IV
[ 1. Instruments of Production and Forms of Property]
[...]a 1401 From the first point, there follows the premise of a highly developed division of labour and an extensive commerce; from the second, the locality. In the first case the individuals must have been brought together, in the second they are instruments of production alongside the given instrument of production.
Here, therefore, emerges the difference between natural instruments of production and those created by civilisation. The field (water, etc.) can be regarded as a natural instrument of production. In the first case, that of the natural instrument of production, individuals are subservient to nature; in the second, to a product of labour. In the first case, therefore, property (landed property) appears as direct natural domination, in the second, as domination of labour, particularly of accumulated labour, capital. The first case presupposes that the individuals are united by some bond: family, tribe, the land itself, etc.; the second, that they are independent of one another and are only held together by exchange. In the first case, what is involved is chiefly an exchange between men and nature in which the labour of the former is exchanged for the products of the latter; in the second, it is predominantly an exchange of men among themselves. In the first case, average human common sense is adequate — physical activity and mental activity are not yet separated; in the second, the division between physical and mental labour must already have been effected in practice. In the first case, the domination of the proprietor over the propertyless may be based on personal relations, on a kind of community; in the second, it must have taken on a material shape in a third party — money. In the first case, small-scale industry exists, but determined by the utilisation of the natural instrument of production and therefore without the distribution of labour among various individuals; in the second, industry exists only in and through the division of labour.
|41| Our investigation hitherto started from the instruments of production, and it has already shown that private property was a necessity for certain industrial stages. In industrie extractive[28] private property still coincides with labour; in small-scale industry and all agriculture up till now property is the necessary consequence of the existing instruments of production; the contradiction between the instrument of production and private property is only the product of large-scale industry, which, moreover, must be highly developed to produce this contradiction. Thus only with large-scale industry does the abolition of private property become possible.
[2. The Division of Material and Mental Labour. Separation of Town and Country. The Guild-System]
The most important division of material and mental labour is the separation of town and country. The contradiction between town and country begins with the transition from barbarism to civilisation, from tribe to state, from locality to nation, and runs through the whole history of civilisation to the present day (the Anti-Corn Law League[29]).
The advent of the town implies, at the same time, the necessity of administration, police, taxes, etc., in short, of the municipality [des Gemeindewesens], and thus of politics in general. Here first became manifest the division of the population into two great classes, which is directly based on the division of labour and on the instruments of production. The town is in actual fact already the concentration of the population, of the instruments of production, of capital, of pleasures, of needs, while the country demonstrates just the opposite fact, isolation and separation. The contradiction between town and country can only exist within the framework of private property. It is the most crass expression of the subjection of the individual under the division of labour, under a definite activity forced upon him — a subjection which makes one man into a restricted town-animal, another into a restricted country-animal, and daily creates anew the conflict between their interests. Labour is here again the chief thing, power over individuals, and as long as this power exists, private property must exist. The abolition of the contradiction between town and country is one of the first conditions |42) of communal life, a condition which again depends on a mass of material premises and which cannot be fulfilled by the mere will, as anyone can see at the first glance. (These conditions have still to be set forth.) The separation of town and country can also be understood as the separation of capital and landed property, as the beginning of the existence and development of capital independent of landed property — the beginning of property having its basis only in labour and exchange.
In the towns which, in the Middle Ages, did not derive ready-made from an earlier period but were formed anew by the serfs who had become free, the particular labour of each man was his only property apart from the small capital he brought with him, consisting almost solely of the most necessary tools of his craft. The competition of serfs constantly escaping into the town, the constant war of the country against the towns and thus the necessity of an organised municipal military force, the bond of common ownership in a particular kind of labour, the necessity of common buildings for the sale of their wares at a time when craftsmen were also traders, and the consequent exclusion of the unauthorised from these buildings, the conflict among the interests of the various crafts, the necessity of protecting their laboriously acquired skill, and the feudal organisation of the whole of the country: these were the causes of the union of the workers of each craft in guilds. In this context we do not have to go further into the manifold modifications of the guild-system, which arise through later historical developments. The flight of the serfs into the towns went on without interruption right through the Middle Ages. These serfs, persecuted by their lords in the country, came separately into the towns, where they found an organised community, against which they were powerless and in which they had to subject themselves to the station assigned to them by the demand for their labour and the interest of their organised urban competitors. These workers, entering separately, were never able to attain to any power, since, if their labour was of the guild type which had to be learned, the guildmasters bent them to their will and organised them according to their interest; or if their labour was not such as had to be learned, and therefore not of the guild type, they were day-labourers, never managed to organise, but remained an unorganised rabble. The need for day-labourers in the towns created the rabble.
These towns were true "unions",[30] called forth by the direct |43| need of providing for the protection of property, and of multiplying the means of production and defence of the separate members. The rabble of these towns was devoid of any power, composed as it was of individuals strange to one another who had entered separately, and who stood unorganised over against an organised power, armed for war, and jealously watching over them. The journeymen and apprentices were organised in each craft as it best suited the interest of the masters. The patriarchal relations existing between them and their masters gave the latter a double power — on the one hand because of the direct influence they exerted on the whole life of the journeymen, and on the other because, for the journeymen who worked with the same master, it was a real bond which held them together against the journeymen of other masters and separated them from these. And finally, the journeymen were bound to the existing order even by their interest in becoming masters themselves. While, therefore, the rabble at least carried out revolts against the whole municipal order, revolts which remained completely ineffective because of its powerlessness, the journeymen never got further than small acts of insubordination within separate guilds, such as belong to the very nature of the guild-system. The great risings of the Middle Ages all radiated from the country, but equally remained totally ineffective because of the isolation and consequent crudity of the peasants.3'—
Capital in these towns was a naturally evolved capital, consisting of a house, the tools of the craft, and the natural, hereditary customers; and not being realisable, on account of the backwardness of intercourse and the lack of circulation, it had to be handed down from father to son. Unlike modern capital, which can be assessed in money and which may be indifferently invested in this thing or that, this capital was directly connected with the particular work of the owner, inseparable from it and to this extent estate capital.—
In the towns, the division of labour between the [44] individual guilds was as yet very little developed and, in the guilds themselves, it did not exist at all between the individual workers. Every workman had to be versed in a whole round of tasks, had to be able to make everything that was to be made with his tools. The limited intercourse and the weak ties between the individual towns, the lack of population and the narrow needs did not allow of a more advanced division of labour, and therefore every man who wished to become a master had to be proficient in the whole of his craft. Medieval craftsmen therefore had an interest in their special work and in proficiency in it, which was capable of rising to a limited artistic sense. For this very reason, however, every medieval craftsman was completely absorbed in his work, to which he had a complacent servile relationship, and in which he was involved to a far greater extent than the modern worker, whose work is a matter of indifference to him.—
[ 3. Further Division of Labour. Separation of Commerce and Industry. Division of Labour between the Various Towns. Manufacture]
The next extension of the division of labour was the separation of production and intercourse, the formation of a special class of merchants; a separation which, in the towns bequeathed by a former period, had been handed down (among other things with the Jews) and which very soon appeared in the newly formed ones. With this there was given the possibility of commercial communications transcending the immediate neighbourhood, a possibility the realisation of which depended on the existing means of communication, the state of public safety in the countryside, which was determined by political conditions (during the whole of the Middle Ages, as is well known, the merchants travelled in armed caravans), and on the cruder or more advanced needs (determined by the stage of culture attained) of the region accessible to intercourse.
