Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/21

 But the professors and doctors did not propose to break with the bourgeoisie. They wished to play a certain role, with the help of the Social Democracy, but they hoped through it to secure the recognition of the bourgeoisie. It was necessary first of all to make the Social Democracy "respectable," to render it admissable to the salons, to take from it its proletarian character.

It became necessary to impose a rule upon the bourgeois-ideological elements that began to have an influence in the Social Democracy. One of the most prominent and gifted of these salon-socialists was unquestionably the Berlin privat-docent, Eugene Duhring, a man of great intellectual powers, who would have been of great significance had he possessed something more of the Marx-Engels power of self-criticism and less of the delusions and froth of the German literary world. Duhring believed that his genius raised him above the necessity of studying fundamentally the relations upon which he philosophized. He was less of the Philistine and bolder than Schaeffle, and began to exercise great influence on the younger elements of the party in Berlin. He was no mean opponent, and many comrades urged Engels to meet him personally and lay bare the hollowness of his philosophy and at the same time sharply define the character of our movement.

This is the story of the origin of the "Anti-Duhring," as it was originally called. A second edition with the polemic portions omitted appeared in a few years under the title "The Developement of Socialism from Utopia to Science."

The occasion for the "Anti-Duhring" has been long forgotten. Not only is Duhring a thing of the past for the Social Democracy, but the whole throng of academic and platonic socialists have been frightened away by the anti-socialist legislation, which at least had the one good effect to show where the reliable supports of our movement are to be found. In spite of the change of conditions the book has not lest one iota of its significance to-day. Duhring was a many-sided man. He wrote on Mathematics and Mechanics, as well as on Philosophy and Political Economy, Jurisprudence, Ancient History, etc. Into all these spheres he was followed by Engels, who was as many-sided as Duhring, but in another way. Engels' many-sidedness was united with a fundamental thoroughness which in these days of specialization is found only in a few cases and was rare even at that time. Modern science partakes of the character of the modern manner of