading industries of the most highly developed peoples.
A corresponding change in the political structure followed this powerful revolution in the economic conditions of society but by no means immediately. The organisation of the State remained feudal in form while society became more and more bourgeois. Trade, particularly international, and to a greater degree world-commerce demanded for its development the free and unrestricted possessors of commodities, who have equality of right to exchange commodities at least in one and the same place. The transition from hand labor to manufacture presupposes the existence of a number of free laborers, free on the one hand from the fetters of the gild and on the other free to employ their labor force in their own behalf, who could make contracts for the hire of their labor force to the manufacturers and therefore face him as if endowed with equal rights as contracting parties. At last then there arose equality of rights and actual equality of all human labor, for labor force finds its unconscious but strongest expression in the law of value of modern bourgeois economy according to which the value of a commodity finds its measure in the socially necessary labor incorporated in it. But where the economic circ.u.mstances render freedom and equality of rights necessary, the political code, gild restrictions and peculiar privileges oppose them at every step. Local provisions of a legal character, differential taxation, exceptional laws of every description, interfere not only with foreigners or colonials but frequently enough also with whole categories of citizens in the nation itself. Gild privileges in particular const.i.tuted a continual impediment to the development of manufacture. The course was nowhere open and the chances of the bourgeois victory were by no means equal, but to make the course open was the first and ever more pressing necessity.
As soon as the demand for the abolition of feudalism and for the equality of rights was set on the order of the day it had necessarily to take an ever widening scope. As soon as the claim was made in behalf of commerce and industry it had also to be made in behalf of the peasants who, being in every stage of slavery from serfdom labored for the most part without any return for the feudal lords and were obliged in addition to perform innumerable services for them and for the State. Also it became desirable to abolish feudal privileges, the immunity of the n.o.bility from taxation, and the superiority which attached to a certain status. And as men no longer lived in a world empire like the Roman, but in an independent system with states which approximated to a similar degree of bourgeois development and which had intercourse with one another on an equal footing, the demand took on necessarily a universal character reaching beyond the individual state, and freedom and equality were thus proclaimed as human rights.
But as regards the special bourgeois character of these human rights, it is significant that the American Const.i.tution which was the first to recognise these rights of man in the same breath established slavery among the colored people: cla.s.s privileges were cursed, race privileges were blessed.
As is well known, the bourgeois cla.s.s as soon as it escaped from the domination of the ruling cla.s.s in the cities, by which process the medieval stage pa.s.ses into the modern, has been steadily and inevitably dogged by a shadow, the proletariat. So also the bourgeois demands for equality are accompanied by the proletarian demands for equality. Directly the demand for the abolition of cla.s.s privileges was made by the bourgeois there succeeded the proletarian demand for the abolition of cla.s.ses themselves. This was first made in a religious form and was based upon early Christianity, but later derived its support from the bourgeois theories of equality. The proletarians take the bourgeois at their word, they demand the realisation of equality not merely apparently, not merely in the sphere of government but actually in the sphere of society and economics. Since the French bourgeoisie of the great Revolution placed equality in the foreground of their movement, the French proletariat has answered it blow for blow with the demand for social and economic equality, and equality has become the special battle cry of the French proletariat.
The demand for equality as made by the proletariat has a double significance. Either it is, as was particularly the case at first, in the Peasants" War, for example, a natural reaction against social inequalities which were obvious, against the contrast between rich and poor, masters and slaves, luxurious and hungry, and as such it is simply an expression of revolutionary instinct finding its justification in that fact and in that fact alone. On the other hand it may arise from reaction against the bourgeois claims of equality from which it deduces more or less just and far reaching claims, serves as a means of agitation to stir the workers, by means of a cry adopted by the capitalists themselves, against the capitalists, and in this case stands or falls with bourgeois equality itself. In both cases the real content of the proletarian claims of equality is the abolition of cla.s.ses. Every demand for equality transcending this is of necessity absurd. We have already given examples and can furnish many more when we come to consider Herr Duehring"s prophecies of the future.
So the notion of equality, in its proletarian as well as in its bourgeois form, is itself a historic product. Certain circ.u.mstances were required to produce it and these in their turn proceeded from a long anterior history. It is therefore anything but an eternal truth.
And if the public regards it as self-evident in one sense or another if it, as Marx remarks "already occupies the position of a popular prejudice" it is not due to its being an axiomatic truth but to the universal broadening of conception in accordance with the spirit of the eighteenth century. If Herr Duehring then can set up his two famous men in housekeeping on the grounds of equality, it is apparent that the prejudices of the ma.s.s of men in its favor is an antecedent condition. In fact Herr Duehring calls his philosophy the "natural"
because it proceeds from generally recognised things, which appear to him to be entirely natural. But why they seem to him to be natural he does not take the trouble to enquire.
_Freedom and Necessity._
(The former part of this section is taken up with a criticism of Herr Duehring"s knowledge of law of which he had boasted. It is a purely technical discussion and is of merely local interest. Having disposed of Duehring"s juristic claims Engels proceeds to discuss "Freedom and Necessity" as follows.)
One cannot deal properly with the question of morals and law without a discussion of free will, human responsibility, and the limits of necessity and freedom. The realistic philosophy has not only one but two solutions of these questions.