With intercourse vested in a particular class, with the extension of trade through the merchants beyond the immediate surroundings of the town, there immediately appears a reciprocal action between production and intercourse. The towns enter into relations with one another, new tools are brought from one town into the other, and the separation between production and intercourse soon calls forth a new division of production between |45| the individual towns, each of which is soon exploiting a predominant branch of industry. The local restrictions of earlier times begin gradually to be broken down.—
It depends purely on the extension of intercourse whether the productive forces evolved in a locality, especially inventions, are lost for later development or not. As long as there exists no intercourse transcending the immediate neighbourhood, every invention must be made separately in each locality, and mere chances such as irruptions of barbaric peoples, even ordinary wars, are sufficient to cause a country with advanced productive forces and needs to have to start right over again from the beginning. In primitive history every invention had to be made daily anew and in each locality independently. That even with a relatively very extensive commerce, highly developed productive forces are not safe from complete destruction, is proved by the Phoenicians, whose inventions were for the most part lost for a long time to come through the ousting of this nation from commerce, its conquest by Alexander and its consequent decline. Likewise, for instance, glass staining in the Middle Ages. Only when intercourse has become world intercourse and has as its basis large-scale industry, when all nations are drawn into the competitive struggle, is the permanence of the acquired productive forces assured.—
The immediate consequence of the division of labour between the various towns was the rise of manufactures, branches of production which had outgrown the guild-system. Intercourse with foreign nations was the historical premise for the first flourishing of manufactures, in Italy and later in Flanders. In other countries, England and France for example, manufactures were at first confined to the home market. Besides the premises already mentioned manufactures presuppose an already advanced concentration of population, particularly in the countryside, and of capital, which began to accumulate in the hands of individuals, partly in the guilds in spite of the guild regulations, partly among the merchants.
1461 The kind of labour which from the first presupposed machines, even of the crudest sort, soon showed itself the most capable of development. Weaving, earlier carried on in the country by the peasants as a secondary occupation to procure their clothing, was the first labour to receive an impetus and a further development through the extension of intercourse. Weaving was the first and remained the principal manufacture. The rising demand for clothing materials, consequent on the growth of population, the growing accumulation and mobilisation of natural capital through accelerated circulation, and the demand for luxuries called forth by this and favoured generally by the gradual extension of intercourse, gave weaving a quantitative and qualitative stimulus, which wrenched it out of the form of production hitherto existing. Alongside the peasants weaving for their own use, who continued, and still continue, with this sort of work, there emerged a new class of weavers in the towns, whose fabrics were destined for the whole home market and usually for foreign markets too.
Weaving, an occupation demanding in most cases little skill and soon splitting up into countless branches, by its whole nature resisted the trammels of the guild. Weaving was, therefore, carried on mostly in villages and market centres, without guild organisation, which gradually became towns, and indeed the most flourishing towns in each land.
With guild-free manufacture, property relations also quickly changed. The first advance beyond naturally derived estate capital was provided by the rise of merchants, whose capital was from the beginning movable, capital in the modern sense as far as one can speak of it, given the circumstances of those times. The second advance came with manufacture, which again mobilised a mass of natural capital, and altogether increased the mass of movable capital as against that of natural capital.
At the same time, manufacture became a refuge of the peasants from the guilds which excluded them or paid them badly, just as earlier the guild-towns had served the peasants as a refuge |47| from the landlords.—
Simultaneously with the beginning of manufactures there was a period of vagabondage caused by the abolition of the feudal bodies of retainers, the disbanding of the armies consisting of a motley crowd that served the kings against their vassals, the improvement of agriculture, and the transformation of large strips of tillage into pasture land. From this alone it is clear that this vagabondage is strictly connected with the disintegration of the feudal system. As early as the thirteenth century we find isolated epochs of this kind, but only at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth does this vagabondage make a general and permanent appearance. These vagabonds, who were so numerous that, for instance, Henry VIII of England had 72,000 of them hanged,[32] were only prevailed upon to work with the greatest difficulty and through the most extreme necessity, and then only after long resistance. The rapid rise of manufactures, particularly in England, absorbed them gradually.—
With the advent of manufacture the various nations entered into competitive relations, a commercial struggle, which was fought out in wars, protective duties and prohibitions, whereas earlier the nations, insofar as they were connected at all, had carried on an inoffensive exchange with each other. Trade had from now on a political significance.
With the advent of manufacture the relations between worker and employer changed. In the guilds the patriarchal relations between journeyman and master continued to exist; in manufacture their place was taken by the monetary relations between worker and capitalist — relations which in the countryside and in small towns retained a patriarchal tinge, but in the larger, the real manufacturing towns, quite early lost almost all patriarchal complexion.
Manufacture and the movement of production in general received an enormous impetus through the extension of intercourse which came with the discovery of America and the sea-route to the East Indies. The new products imported thence, particularly the masses of gold and silver which came into circulation, had totally changed the position of the classes towards one another, dealing a hard blow to feudal landed property and to the workers; the expeditions of adventurers, colonisation, and above all the extension of markets into a world market, which had now become possible and was daily becoming more and more a fact, called forth a new phase 148 j of historical development, into which in general we need not here enter further. Through the colonisation of the newly discovered countries the commercial struggle of the nations against one another was given new fuel and accordingly greater extension and animosity.
The expansion of commerce and manufacture accelerated the accumulation of movable capital, while in the guilds, which were not stimulated to extend their production, natural capital remained stationary or even declined. Commerce and manufacture created the big bourgeoisie; in the guilds was concentrated the petty bourgeoisie, which no longer was dominant in the towns as formerly, but had to bow to the might of the great merchants and manufacturers.(1) Hence the decline of the guilds, as soon as they came into contact with manufacture.
