"The absence of natural and intelligible logic which characterises these dialectical frills and mazes and conceptual arabesques... 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 preconception, all is to be sought in each and each in all, and that therefore, according to this mixed and misconceived idea, it all amounts to one and the same thing in the end" {D. K. G. 496}.
This insight into the well-known philosophical preconception also enables Herr Dühring to prophesy with assurance what will be the "end" of Marx's economic philosophising, 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 divine what is still to come in the two" (final) "volumes" [61] {496}.
This, however, is not the first time that Herr Dühring's writings are revealed to us as belonging to the "things" in which "contradiction is objectively present and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form"{479-80}. But this does not prevent him from going on victoriously as follows:
"Yet sound logic will in all probability triumph over its caricature...
This presence of superiority and this mysterious dialectical rubbish will tempt no one who has even a modicum of sound judgment left to have anything to do ... with these deformities of thought and style. With the demise of the last relics of the dialectical follies this means of duping ...
will lose its deceptive influence, and no one will any longer believe that he has to torture himself in order to get behind some profound piece of wisdom where the husked kernel of the abstruse things reveals at best the features of ordinary theories if not of absolute commonplaces... It is quite impossible to reproduce the" (Marxian) "maze in accordance with the Logos doctrine without prostituting sound logic" {D. K. C. 497}. Marx's method, according to Herr Dühring, consists in "performing dialectical miracles for his faithful followers" {498}, and so on.
We are not in any way concerned here as yet with the correctness or incorrectness of the economic results of Marx's researches, but only with the dialectical method used by Marx. But this much is certain: most readers of Capital will have learnt for the first time from Herr Dühring what it is in fact that they have read. And among them will also be Herr Dühring himself, who in the year 1867 (Ergänzungsblätter III, No. 3) was still able to provide what for a thinker of his calibre was a relatively rational review of the book; and he did this without first being obliged as he now declares is indispensable, to translate the Marxian argument into Dühringian language. And though even then he committed the blunder of identifying Marxian dialectics with the Hegelian, 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 detail by lampooning the former in general.
At any rate, the most astonishing piece of information given by Herr Dühring is the statement that from the Marxian standpoint "it all amounts to one and the same thing in the end" {496}, that therefore to Marx, for example, capitalists and wage-workers, feudal, capitalist and socialist modes of production are also "one and the same thing" --no doubt in the end even Marx and Herr Dühring are "one and the same thing". 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 mental irresponsibility that, as a result of a certain mixed and misconceived idea, what he says and does is "one and the same thing"in the end.
We have here a sample of what Herr Dühring calls "my historical depiction in the grand style" {556}, or "the summary treatment 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 higher and nobler style is the only one compatible with the interests of complete truth and with one's duty to the public which is free from the bonds of the guilds" {507}.
Historical depiction in the grand style and the summary settlement with genus and type is indeed very convenient for Herr Dühring, inasmuch as this method enables him to neglect all known facts as micrological and equate them to zero, 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 style, to resort to general phrases and finally thunder back denunciations at Herr Dühring --in a word, as they say, engage in a clanging match, which is not to everyone's taste. We must therefore be grateful to Herr Dühring for occasionally, by way of exception, dropping the higher and nobler style, and giving us at least two examples of the unsound Marxian Logos doctrine.
"How comical is the reference to the confused, hazy Hegelian notion that quantity changes into quality, and that therefore an advance, when it reaches a certain size, becomes capital by this quantitative increase alone" {498}.
In this "expurgated" presentation by Herr Dühring that statement certainly seems curious enough. Let us see how it looks in the original, in Marx.
