master
only as long as he has the power, and for this reason he cannot
complain of the use of force if he is banished.... Force upholds him,
force throws him down, everything goes according to a straight and
naturally appointed path." And thus again inequality is transformed
into equality, but not into the old materialistic equality of
speechless, primitive men, but into the higher equality of organised
society. The oppressor is oppressed, it is negation of the negation.

We have then, as regards Rousseau, not merely a method of thought
which is quite analogous to that pursued in Marx's "Capital," but also
a whole series of single dialectic turns of which Marx avails himself:
Processes, which are antagonistic in their nature, containing a
contradiction in themselves, are transformed from one extreme to its
opposite, finally, as the quintessence of the whole, negation of the
negation. Although Rousseau in 1754 could not speak the jargon of
Hegel, he was then, at a period twenty-three years before the birth of
Hegel, deeply infected with the Hegel contagion, the dialectic of
contradiction, doctrine of logic, theology, etc. And if Duehring in
his misapplication of Rousseau's theory of equality, operates with his
two victorious men, he having lost his feet, falls, of necessity into
the arms of the negation of the negation.

The conditions under which the equality of the two men flourishes and
which is set forth as an ideal condition is shown on page 271 of the
Philosophy as the original condition. This original condition on page
279 is of necessity destroyed by the "robber system"--first negation.
But we have now, thanks to the philosophy of reality, arrived at the
point of abolishing the "robber system" and substituting for it the
economic commune discovered by Herr Duehring--negation of the
negation, equality on a higher plane.

What is the negation of the negation, therefore? It is a very far
reaching, and, just, for this reason, a very important law of
development of nature, human history and thought, a law which we see
realised in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in geology, in
mathematics, in history, and philosophy, and which Herr Duehring
himself, in spite of his opposition and resistance, must follow, after
his own fashion. It is evident that I say nothing of the special
development of the grain of barley from the germ to the crop bearing
plant, if I say it is negation of the negation. Since the integral
cal