The relations between nations in their intercourse took on two different forms in the epoch of which we have been speaking. At first the small quantity of gold and silver in circulation occasioned the ban on the export of these metals; and industry, made necessary by the need for employing the growing urban population and for the most part imported from abroad, could not do without privileges which could be granted not only, of course, against home competition, but chiefly against foreign. The local guild privilege was in these original prohibitions extended over the whole nation. Customs duties originated from the tributes which the feudal lords exacted from merchants passing through their territories as protection money against robbery, tributes later imposed likewise by the towns, and which, with the rise of the modern states, were the Treasury's most obvious means of raising money.
The appearance of American gold and silver on the European markets, the gradual development of industry, the rapid expansion of trade and the consequent rise of the non-guild bourgeoisie and the increasing importance of money, gave these measures another significance. The state, which was daily less and less able to do without money, now retained the ban on the export of gold and silver out of fiscal considerations; the bourgeois, for whom these quantities of money which were hurled on to the market became the chief object of speculative buying, were thoroughly content with this; privileges established earlier became a source of income for the government and were sold for money; in the customs legislation there appeared export duties which, since they only hampered industry, |49] had a purely fiscal aim.—
The second period began in the middle of the seventeenth century and lasted almost to the end of the eighteenth. Commerce and navigation had expanded more rapidly than manufacture, which played a secondary role; the colonies were becoming considerable consumers; and after long struggles the various nations shared out the opening world market among themselves. This period begins with the Navigation Laws[33] and colonial monopolies. The competition of the nations among themselves was excluded as far as possible by tariffs, prohibitions and treaties; and in the last resort the competitive struggle was carried on and decided by wars (especially naval wars). The mightiest maritime nation, the English, retained preponderance in commerce and manufacture. Here, already, we find concentration in one country.
Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the home market, by monopolies in the colonial market, and abroad as much as possible by differential duties. The working-up of home-produced material was encouraged (wool and linen in England, silk in France), the export of home-produced raw materia! forbidden (wool in England), and the [working-up] of imported raw material neglected or suppressed (cotton in England). The nation dominant in maritime trade and colonial power naturally secured for itself also the greatest quantitative and qualitative expansion of manufacture. Manufacture could not be carried on without protection, since, if the slightest change takes place in other countries, it can lose its market and be ruined; under reasonably favourable conditions it may easily be introduced into a country, but for this very reason can easily be destroyed. At the same time through the mode in which it is carried on, particularly in the eighteenth century in the countryside, it is to such an extent interwoven with the conditions of life of a great mass of individuals, that no country dare jeopardise their existence by permitting free competition. Consequently, insofar as manufacture manages to export, it depends entirely on the extension or restriction of commerce, and exercises a relatively very small reaction [on the latter]. Hence its secondary [role] and the influence of [the merchants] in the eighteenth century. |50j It was the merchants and especially the shipowners who more than anybody else Dressed for state protection and monopolies; the manufacturers also demanded and indeed received protection, but all the time were inferior in political importance to the merchants. The commercial towns, particularlv the maritime towns, became to some extent civilised and acquired the outlook of the big bourgeoisie, but in the factory towns an extreme petty-bourgeois outlook persisted. Cf. Aikin, etc." The eighteenth century was the century of trade. Pinto says this expressly: "Le commerce fait la marotte du siècle" ;(2) and: "depuis quelque temps il n'est plus question que de commerce, de navigation et de marine."3
The movement of capital, although considerably accelerated, still remained, however, relatively slow. The splitting-up of the world market into separate parts, each of which was exploited by a particular nation, the prevention of competition between the different nations, the clumsiness of production and the fact that finance was only evolving from its early stages, greatly impeded circulation. The consequence of this was a haggling, mean and niggardly spirit which still clung to all merchants and to the whole mode of carrying on trade. Compared with the manufacturers, and above all with the craftsmen, they were certainly big bourgeois; compared with the merchants and industrialists of the next period they remain petty bourgeois. Cf. Adam Smith.b—
This period is also characterised by the cessation of the bans on the export of gold and silver and the beginning of money trade, banks, national debts, paper money, speculation in stocks and shares, stockjobbing in all articles and the development of finance in general. Again capital lost a great part of the natural character which had still clung to it.
[4. Most Extensive Division of Labour. Large-Scale Industry]
The concentration of trade and manufacture in one country, England, developing irresistibly in the seventeenth century, gradually created for this country a relative world market, and thus a demand for the manufactured products of this country which could no longer be met by the industrial productive forces hitherto existing. This demand, outgrowing the productive forces, was the motive power which, by producing large-scale industry-—the application of elemental forces to industrial ends, machinery and the most extensive division of labour — called into existence the third 1511 period of private property since the Middle Ages. There already existed in England the other preconditions of this new phase: freedom of competition inside the nation, the development of theoretical mechanics, etc. (indeed, mechanics, perfected by Newton, was altogether the most popular science in France and England in the eighteenth century). (Free competition inside the nation itself had everywhere to be won by a revolution — 1640 and 1688 in England, 1789 in France.)
Competition soon compelled every country that wished to retain its historical role to protect its manufactures by renewed customs regulations (the old duties were no longer any good against large-scale industry) and soon after to introduce large-scale industry under protective duties. In spite of these protective measures large-scale industry universalised competition (it is practical free trade; the protective duty is only a palliative, a measure of defence within free trade), established means of communication and the modern world market, subordinated trade to itself, transformed all capital into industrial capital, and thus produced the rapid circulation (development of the financial system) and the centralisation of capital. By universal competition it forced all individuals to strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as far as possible ideology, religion, morality, etc., and, where it could not do this, made them into a palpable lie. It produced world history for the first time, insofar as it made all civilised nations and every individual member of them dependent for the satisfaction of their wants on the whole world, thus destroying the former natural exclusiveness of separate nations. It made natural science subservient to capital and took from the division of labour the last semblance of its natural character. It altogether destroyed the natural character, as far as this is possible with regard to labour, and resolved all natural relations into money relations. In the place of naturally grown towns it created the modern, large industrial cities which have sprung up overnight. It destroyed the crafts and all earlier stages of industry wherever it gained mastery. It completed the victory of the town over the country. Its [basis] is the automatic system. It produced a mass of productive forces, for which private property became just as much a fetter [521 as the guild had been for manufacture and the small, rural workshop for the developing handicrafts. These productive forces receive under the system of private property a one-sided development only, and for the majority they become destructive forces; moreover, a great many of these forces can find no application at all within the system of private property. Generally speaking, large-scale industry created everywhere the same relations between the classes of society, and thus destroyed the peculiar features of the various nationalities. And finally, while the bourgeoisie of each nation still retained separate national interests, large-scale industry created a class which in all nations has the same interest and for which nationality is already dead; a class which is really rid of all the old world and at the same time stands pitted against it. For the worker it makes not only his relation to the capitalist, but labour itself, unbearable.
