And now see how puerile is Herr Dühring's idea that society can take possession of all means of production in the aggregate without revolutionising from top to bottom the old method of production and first of all putting an end to the old division of labour; that everything will be in order once "natural opportunities and personal capabilities are taken into account"{D. C. 259} -- that therefore whole masses of entities will remain, as in the past, subjected to the production of one single article; whole "populations" {275}
will be engaged in a single branch of production, and humanity continue to be divided, as in the past, into a number of different crippled "economic species" {329}, for there still are "porters" and "architects" {D. K.G.
500}. Society is to become master of the means of production as a whole, in order that each individual may remain the slave of his means of production, and have only a choice as to which means of production are to enslave him. And see also how Herr Dühring considers the separation of town and country as "inevitable in the nature of things" {D. C. 232}, and can find only a tiny palliative in schnaps-distilling and beet-sugar manufacturing -- two, in their connection specifically Prussian, branches of industry;how he makes the distribution of industry over the country dependent on certain future inventions and on the necessity of associating industry directly with the procurement of raw materials -- raw materials which are already used at an ever increasing distance from their place of origin!
And Herr Dühring finally tries to cover up his rear by assuring us that in the long run social wants will carry through the union between agriculture and industry even against economic considerations, as if this would be some economic sacrifice!
Certainly, to be able to see that the revolutionary elements which will do away with the old division of labour, along with the separation of town and country, and will revolutionise the whole of production; see that these elements are already contained in embryo in the production conditions of modern large-scale industry and that their development is hindered by the existing capitalist mode of production -- to be able to see these things, it is necessary to have a somewhat wider horizon than the sphere of jurisdiction of Prussian law, than the country where production of schnaps and beet-sugar are the key industries, and where commercial crises can be studied on the book market. To be able to see these things it is necessary to have some knowledge of real large-scale industry in its historical growth and in its present actual form, especially in the one country where it has its home and where alone it has attained its classical development. Then no one will think of attempting to vulgarise modern scientific socialism and to degrade it into Herr Dühring's specifically Prussian socialism .
IV.
DISTRIBUTION W e 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 of evil, and must disappear. We now find that Herr Dühring's "socialitarian" system is nothing more than the carrying through 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 robust facts are dealt with, and in which consequently "rational fantasy" {D. Ph. 46} should give but little scope to the soaring of its free soul, because the danger of making a disgraceful blunder is too great. It is quite otherwise with distribution -- which in Herr Dühring's view has no connection whatever with production and is determined not by production but by a pure act of the will -- distribution is the predestined field of his "social alchemising" {D. K. G. 237}.
To the equal obligation to produce corresponds the equal right to consume, exercised in an organised manner in the economic commune and in the trading commune embracing a large number of economic communes. "Labour" is here "exchanged for other labour on the basis of equal valuation... Service and counterservice represent here real equality between quantities of labour"{D. C. 256}. And this "equalisation of human energies" applies "whether the individuals have in fact done more or less, or perhaps even nothing at all" {D. Ph. 281}; for all performances, in so far as they involve time and energy, can be regarded as labour done -- therefore even playing bowls or going for a walk {see D. C. 266}. This exchange, however, does not take place between individuals as the community is the owner of all means of production and consequently also 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" {326}. Wholesale trade will be organised on the same lines: "The system of the free economic society ... consequently remains a vast exchange institution, whose operations are carried out on the basis provided by the precious metals. It is insight into the inevitable necessity of this fundamental quality which distinguishes our scheme from all those foggy notions which cling even to the most rational forms of current socialist ideas" {324}.
