The Equality Thought In Anti-dühring And Its Contemporary Value

Engels was one of the few western thinkers who severely criticized the topics of fairness and freedom,but this did not mean that Engels was against equality itself.Engels appeared to criticize Dühring’s idea of equality,but actually,he was against the petty-bourgeois socialist theory prevailing in society at that time.On the basis of inheriting the thought of his predecessors and taking criticizing Dühring’s wrong idea as the target,Engels created a research paradigm different from the western political philosophy based on the methodology of historical materialism.The biggest mistake of Dühring was to reverse the relationship between economics and politics,replacing class struggle with moral suasion.He believed that politics determines economics,the political imbalance leads to economic inequality,equality and justice are the ultimate goal of socialism,as long as the design of equality at the political level is realized,a“just” society will come,without the need to overthrow the capitalist mode of production or carry out class struggle.Engels thoroughly refuted the equality theory of Dühring and proposed the equality appeal of the proletariat from aspects of methodology,world view,epistemology and concrete equality rules.“Realistic man” is the starting point and foothold of Engels’ research on equality thought.“Equality” and “justice” are not the goals and slogans that communists pursue,but the natural outcome of the elimination of the state and class.Therefore,Engels proposed that equality should be the product of society and history;people should seek the possibility of realizing equality from the material structure of society and economic facts,instead of just staying on the improvement of the political system;the realization of equality in the real sense must be based on the elimination of classes,without the elimination of classes,any equality principle would become empty talk;only in the communist society,people can be “free” and be “equal” in the real sense.It is of great theoretical and practical value to study the equality thought in Anti-Dühring.Compared with other works of Marx and Engels,the description of equality thought in this book is more systematic and complete,and the viewpoint is more distinct.In this book,Engels developed a different research idea,realized the shift of studying equality theory from political perspective to economic perspective,and from distribution perspective to production perspective,providing a scientific solution for the realization of social equality.Anti-Dühring is closely related to equality thought in articles like Das Kapital and Critique of the Gotha Programme,and its philosophical essence is in line with the philosophical thought contained in The German Ideology.The interpretation of “labor has no value” in Anti-Dühring is an important advance to understand the criticism of the “iron law of wages” in Critique of the Gotha Programme.Besides,the equality thought in this book also helps to respond to the doubts of Western Marxists,proving that Marx has put forward a clear principle of justice,the communist movement has moral faith,and there is no conflict between normative and scientific methods in Marxist theory.The publication of Anti-Dühring aroused a great response in history.The clear content of the book corrected the communists’ misunderstanding of Marxist theory at that time to some extent,eliminated the wrong influence of Dühring’s equality thought,and promoted the development of the Communist movement.Even to this day,the equality thought in this book still has great enlightening significance for the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics.With the transformation of the principal contradiction in Chinese society,people’s demands for social fairness and justice are becoming more and more urgent.Having achieved great achievements in its anti-poverty practice,the Communist Party of China will still adhere to the basic stand and viewpoint of Marx and Engels on equality on the road to common prosperity in the future.