It is evident that large-scale industry does not reach the same level of development in all districts of a country. This does not, however, retard the class movement of the proletariat, because the proletarians created by large-scale industry assume leadership of this movement and carry the whole mass along with them, and because the workers excluded from large-scale industry are placed by it in a still worse situation than the workers in large-scale industry itself. The countries in which large-scale industry is developed act in a similar manner upon the more or less non-industrial countries, insofar as the latter are swept by world intercourse into the universal competitive struggle.
* * *
These different forms [of production] are just so many forms of the organisation of labour, and hence of property. In each period a unification of the existing productive forces takes place, insofar as this has been rendered necessary by needs.
[ 5. The Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of Intercourse as the Basis of Social Revolution]
The contradiction between the productive forces and the form of intercourse, which, as we saw, has occurred several times in past history, without, however, endangering its basis, necessarily on each occasion burst out in a revolution, taking on at the same time various subsidiary forms, such as all-embracing collisions, collisions of various classes, contradictions of consciousness, battle of ideas, political struggle, etc. From a narrow point of view one may isolate one of these subsidiary forms and consider it as the basis of these revolutions; and this is all the more easy as the individuals who started the revolutions had illusions about their own activity according to their degree of culture and the stage of historical development.
Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the form 1531 of intercourse. Incidentally, to lead to collisions in a country, this contradiction need not necessarily have reached its extreme limit in that particular country. The competition with industrially more advanced countries, brought about by the expansion of international intercourse, is sufficient to produce a similar contradiction in countries with a less advanced industry (e.g., the latent proletariat in Germany brought into more prominence by the competition of English industry).
[6. Competition of individuals
OF LIFE. THE ILLUSORY COMMUNITY OF INDIVIDUALS IN BOURGEOIS SOCIETY AND THE REAL UNION
OF INDIVIDUALS UNDER COMMUNISM. SUBORDINATION OF THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF LIFE
TO THE POWER OF THE UNITED INDIVIDUALS]
Competition separates individuals from one another, not only the bourgeois but still more the workers, in spite of the fact that it brings them together. Hence it is a long time before these individuals can unite, apart from the fact that for the purpose of this union — if it is not to be merely local — the necessary means, the big industrial cities and cheap and quick communications, have first to be produced by large-scale industry. Hence every organised power standing over against these isolated individuals, who live in conditions daily reproducing this isolation, can only be overcome after long struggles. To demand the opposite would be tantamount to demanding that competition should not exist in this definite epoch of history, or that the individuals should banish from their minds conditions over which in their isolation they have no control.
The building of houses. With savages each family has as a matter of course its own cave or hut like the separate family tent of the nomads. This separate domestic economy is made only the more necessary by the further development of private property. With the agricultural peoples a communal domestic economy is just as impossible as a communal cultivation of the soil. A great advance was the building of towns. In all previous periods, however, the abolition [Aufhebung\a of individual economy, which is inseparable from the
Aufhebung—a term used by Hegel to denote the negation of an old form while preserving its positive content in the new, which supersedes it.—Ed.
abolition of private property, was impossible for the simple reason that the material conditions required were not present. The setting up of a communal domestic economy presupposes the development of machinery, the use of natural forces and of many other productive forces — e.g., of water-supplies, |54| gas-lighting, steam-heating, etc., the supersession [Aufhebung] of town and country. Without these conditions a communal economy would not in itself form a new productive force; it would lack material basis and rest on a purely theoretical foundation, in other words, it would be a mere freak and would amount to nothing more than a monastic economy.—What was possible can be seen in the towns brought into existence by concentration and in the construction of communal buildings for various definite purposes (prisons, barracks, etc.). That the supersession of individual economy is inseparable from the supersession of the family is self-evident.
(The statement which frequently occurs with Saint Sancho that each man is all that he is through the state3 is fundamentally the same as the statement that the bourgeois is only a specimen of the bourgeois species; a statement which presupposes that the bourgeois class existed before the individuals constituting it.(1))
In the Middle Ages the citizens in each town were compelled to unite against the landed nobility to defend themselves. The extension of trade, the establishment of communications, led separate towns to establish contacts with other towns, which had asserted the same interests in the struggle with the same antagonist. Out of the many local communities of citizens in the various towns there arose only gradually the middle class. The conditions of life of the individual citizens became — on account of their contradiction to the existing relations and of the mode of labour determined by this — conditions which were common to them all and independent of each individual. The citizens created these conditions insofar as they had torn themselves free from feudal ties, and were in their turn created by them insofar as they were determined by their antagonism to the feudal system which they found in existence. With the setting up of intercommunications between the individual towns, these common conditions developed into class conditions. The same conditions, the same contradiction, the same interests were bound to call forth on the whole similar customs everywhere. The bourgeoisie itself develops only gradually together with its conditions, splits according to the division of labour into various sections and finally absorbs all propertied classes it finds in existence * (while it develops the majority of the earlier propertyless and a part of the hitherto propertied classes into a new class, the proletariat) in the measure to which all property found in existence is transformed into industrial or commercial capital.
The separate individuals form a class only insofar as [55] they have to carry on a common battle against another class; in other respects they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn assumes an independent existence as against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of life predetermined, and have their position in life and hence their personal development assigned to them by their class, thus becoming subsumed under it. This is the same phenomenon as the subjection of the separate individuals to the division of labour and can only be removed by the abolition of private property and of labour(2) itself. We have already indicated several times that this subsuming of individuals under the class brings with it their subjection to all kinds of ideas, etc.
If this development of individuals, which proceeds within the common conditions of existence of estates and classes, historically folio-wing one another, and the general conceptions thereby forced upon them — if this development is considered from a philosophical point of view, it is certainly very easy to imagine that in these individuais the species, or man, has evolved, or that they evolved man — and in this way one can give history some hard clouts on the ear. One can then conceive these various estates and classes to be specific terms of the general expression, subordinate varieties of the species, or evolutionary phases of man.
This subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot be abolished until a class has evolved which has no longer any particular class interest to assert against a ruling class.
