Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/232

 take their stand on this relation and each one of them maintains his position. A certain amount of profit is a necessity of the dominant economic condition."

We know quite well that the entrepreneurs are in a position to sell the products of labor at a cost above the natural cost of production. Surely Herr Duehring does not think so meanly of his public as to hold the position that profit on capital stands above competition as the King of Prussia used to stand above the law. The proceeding by which the King of Prussia reached his position of superiority to the law we all know, the methods by which profit has come to be mightier than competition is just what Herr Duehring has to explain and what he stubbornly refuses to explain. It is no argument when he says that the entrepreneurs trade from this position and each one of them maintains his own place. If we take him at his word, how is it possible for a number of people each to be able to trade only on certain terms and yet each one of them to keep his position? The gildmen of the Middle Ages and the French nobility of 1789 operated from a decidedly superior position, and yet they came to grief. The Prussian army at Jena occupied an advantageous position and yet it had to abandon it and surrender piecemeal. It is not enough to tell us that a certain measure of profit is a necessary concomitant of domination in the economic sphere, it is necessary to tell us why. We do not get a step further by the statement of Duehring. "Capitalistic superiority is inseparable from landlordism. A portion of the peasantry is transformed in the cities into factory hands and in the final analysis into factory material. Profit appears as another form of rent." This is a mere assertion and only repeats what should have been explained and proved. We can come to no other conclusion, then,