Yang Hongyuan: The Dialectical Relationship Between Economic Base and Superstructure in "Anti-Dühring"
Certain fundamental principles, as primary components of a theoretical system, play a crucial role in understanding and grasping the external world. Within the basic principles of Marxist philosophy, the dialectical relationship between the productive forces and the relations of production, and that between the economic base and the superstructure, are frequently cited and applied when examining the basic features and developmental direction of society; they provide a reliable internal basis for such inquiries. However, in the process of applying these fundamental principles to analyze social development, certain erroneous tendencies—such as subjectivism, one-sidedness, dogmatism, and formalism—exist to a specific extent. The root cause lies primarily in a superficial understanding of these principles, a failure to fully comprehend the era in which they were produced, and an inability to integrate them with the specific realities to which they relate. Consequently, returning to the classic works that revealed the principle of the dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure, and comprehensively tracing the positive theoretical conclusions reached by Engels in Anti-Dühring through his critique of Dühring's "political force theory"—including his so-called "force as purpose," "force as origin," and "force as harm" theories—will help us "know not only the what, but also the why" [1], thereby better engaging in the activity of understanding and transforming the world.
The Fallacy of Dühring’s Political Force Theory
The political force theory is the theoretical cornerstone and logical starting point of the "social economics" flaunted by Dühring. In his Course of National and Social Economy (1873), based on the idea that principles (i.e., natural laws) subsume social history, he argued that political force plays a decisive role in economic life. In Dühring's view, the entirety of social life, including political and economic life, is subject to the most general natural laws. Compared to the primary position of political life in human social existence, economic life is secondary and exists only as a cross-section of political life. Therefore, only by removing the intervention of the political state—especially interference in ownership based on force and associated with slavery and wage-dependency—can the natural laws of economics be found in the strictest sense. Looking at Dühring's aforementioned views, it is not difficult to find that, once the emphasis on the priority of natural laws is removed, nothing of substance remains. In fact, in capitalist society, the political force of the ruling class does not interfere with the operation of the existing economic system; rather, it serves as a tool to maintain it at all times. As Engels stated: "Force... only protects exploitation, but does not cause it; the relationship between capital and wage labor is the basis of his exploitation, and this relationship is produced via a purely economic path and not at all via the path of force."
Political force is an extremely unique concept in Dühring’s theoretical system. Not only are all economic phenomena attributed to it, but all forms of ownership in history are reduced to "ownership based on force"—that is, the enslavement of man by man. Engels argued that this "force as purpose" theory is a typical form of idealism. Various facts of enslavement and oppression prove that economic interest is the purpose, while political force is merely the means to achieve that purpose. Similarly, directly equating "ownership based on force" with the enslavement of man by man reverses the true relationship between economic interests and political force. From slavery in ancient Rome to modern slavery in the United States, slave owners could only use slaves on the premise of possessing the necessary productive forces and means of subsistence to command slave labor. Although these assets, which exceed the average level, can be obtained through forceful plunder, they must always be produced by labor first. Furthermore, political force is by no means the "origin" or "original sin" [2] as Dühring claimed. The reason political force depends on economic power is that the realization of force must resort to certain tools, and the latter must rely on economic power for their production. Nor is political force entirely harmful to social history; historical facts regarding its role in promoting historical development and social progress are found everywhere. "The ruled and the exploited have at all times been far more numerous than the rulers and the exploiters, so that the real power has always been in the hands of the former. This simple fact alone is enough to demonstrate the absurdity of the whole force theory."
The Determinative Nature of Economic Interests and Economic Power
As Engels rightly said: "The 'system' of Herr Dühring which is being criticised covers a very wide theoretical domain; and this has compelled me to follow him everywhere and to oppose my conceptions to his. As a result, negative criticism has become positive criticism." Through the critique of Dühring’s political force theory, Engels further elucidated the decisive role of economic interests over the means of force, the dominance of economic power over the tools of force, and the counter-action of political force on economic development, profoundly revealing the interaction and mutual influence between the economic base and the superstructure. Engels analyzed that the emergence of private property can be traced back to the period of the primitive commune. The development of social production promoted the expansion of the division of labor and the emergence of surplus products, leading to a gradual transition from collective labor to individual labor, which in turn brought the system of equal distribution of property to an end. Simultaneously, the expansion of the division of labor caused exchange to develop from occurring between different communes to within the same commune, intensifying property inequality among commune members and ultimately leading to the emergence of private ownership. After simple commodity production disintegrated communal land ownership, it underwent a long historical process to transform into capitalist production. Under the operation of the law of value, competition among commodity producers appeared, eventually leading to the birth of the wage-labor system.