The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal powers (relations) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by dismissing the general idea of it from one's mind, but can only be abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers to themselves and abolishing the division of labour.(3) This is not possible without the community. Only within the community has each individual 1561 the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; hence personal freedom becomes possible only within the community. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the state, etc., personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed under the conditions of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class. The illusory community in which individuals have up till now combined always took on an independent existence in relation to them, and since it was the combination of one class over against another, it was at the same time for the oppressed class not only a completely illusory community, but a new fetter as well. In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association.
Individuals have always proceeded from themselves, but of course from themselves within their given historical conditions and relations, not from the "pure" individual in the sense of the ideologists. But in the course of historical development, and precisely through the fact that within the division of labour social relations inevitably take on an independent existence, there appears a cleavage in the life of each individual, insofar as it is personal and insofar as it is determined by some branch of labour and the conditions pertaining to it. (We do not mean it to be understood from this that, for example, the rentier, the capitalist, etc., cease to be persons; but their personality is conditioned and determined by quite definite class relations, and the cleavage appears only in their opposition to another class and, for themselves, only when they go bankrupt.) In the estate (and even more in the tribe) this is as yet concealed: for instance, a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a commoner always a commoner, a quality inseparable from his individuality irrespective of his other relations. The difference between the private individual and the class individual, the accidental nature of the conditions of life for the individual, appears only with the emergence of the class, which is itself a product of the bourgeoisie. This accidental character as such is only engendered and developed |57| by competition and the struggle of individuals among themselves. Thus, in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seem accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are to a greater extent governed by material forces. The difference from the estate comes out particularly in the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. When the estate of the urban burghers, the corporations, etc., emerged in opposition to the landed nobility, their condition of existence — movable property and craft labour, which had already existed latently before their separation from the feudal institutions — appeared as something positive, which was asserted against feudal landed property, and, therefore, in its own wav at first took on a feudal form. Certainly the fugitive serfs treated their previous servitude as something extraneous to their personality. But here they only were doing what every class that is freeing itself from a fetter does; and they did not free themselves as a class but individually. Moreover, they did not break loose from the system of estates, but only formed a new estate, retaining their previous mode of labour even in their new situation, and developing it further bv freeing it from its earlier fetters, which no longer corresponded to the development already attained.
For the proletarians, on the other hand, the condition of their life, labour, and with it all the conditions of existence of modern society, have become something extraneous, something over which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no social organisation can give them control. The contradiction between the individuality of each separate proletarian and labour, the condition of life forced upon him, becomes evident to him, for he is sacrificed from youth onwards and, within his own class, has no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class.—
158| NB. It must not be forgotten that the serf's very need of existing and the impossibility of a large-scale economy involved the distribution of allotments3 among the serfs and very soon reduced the services of the serfs to their lord to an average of payments in kind and labour-services. This made it possible for the serf to accumulate movable property and hence facilitated his escape from his lord and gave him the prospect of making his way as a townsman; it also created gradations among the serfs, so that the runaway serfs were already half burghers. It is likewise obvious that the serfs who were versed in a craft had the best chance of acquiring movable property.— Thus, while the fugitive serfs only wished to have full scope to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, have to abolish the hitherto prevailing condition of their existence (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to then), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the state; in order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the state.
It follows from all we have been saying up till now that* the communal relation into which the individuals of a class entered, and which was determined by their common interests as against a third party, was always a community to which these individuals belonged only as average individuals, only insofar as they lived within the conditions of existence of their class — a relation in which they participated not as individuals but as members of a class. With the community of revolutionary proletarians, on the other hand, who take their conditions |59| of existence and those of all members of society under their control, it is just the reverse; it is as individuals that the individuals participate in it. For it is the association of individuals (assuming the advanced stage of modern productive forces, of course) which puts the conditions of the free development and movement of individuals under their control — conditions which were previously left to chance and had acquired an independent existence over against the separate individuals precisely because of their separation as individuals and because their inevitable association, which was determined by the division of labour, had, as a result of their separation, become for them an alien bond. Up tili now association (by no means an arbitrary one, such as is expounded for example in the Contrat social,* but a necessary one) was simply an agreement about those conditions, within which the individuals were free to enjoy the freaks of fortune (compare, e.g., the formation of the North American state and the South American republics). This right to the undisturbed enjoyment, within certain conditions, of fortuity and chance has up till now been called personal freedom.—These conditions of existence are, of course, only the productive forces and forms of intercourse at any particular time.
Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all naturally evolved premises as the creations of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality which communism creates is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is nevertheless only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals. Thus the Communists in practice treat the conditions created up to now by production and intercourse as inorganic conditions, without, however, imagining that it was the plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them material, and without believing that these conditions were inorganic for the individuals creating them.
[ 7. Contradiction between Individuals and Their Conditions of Life as Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of Intercourse. Development of the Productive Forces and the Changing Forms of Intercourse]
[60] The difference between the individual as a person and whatever is extraneous to him is not a conceptual difference but a historical fact. This distinction has a different significance at different times — e.g., the estate as someting extraneous to the individual in the eighteenth century, and so too, more or less, the family. It is not a distinction that we have to make for each age, but one which each age itself makes from among the different elements which it finds in existence, and indeed not according to any idea, but compelled by material collisions in life.
What appears accidental to a later age as opposed to an earlier— and this applies also to the elements handed down by an earlier age — is a form of intercourse which corresponded to a definite stage of development of the productive forces. The relation of the productive forces to the form of intercourse is the relation of the form of intercourse to the occupation or activity of the individuals. (The fundamental form of this activity is, of course, material, on which depend all other forms — mental, political, religious, etc. The different forms of material life are, of course, in every case dependent on the needs which are already developed, and the production, as well as the satisfaction, of these needs is an historical process, which is not found in the case of a sheep or a dog (Stirner's refractory principal argument3 advers us kominem), although sheep and dogs in their present form certainly, but in spite of themselves, are products of an historical process). The conditions under which individual:- have intercourse with each other, so long as this contradiction is absent, are conditions appertaining to their individuality, in no way external to them; conditions under which alone these definite individuals, living under definite relations, can produce their material life and what is connected with it, are thus the conditions of their self-activity and are produced by this self-activity.(1) The definite condition under which they produce thus corresponds, as long as [61J the contradiction has not yet appeared, to the reality of their conditioned nature, their one-sided existence, the one-sidedness of which only becomes evident when the contradiction enters on the scene and thus exists solely for those who live later. Then this condition appears as an accidental fetter, and the consciousness that it is a fetter is imputed to the earlier age as well.
