Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/171

 of the two differentials of x and y, is $0⁄0$ but $0⁄0$ is fixed as the expression of $y⁄x$. That this relation between two vanished quantities, the fixed moment of their vanishing, is a contradiction I merely mention in passing, it should give us as little uneasiness as it has given mathematics for the two hundred or so years past. What have I done except to negate x and y; not as in metaphysics so as not to trouble myself any further about them, but in a manner demanded by the problem? Instead of x and y, I have therefore their negation dx and dy in the formulæ or equations before me. I now calculate further with these formulae. I treat dx and dy as real quantities, as quantities subject to certain exceptional laws, and at a certain point I negate the negation, that is, I integrate the differential formula. I get instead of dx and dy the real quantities x and y again, and am thereby no further forward than at the beginning, but I have thereby solved the problem over which ordinary geometry and algebra would probably have gnashed their teeth in vain.

It is not otherwise in history. All civilised peoples began with common property in land. Among all peoples which pass beyond a certain primitive stage the common property in land becomes a fetter upon production in the process of agricultural development. It is cast aside, negated, and, after shorter or longer intervening periods, is transformed into private property. But at a higher stage, through the development still further of agriculture, private property becomes in its turn a bar to production, as is to-day the case with both large and small land proprietorship. The next step, to negate it in turn,