In essence, the formation and development of capitalism is itself the history of the bourgeoisie, fully demonstrating that economic interests fundamentally determine the means of force, rather than the other way around. Engels pointed out that the success of the bourgeois revolution depended, in the final analysis, on economic factors. In their struggle against the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie used as their weapon the economic power that grew continuously due to industrial development and commercial expansion, whereas the means of force were frequently used by the feudal aristocracy. Even when resorting to the means of force in a social revolution, the purpose is not to make economic development adapt to political conditions, but to discard all old political matters and create a political and legal environment compatible with economic conditions so that they may fully develop. As the development of the productive forces continues to break through the political "shell" [3] of capitalist rule, the bourgeoisie increasingly becomes a class of fixed-income earners detached from productive activity, becoming superfluous and even an obstacle to society, while creating a new class—the proletariat—through purely economic means. When the sum of the productive forces possessed by the bourgeoisie exceeds its capacity to manage them, leading to the transformation or even the demise of the entire capitalist society, no means of force will be of any avail in saving it. Furthermore, to further illustrate that the economic base determines the superstructure, Engels specifically traced the evolution of weapons in European land and naval forces to confirm that "economic conditions provide the equipment and maintain the tools of force."
The Relative Independence of Politics
While emphasizing that the economic base determines the superstructure, Engels also affirmed the relative independence of the superstructure and its counter-action and influence on the economic base. To this end, he systematically clarified the historical role of political force by starting with the primary formation paths of the ruling class (i.e., relations of rule and relations of enslavement). On the one hand, political rule is established upon the execution of certain social functions, and can only be maintained in this way. Historically, although universal equality of social status existed among members within the primitive commune, individual members had already begun to undertake certain tasks to maintain the public interest, such as resolving disputes, preventing abuses of power, supervising the exercise of power, and performing rituals. These positions, endowed with a certain full authority, constituted the seeds of state power. Subsequently, the gradual improvement of the productive forces, the increase in population, and the emergence of new divisions of labor led to the formation of various interest groups and their representative bodies within different communes. These bodies became increasingly indispensable due to the hereditary nature of positions and the increase in interest conflicts between different groups; they became special and even opposite entities to each commune, thus gaining greater independence. Consequently, the "public servants" who performed certain social functions became the ruling class, and these functions were correspondingly transformed into political rule. In other words, once force as political rule is formed on the basis of certain economic and social functions, it possesses relative independence.
On the other hand, the formation of a ruling class also depended on the appearance of slaves. Engels continued to write that, under the historical premises of ancient society, the progress toward a society constructed upon class antagonisms could only be completed by resorting to slavery. As the productive forces developed to the point where the products created far exceeded the amount required to maintain labor power, and human society reached the capacity to utilize such labor power, the primitive communes and their various interest groups could not provide the necessary surplus disposable labor. Prisoners of war and others, who in the past were killed, were put to work; the system of slavery and the ruling class thus emerged. The initial economic progress of slavery was, in a context of extremely low labor productivity, to develop and improve social production with the help of slave labor. Its formation fully demonstrates that political force was compelled to serve economic development. By the same token, the various antagonisms between the ruling class and the oppressed class can be explained by the relative underdevelopment of the productivity of labor. As the "tool by which social movement carves out its path and destroys rigid, dying political forms," the victory of every historical violent revolution was intended to liberate the productive forces and bring immense spiritual encouragement to the revolutionary class. The same applies to the overthrow of bourgeois rule and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat through violent revolution; it will inevitably be able to eliminate the old relations of production and open the path for the development of new productive forces.
(The author is the Deputy Director of the Culture Research Center and a Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Source: China Social Sciences Net - China Social Sciences Today, August 5, 2025. Online Editor: Tongxin