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, except that
Herr Duehring does not like to tackle the answer to his own question
how the capitalists are in a position to sell products of labor for
more than the natural cost of production, in short Herr Duehring
shirks an explanation of profit. He takes the only path open to him, a
short cut, and simply declares that profit is the product of "force."
This has been stated by Herr Duehring in his economic theory under the
statement "force distributes." That is all very well; but the question
still persists what does force distribute? There must be something to
distribute otherwise force cannot distribute it. The profit which the
competing capitalists pocket is something actual and tangible. Force
may take but it cannot create. And if Herr Duehring still obstinately
persists in his statement that "force" takes the profits for the
entrepreneurs he is as silent as the grave as to whence it takes it.
Where there is nothing the Kaiser, as all other "force," ceases to
operate. From nothing comes nothing, particularly nothing in the shape
of profits. If capitalistic private property has not practical
actuality, and cannot realize itself, except by the exercise of
indirect force over men, the question still persists, in the first
place, how did the capitalist government come into possession of this
"force" and in the second place how has this force been transformed
into profits, and in the third place where does it get these profits?

(The remainder of this section is merely further elaboration of this
idea with more caustic satire at the expense of the antagonist of
Engels.)

_IX. Natural Economic Laws--Ground Rent._

(In this chapter Engels proceeds to examine what Herr Duehring called
the "fundamental laws" of his theory of economic science.)

LAW NO. I. "The productivity of economic instruments, natural
resources and human force are capable of being increased by invention
and discovery."

We are amazed. Herr Duehring treats us like that joke of Moliere on
the parvenu who was informed that he had talked prose all his life
without being aware of it. That inventions and discoveries increase
the produ