These various conditions, which appear first as conditions of self-activity, later as fetters upon it, form in the whole development of history a coherent series of forms of intercourse, the coherence of which consists in this: an earlier form of intercourse, which has become a fetter, is replaced by a new one corresponding to the more developed productive forces and, hence, to the advanced mode of the self-activity of individuals — a form which in its turn becomes a fetter and is then replaced by another. Since these conditions correspond at every stage to the simultaneous development of the productive forces, their history is at the same time the history of the evolving productive forces taken over by each new generation, and is therefore the history of the development of the forces of the individuals themselves.
Since this development takes place spontaneously, i.e., is not subordinated to a general plan of freely combined individuals, it proceeds from various localities, tribes, nations, branches of labour, etc., each of which to start with develops independently of the others and only gradually enters into relation with the others. Furthermore, this development proceeds only very slowly; the various stages and interests are never completely overcome, but only subordinated to the prevailing interest and trail along beside the latter for centuries afterwards. It follows from this that even within a nation the individuals, even apart from their pecuniary circumstances, have quite diverse developments, and that an earlier interest, the peculiar form of intercourse of which has already been ousted by that belonging to a later interest, remains for a long time afterwards in possession of a traditional power in the illusory community (state, law), which has won an existence independent of the individuals; a power which in the last resort can only be broken by a revolution. This explains why, with reference to individual points [62] which allow of a more general summing-up, consciousness can sometimes appear further advanced than the contemporary empirical conditions, so that in the struggles of a later epoch one can refer to earlier theoreticians as authorities.
On the other hand, in countries like North America, which start from scratch in an already advanced historical epoch, the development proceeds very rapidly. Such countries have no other natural premises than the individuals who have settled there and were led to do so because the forms of intercourse of the old countries did not correspond to their requirements. Thus they begin with the most advanced individuals of the old countries, and, therefore, with the correspondingly most advanced form of intercourse, even before this form of intercourse has been able to establish itself in the old countries. This is the case with all colonies, insofar as they are not mere military or trading stations. Carthage, the Greek colonies, and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, provide examples of this. A similar relationship issues from conquest, when a form of intercourse which has evolved on another soil is brought over complete to the conquered country: whereas in its home it was still encumbered with interests and relations left over from earlier periods, here it can and must be established completely and without hindrance, if only to assure the conquerors' lasting power. (England and Naples after the Norman conquest,[34] when they received the most perfect form of feudal organisation.)
[ 8. The Role of Violence ( Conquest) in History]
This whole conception of history appears to be contradicted by the fact of conquest. Up till now violence, war, pillage, murder and robbery, etc., have been accepted as the driving force of history. Here we must limit ourselves to the chief points and take, therefore, only the most striking example — the destruction of an old civilisation by a barbarous people and the resulting formation of an entirely new organisation of society. (Rome and the barbarians; feudalism and Gaul; the Byzantine Empire and the Turks.)
[63] With the conquering barbarian people war itself is still, as indicated above,3 a regular form of intercourse, which is the more eagerly exploited as the increase in population together with the traditional and, for it, the only possible crude mode of production gives rise to the need for new means of production. In Italy, on the other hand, the concentration of landed property (caused not only by buying-up and indebtedness but also by inheritance, since loose living being rife and marriage rare, the old families gradually died out and their possessions fell into the hands of a few) and its conversion into grazing-land (caused not only by the usual economic factors still operative today but by the importation of plundered and tribute corn and the resultant lack of demand for Italian corn) brought about the almost total disappearance of the free population; the slaves died out again and again, and had constantly to be replaced by new ones. Slavery remained the basis of the entire production process. The plebeians, midway between freemen and slaves, never succeeded in becoming more than a proletarian rabble. Rome indeed never became more than a city; its connection with the provinces was almost exclusively political and could, therefore, easily be broken again by political events.
Nothing is more common than the notion that in history up till now it has only been a question of taking. The barbarians take the Roman Empire, and this fact of taking is made to explain the transition from the old world to the feudal system. In this taking by barbarians, however, the question is whether the nation which is conquered has evolved industrial productive forces, as is the case with modern peoples, or whether its productive forces are based for
Probably a reference to one of the missing pages of the manuscript (see this volume, p. 63). A similar idea is expressed in the clean copy; see this volume, p. 34.—Ed.
the most part merely on their concentration and on the community. Taking is further determined by the object taken. A banker's fortune, consisting of paper, cannot be taken at all without the taker's submitting to the conditions of production and intercourse of the country taken. Similarly the total industrial capital of a modern industrial country. And finally, everywhere there is very soon an end to taking, and when there is nothing more to take, you have to set about producing. From this necessity of producing, which very soon asserts itself, it follows 1641 that the form of community adopted by the settling conquerors must correspond to the stage of development of the productive forces they find in existence; or, if this is not the case from the start, it must change according to the productive forces. This, too, explains the fact, which people profess to have noticed everywhere in the period following the migration of the peoples, namely that the servant was master, and that the conquerors very soon took over language, culture and manners from the conquered.
The feudal system was by no means brought complete from Germany, but had its origin, as far as the conquerors were concerned, in the martial organisation of the army during the actual conquest, and this evolved only after the conquest into the feudal system proper through the action of the productive forces found in the conquered countries. To what an extent this form was determined by the productive forces is shown by the abortive attempts to realise other forms derived from reminiscences of ancient Rome (Charlemagne, etc.).
To be continued.—
[9. Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of Intercourse under the Conditions of Large-Scale Industry and Free Competition. Contradiction between Labour and Capital]
In large-scale industry and competition the whole mass of conditions of existence, limitations, biases of individuals, are fused together into the two simplest forms: private property and labour. With money every form of intercourse, and intercourse itself, becomes fortuitous for the individuals. Thus money implies that all intercourse up till now was only intercourse of individuals under particular conditions, not of individuals as individuals. These conditions are reduced to two: accumulated labour or private property, and actual labour. If both or one of these ceases, then intercourse comes to a standstill. The modern economists themselves, e.g., Sismondi, Cherbuliez, etc., oppose association des individus
to association des capitaux.3 On the other hand, the individuals themselves are entirely subordinated to the division of labour and hence are brought into the most complete dependence on one another. Private property, insofar as within labour it confronts labou r, evolves out of the necessity of accumulation, and is in the beginning still mainly a communal form, but in its further development it approaches more and more the modern form of private property. The division of labour implies from the outset the division of the conditions of labour, of tools and materials, and thus the fragmentation of accumulated capital among different owners, and thus, also, the fragmentation between capital and labour, and the different forms of property itself. The more the division of labour develops [65] and accumulation grows, the further fragmentation develops. Labour itself can only exist on the premise of this fragmentation.
