Quiz: Landmarks of Scientific Socialism (Anti-Dühring, abridged)

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. When is Engels’s first preface dated?

   London, 11 June 1878 London, 1894 Paris, 25 December 1848 Zurich, 1 September 1883
2. 2. What criticism of Engels does Lewis make in his appendix?

   That he misread Darwin and applied the struggle for existence directly to human society That he wrote too little on economics and left that subject almost entirely to Marx That he was too cautious, and expected revolution only after generations of slow struggle That he never shed the old “forty-eight” spirit, the expectation of imminent revolution
3. 3. Which everyday example does Engels use for the negation of the negation?

   A tree that sheds its leaves each autumn and puts out new ones every spring A seed that is ground into flour, which is then baked into bread and eaten Water heated to boiling point, which suddenly turns from a liquid into steam A grain of barley negated by the plant, which in turn yields many grains
4. 4. What does Engels say about Marx and mathematics in the 1885 preface?

   Marx knew no mathematics Marx rejected mathematics Marx was a sound mathematician Marx learned mathematics from Engels
5. 5. What is religion, according to Engels?

   The highest expression of human truth, which philosophy translates into concepts A deliberate fraud, invented by priests to keep the people submissive to their rulers The fantastic reflection in men’s minds of the external forces ruling their daily lives A product of climate and geography, differing among peoples by natural necessity
6. 6. Which story does Engels mock as Dühring’s illustration of how force created slavery?

   The Roman conquest of Gaul under Julius Caesar Cain and Abel Romulus and Remus Robinson Crusoe making Friday his slave
7. 7. What has all morality been up to now, according to Engels?

   A purely individual matter, decided by each person’s own conscience and reason A set of eternal principles, everywhere the same, which every age has merely restated The invention of priests, imposed on the people to keep them obedient to the throne Class morality, justifying the dominant class or the revolt of the oppressed
8. 8. Who was Dühring when, in 1875, he proclaimed his conversion to socialism?

   A Reichstag deputy for Berlin A privat docent at Berlin University A factory owner A Catholic priest
9. 9. What role does force play in history, in Marx’s words as Engels quotes them?

   It is the midwife of the old society pregnant with the new It is always and everywhere reactionary in its effects It is the source of all value It is the basis of the economy
10. 10. According to Engels, did Marx use the negation of the negation to prove that capitalism must end?

    Yes: it was his main proof, from which the expropriation then followed Yes: he took it ready-made from Hegel and fitted the economic facts to the formula No: he rejected Hegel’s dialectic altogether and never used the phrase in Capital No: he described a historical process and only then called it a negation of the negation
11. 11. To what does Dühring attribute crises, and how does Engels answer?

    To underconsumption; Engels replies it is as old as exploitation, while crises are new To overproduction of luxuries; Engels agrees, but adds that the rich themselves are to blame To shortages of gold; Engels replies that the banks can create credit and money at will To bad harvests and dear food; Engels agrees, adding that famines caused them in earlier ages
12. 12. Which example does Engels use in discussing whether truths might differ on other heavenly bodies?

    Water flowing uphill Fire freezing Twice two making five The sun rising in the west
13. 13. Whom does Engels defend against Dühring’s misreadings in natural philosophy?

    Lamarck Newton Darwin Haeckel
14. 14. Which physical theory does Engels defend in the section on natural philosophy, citing the heat needed to melt ice?

    The ether theory The mechanical theory of heat The caloric theory of heat The theory of phlogiston
15. 15. How can a planned society reckon the labour in its products, according to Engels?

    Directly in labour-hours, without the detour of value By an average of past market values, recorded and fixed by a central authority By the prices that products fetch when sold at auction in the communal markets Only in gold, since a common money measure remains indispensable in any society
16. 16. Why does Lewis think Engels’s attack on “eternal truths” matters to American socialists in 1907?

    Many recruits came from democratic idealism and made those “eternal truths” their platform American socialists had already abandoned idealism and needed only Engels’s economics Dühring’s books had just been translated and were widely read among American trade unionists American courts were invoking the same “eternal truths” to strike down laws protecting labour
17. 17. How does Engels define life?

    The capacity of a body to move itself, independently of external mechanical forces Mode of existence of albuminous bodies, constantly renewing their components The working of a vital force in matter, distinct from chemical and physical processes The faculty of sensation, present in every organism that responds to its surroundings
18. 18. In what does Engels say the real unity of the universe consists?

    In thought In its mere existence In God In its materiality
19. 19. Which recent scientific discovery does Lewis say “was in itself sufficient to revolutionise” existing theories?

    Radium Relativity X-rays The electron
20. 20. What part did Marx play in the book, according to Engels?

    Marx saw none of the manuscript, being absorbed in finishing the later volumes of Capital Marx drafted the philosophical section, and Engels merely revised his manuscript for the press Engels read him the manuscript, and Marx wrote a chapter on political economy Marx supplied the section on socialism, and Engels wrote the parts on philosophy and economics
21. 21. Which discovery made clear the nature of capitalist exploitation, according to the Introduction?

    The theory of rent The discovery of surplus value Ricardo’s theory of value The law of supply and demand
22. 22. What does Engels say about the introduction of slavery under the conditions of its time?

    It never existed among Europeans It was a great step forward It was abolished by Christianity It was always a pure evil without historical role
23. 23. In which group of sciences, according to Engels, are “final truths of last instance” rarest?

    The historical sciences Physics Pure mathematics and logic Astronomy
24. 24. How does Engels, following Hegel, define freedom?

    The absence of all state coercion Independence from natural laws Doing whatever one happens to want The recognition of necessity
25. 25. Which example of quantity turning into quality does Engels take from Napoleon?

    The Grand Army in Russia: so large that its numbers became a burden rather than a strength French cavalry against Mamelukes: a thousand Frenchmen beat fifteen hundred better riders Infantry squares at Waterloo: a few hundred men in formation held off thousands of horsemen Artillery at Austerlitz: a hundred guns massed together did more than the same guns dispersed
26. 26. Whose nebular hypothesis does Engels credit with proclaiming the origin of the solar system?

    Kant’s Descartes’s Newton’s Hegel’s
27. 27. What method of Dühring’s does Engels attack in the section on philosophy?

    Scepticism: denying that any knowledge of the world beyond the senses is possible Mysticism: deriving the laws of nature from revelation and religious feeling Apriorism: deriving the properties of the world from principles in the head Empiricism: collecting isolated facts without ever rising to general laws
28. 28. What does Engels say is the real content of the proletarian demand for equality?

    The demand for the abolition of classes Equal wages Equal votes only Equal religious and civil rights for all citizens
29. 29. What does Engels point out about Dühring’s society built from “two men”?

    Its elements are not two men but a man and a woman, a family Two such men would have no reason to cooperate unless they were brothers by birth Two men alone could never produce enough to allow any division of labour Two men are too few to form a society, which requires at least a village or a tribe
30. 30. What does Engels’s history of weapons show, beginning with gunpowder in the fourteenth century?

    Wars are decided by the courage and discipline of soldiers, not by their equipment Force depends on economic production, since weapons must be produced Force is independent of the economy, since conquest can create any economic order Military technique changes only when generals invent new tactics in the field