(Personal energy of the individuals of various nations — Germans and Americans — energy even as a result of miscegenation — hence the cretinism of the Germans; in France, England, etc., foreign peoples transplanted to an already developed soil, in America to an entirely new soil; in Germany the indigenous population quietly stayed where it was.)
Thus two facts are here revealed.(1) First the productive forced appear as a world for themselves, quite independent of and divorced from the individuals, alongside the individuals; the reason for this is that the individuals, whose forces they are, exist split up and in opposition to one another, whilst, on the other hand, these forces are only real forces in the intercourse and association of these individuals. Thus, on the one hand, we have a totality of productive forces, which have, as it were, taken on a material form and are for the individuals themselves no longer the forces of the individuals but of private property, and hence of the individuals only insofar as they are owners of private property. Never, in any earlier period, have the productive forces taken on a form so indifferent to the intercourse of individuals as individuals, because their intercourse itself was still a restricted one. On the other hand, standing against these productive forces, we have the majority of the individuals from whom these forces have been wrested away, and who, robbed thus of all real life-content, have become abstract individuals, who are, however, by this very fact put into a position to enter into relation with one another as individuals.
Labour, the only connection which still links them with the productive forces and with their own existence, has lost all semblance of self-activity and only sustains their 1661 life by stunting it. While in the earlier periods self-activity and the production of material life were separated since they devolved on different persons, and while, on account of the narrowness of the individuals themselves, the production of material life was considered a subordinate mode of self-activity, they now diverge to such an extent that material life appears as the end, and what produces this material life, labour (which is now the only possible but, as we see, negative form of self-activity), as the means.
[ 10. The Necessity, Preconditions and Consequences of the Abolition of Private Property]
Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence.
This appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. Even from this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a universal character corresponding to the productive forces and the intercourse. The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a totality of instruments of production is, for this very reason, the development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves.
This appropriation is further determined by the persons appropriating. Only the proletarians of the present day, who are completely shut off from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a complete and no longer restricted self-activity, which consists in the appropriation of a totality of productive forces and in the development of a totality of capacities entailed by this. All earlier revolutionary appropriations were restricted; individuals, whose self-activity was restricted by a crude instrument of production and a limited intercourse, appropriated this crude instrument |67| of production, and hence merely achieved a new state of limitation. Their instrument of production became their property, but they themselves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their own instrument of production. In all appropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse cannot be controlled by individuals, unless it is controlled by all.
This appropriation is further determined by the manner in which it must be effected. It can only be effected through a union, which by the character of the proletariat itself can again only be a universal one, and through a revolution, in which, on the one hand, the power of the earlier mode of production and intercourse and social organisation is overthrown, and, on the other hand, there develops the universal character and the energy of the proletariat, which are required to accomplish the appropriation, and the proletariat moreover rids itself of everything that still clings to it from its previous position in society.
Only at this stage does self-activity coincide with material life, which corresponds to the development of individuals into complete individuals and the casting-off of all natural limitations. The transformation of labour into self-activity corresponds to the transformation of the previously limited intercourse into the intercourse of individuals as such. With the appropriation of the total productive forces by the united individuals, private property comes to an end. Whilst previously in history a particular condition always appeared as accidental, now the isolation of individuals and each person's particular way of gaining his livelihood have themselves become accidental.
The individuals, who are no longer 1681 subject to the division of labour, have been conceived by the philosophers as an ideal, under the name "man", and the whole process which we have outlined has been regarded by them as the evolutionary process of "man", so that at every historical stage "man" was substituted for the individuals existing hitherto and shown as the motive force of history. The whole process was thus conceived as a process of the self-estrangement [Selbstentfremdungsprozess] of "man",(1) and this was essentially due to the fact that the average individual of the later stage was always foisted on to the earlier stage, and the consciousness of a later age on to the individuals of an earlier. Through this inversion, which from the first disregards the actual conditions, it was possible to transform the whole of history into an evolutionary process of consciousness.
Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage of the development of productive forces. It embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of a given stage and, insofar, transcends the state and the nation, though, on the other hand again, it must assert itself in its external relations as nationality and internally must organise itself as state. The term "civil society"[35] emerged in the eighteenth century, when property relations had already extricated themselves from the ancient and medieval community. Civil society as such only develops with the bourgeoisie; the social organisation evolving directly out of production and intercourse, which in all ages forms the basis of the state and of the rest of the idealistic3 superstructure, has, however, always been designated by the same name.
[ 11.] The Relation of State and Law to Property
The first form of property, in the ancient world as in the Middle Ages, is tribal property, determined with the Romans chiefly by war, with the [69] Germans by the rearing of cattle. In the case of the ancient peoples, since several tribes live together in one city, tribal property appears as state property, and the right of the individual to it as mere "possession" which, however, like tribal property as a whole, is confined to landed property only. Real private property began with the ancients, as with modern nations, with movable property. (Slavery and community) (dominium ex jure Quiritumh).—In the case of the nations which grew out of the Middle Ages, tribal property evolved through various stages — feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture — to modern capital, determined by large-scale industry and universal competition, i.e., pure private property, which has cast off all semblance of a communal institution and has shut out the state from any influence on the development of property. To this modern private property corresponds the modern state, which, purchased gradually by the owners of property by means of taxation, has fallen entirely into their hands through the national debt, and its existence has become wholly dependent on the commercial credit which the owners of property, the bourgeois, extend to it, as reflected in the rise and fall of government securities on the stock exchange. By the mere fact that it is a class and no longer an estate, the bourgeoisie is forced to organise itself no longer locally, but nationally, and to give a general form to its average interests. Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the state has become a separate entity, alongside and outside civil society; but it is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois are compelled to adopt, both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests. The independence of the state is only found nowadays in those countries where the estates have not vet completely developed into classes, where the estates, done away with in more advanced countries, still play a part and there exists a mixture, where consequently no section of the population can achieve dominance over the others. This is the case particularly m Germany. The most perfect example of the modern state is North |70j America. The modern French, English and American writers all express the opinion that the state exists only for the sake of private property, so that this view has also been generally accepted by the average man.
Since the state is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch \s epitomised,, it follows that all common institutions are set up with the help cf the state and are given a political form. Hence the illusion that law is based on the will, and incieed on the will divorced from its real basis — on freewill. Similarly, justice is in its turn reduced to statute law.
Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the natural community. With the Romans the development of private property and civil law had no further industrial and commercial consequences, because their whole mode of production did not alter.(1) With modern peoples, where the feudal community was disintegrated by industry and trade, there began with the rise of private property and civil law a new phase, which was capable of funher development. The very first town which carried on an extensive maritime trade in the Middle Ages, Amalfi, also developed maritime law.[36] As soon as industry and trade developed private property further, first in Italy and later in other countries, the highly developed Roman civil law was immediately adopted again and raised to authority. When later the bourgeoisie had acquired so much power that the princes took up its interests in order to overthrow the feudal nobility by means of the bourgeoisie, there began in all countries — in France in the sixteenth century — the real development of law, which in all |7l | countries except England proceeded on the basis of the Roman code of laws. In England, too, Roman legal principles had to be introduced to further the development of civil law (especially in the case of movable property). (It must not be forgotten that law has just as little an independent history as religion.)
In civil law the existing property relations are declared to be the result of the general will. The jus utendi et abutendi* itself asserts on the one hand the fact that private property has become entirely independent of the community, and on the other the illusion that private property itself is based solely on the private will, the arbitrary disposal of the thing. In practice, the abuti has very definite economic limitations for the owner of private property, if he does not wish to see his property and hence his jus abutendi pass into other hands, since actually the thing, considered merely with reference to his will, is not a thing at all, but only becomes a thing, true property, in intercourse, and independently of the law (a relationship, which the philosophers call an idea*). This juridical illusion, which reduces law to the mere will, necessarily leads, in the further development of property relations, to the position that a man may have a legal title to a thing without really having the thing. If, for instance, the income from a piece of land disappears owing to competition, then the proprietor has certainly his legal title to it along with the jus utendi
et abutendi. But he can do nothing with it: he owns nothing as a landed proprietor if he has not enough capital elsewhere to cultivate his land. This illusion of the jurists also explains the fact that for them, as for every code, it is altogether fortuitous that individuals enter into relations among themselves (e.g., contracts); it explains why they consider that these relations [can] be entered into or not at will, 1721 and that their content [rests] purely on the individual free will of the contracting parties.
Whenever, through the development of industry and commerce, new forms of intercourse have been evolved (e.g., insurance companies, etc.), the law has always been compelled to admit them among the modes of acquiring property.(2)
[ 12. Forms of Social Consciousness]
The influence of the division of labour on science.
The role of repression with regard to the state, law, morality, etc. It is precisely because the bourgeoisie rules as a class that in the law it must give itself a general expression.
Natural science and history. There is no history of politics, law, science, etc., of art, religion, etc.(1)
Why the ideologists turn everything upside-down. Clerics, jurists, politicians. Jurists, politicians (statesmen in general), moralists, clerics. For this ideological subdivision within a class: 1) The occupation assumes an independent existence owing to division of labour. Everyone believes his craft to be the true one. Illusions regarding the connection between their craft and reality are the more likely to be cherished by them because of the very nature of the craft. In consciousness — in jurisprudence, politics, etc.—relations become concepts; since they do not go beyond these relations, the concepts of the relations also become fixed concepts in their mind. The judge, for example, applies the code, he therefore regards legislation as the real, active driving force. Respect for their goods, because their craft deals with general matters. '
Idea of law. Idea of state. The matter is turned upside-down in ordinary consciousness.
Religion is from the outset consciousness of the transcendental arising from actually existing forces. This more popularly.
Tradition, with regard to law, religion, etc.
[73](2) Individuals always proceeded, and always proceed, from themselves. Their relations are the relations of their real life-process. How does it happen that their relations assume an independent existence over against them? and that the forces of their own life become superior to them?
In short: division of labour, the level of which depends on the development of the productive power at any particular time.
Landed property. Communal property. Feudal. Modern. Estate property. Manufacturing property. Industrial capital.
Endnotes
[28] Industrie extractive (extractive industry)—a term which the French economist Charles Dunoyer used in his book De la liberté du travail to denote hunting, fishing and mining. Cf. Marx's Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter I, § 2 (see present edition, Vol. 6).
[29] The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester manufacturers Cobden and Bright. The English Corn Laws, first adopted in the 15th century, imposed high tariffs on imported cereals in order to maintain high prices for them in the home market. In the first third of the 19th century, in 1815, 1822 and later, several laws were passed changing the conditions for corn imports, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced which raised import tariffs on corn when prices in the home market declined and, on the other hand, lowered tariffs when prices rose in Britain. The League widely exploited the popular discontent over the raising of corn prices. In its efforts to obtain the repeal of the Corn Laws and the establishment of complete freedom of trade, it aimed at weakening the economic and political positions of the landed aristocracy and lowering the cost of living thus making possible a lowering of the workers' wages. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended with the repeal of these laws in 1846.
[30] An ironical allusion to Stirner's "union" ("Verein")—a voluntary association of egoists (see this volume, pp. 389-417).
[32] This fact is given by Harrison in his Description of England in The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles.... First collected and published by Raphaell Holinshed, William Harrison, and others..., London, 1587. Marx mentions it also in Capital. See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, Chapter XXVIII, Footnote 2 to p. 687.
[33] Navigation Laws—a series of acts passed in England to protect English shipping against foreign competition. The best known was that of 1651, directed mainly against the Dutch, who controlled most of the carrying trade. It prohibited the importation of any goods not carried by English ships or the ships of the country where the goods were produced, and laid down that British coasting trade and commerce with the colonies were to be carried on only by English ships. The Navigation Laws were modified in the early 19th century and repealed in 1849 except for a reservation regarding coasting trade, which was revoked in 1854.
[34] England was conquered by the Normans in 1066. The foundations of the Kingdom of Sicily, proclaimed in 1130 and embracing Sicily and South Italy with Naples as its centre, were laid down in the latter half of the 11th century by Robert Guiscard, leader of the Norman conquerors.
[35] The term "bürgerliche Gesellschaft" ("civil society") is used in two distinct ways by Marx and Engels: 1) to denote the economic system of society irrespective of the historical stage of development, the sum total of material relations which determine the political institutions and ideological forms, and 2) to denote the material relations of bourgeois society (or that society as a whole), of capitalism. The term has therefore been translated according to its concrete content and the given context either as "civil society" (in the first case) or as "bourgeois society" (in the second). p gg
[36] The Italian town of Amalfi became a prosperous trade centre in the 10th and 11th centuries. Its maritime law (Tabula Amalphitana) was valid throughout Italy and widely used in other Mediterranean countries in the Middle Ages.