Karl Marx 1844Economic & PhilosophicEconomic & PhilosophicManuscripts of 1844Manuscripts of 18441Written: Between April and August 1844;First Published: 1932;Source: Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844;First Published: Progress Publishers, Moscow 1959;Translated: by Martin Milligan from the German text, revised by Dirk J. Struik, contained inMarx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Bd. 3. Corrections were made of typographical errors andthe author’s obvious slips when preparing the Russian edition, 1956;Transcribed: in 2000 for marxists.org by Andy Blunden;Proofed: and corrected by Matthew Carmody, 2009.Preface||XXXIX| I have already announced in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher the critique ofjurisprudence and political science in the form of a critique of the Hegelian philosophy of law.While preparing it for publication, the intermingling of criticism directed only against speculationwith criticism of the various subjects themselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering thedevelopment of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult. Moreover, the wealth anddiversity of the subjects to be treated could have been compressed into one work only in a purelyaphoristic style; whilst an aphoristic presentation of this kind, for its part, would have given theimpression of arbitrary systematism. I shall therefore publish the critique of law, ethics, politics,etc., in a series of distinct, independent pamphlets, and afterwards try in a special work to presentthem again as a connected whole showing the interrelationship of the separate parts, and lastlyattempt a critique of the speculative elaboration of that material. For this reason it will be foundthat the interconnection between political economy and the state, law, ethics, civil life, etc., istouched upon in the present work only to the extent to which political economy itself expresslytouches upon these subjects.It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant with political economy that my results havebeen attained by means of a wholly empirical analysis based on a conscientious critical study ofpolitical economy.(Whereas the uninformed reviewer who tries to hide his complete ignorance and intellectualpoverty by hurling the “utopian phrase” at the positive critic’s head, or again such phrases as“quite pure, quite resolute, quite critical criticism,” the “not merely legal but social – utterlysocial – society”, the “compact, massy mass”, the “outspoken spokesmen of the massy mass”2this reviewer has yet to furnish the first proof that besides his theological family affairs he hasanything to contribute to a discussion of worldly matters.)It goes without saying that besides the French and English socialists I have also used Germansocialist works. The only original German works of substance in this science, however – otherthan Weitling’s writings – are the essays by Hess published in Einundzwanzig Bogen3 andUmrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie by Engels in the Deutsch-FranzösischeJahrbücher, where also the basic elements of this work [Economic and Philosophic Manuscriptsof 1844] have been indicated by me in a very general way.(Besides being indebted to these authors who have given critical attention to political economy,positive criticism as a whole – and therefore also German positive criticism of political economy– owes its true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach, against whose Philosophie der Zukunft 2Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Prefaceand Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie in the Anekdota, despite the tacit use that is made ofthem, the petty envy of some and the veritable wrath of others seem to have instigated a regularconspiracy of silence.It is only with Feuerbach that positive, humanistic and naturalistic criticism begins. The lessnoise they make, the more certain, profound, extensive, and enduring is the effect of Feuerbach’swritings, the only writings since Hegel’s Phänomenologie and Logik to contain a real theoreticalrevolution.In contrast to the critical theologian of our day, I have deemed the concluding chapter of thiswork – a critical discussion of Hegelian dialectic and philosophy as a whole to be absolutelynecessary, ||XL| a task not yet performed. This lack of thoroughness is not accidental, since eventhe critical theologian remains a theologian. Hence, either he has to start from certainpresuppositions of philosophy accepted as authoritative; or, if in the process of criticism and as aresult of other people’s discoveries doubts about these philosophical presuppositions have arisenin him, he abandons them in a cowardly and unwarrantable fashion, abstracts from them, thusshowing his servile dependence on these presuppositions and his resentment at this servilitymerely in a negative, unconscious and sophistical manner.(He does this either by constantly repeating assurances concerning the purity of his own criticism,or by trying to make it seem as though all that was left for criticism to deal with now was someother limited form of criticism outside itself – say eighteenth-century criticism – and also thelimitations of the masses, in order to divert the observer’s attention as well as his own from thenecessary task of settling accounts between criticism and its point of origin – Hegelian dialecticand German philosophy as a whole – that is, from this necessary raising of modern criticismabove its own limitation and crudity. Eventually, however, whenever discoveries (such asFeuerbach’s) are made regarding the nature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the criticaltheologian partly makes it appear as if he were the one who had accomplished this, producing thatappearance by taking the results of these discoveries and, without being able to develop them,hurling them in the form of catch-phrases at writers still caught in the confines of philosophy. Hepartly even manages to acquire a sense of his own superiority to such discoveries by asserting in amysterious way and in a veiled, malicious and skeptical fashion elements of the Hegeliandialectic which he still finds lacking in the criticism of that dialectic (which have not yet beencritically served up to him for his use) against such criticism – not having tried to bring suchelements into their proper relation or having been capable of doing so, asserting, say, the categoryof mediating proof against the category of positive, self-originating truth, [...] in a way peculiar toHegelian dialectic. For to the theological critic it seems quite natural that everything has to bedone by philosophy, so that he can chatter away about purity, resoluteness, and quite criticalcriticism; and he fancies himself the true conqueror of philosophy whenever he happens to feelsome element4 in Hegel to be lacking in Feuerbach – for however much he practices the spiritualidolatry of “self-consciousness” and “mind” the theological critic does not get beyond feeling toconsciousness.)On close inspection theological criticism – genuinely progressive though it was at the inceptionof the movement – is seen in the final analysis to be nothing but the culmination and consequenceof the old philosophical, and especially the Hegelian, transcendentalism, twisted into atheological caricature. This interesting example of historical justice, which now assigns totheology, ever philosophy’s spot of infection, the further role of portraying in itself the negativedissolution of philosophy, i.e., the process of its decay – this historical nemesis I shalldemonstrate on another occasion.5(How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach’s discoveries about the nature of philosophy still, fortheir proof at least, called for a critical discussion of philosophical dialectic will be seen from myexposition itself.) |XL|| First ManuscriptWages of LaborWages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker. Victorygoes necessarily to the capitalist. The capitalist can live longer without the worker than can theworker without the capitalist. Combination among the capitalists is customary and effective;workers’ combination is prohibited and painful in its consequences for them. Besides, thelandowner and the capitalist can make use of industrial advantages to augment their revenues; theworker has neither rent nor interest on capital to supplement his industrial income. Hence theintensity of the competition among the workers. Thus only for the workers is the separation ofcapital, landed property, and labour an inevitable, essential and detrimental separation. Capitaland landed property need not remain fixed in this abstraction, as must the labor of the workers.The separation of capital, rent, and labor is thus fatal for the worker.The lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the workerfor the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and forthe race of laborers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to Smith, is the lowestcompatible with common humanity6, that is, with cattle-like existence.The demand for men necessarily governs the production of men, as of every other commodity.Should supply greatly exceed demand, a section of the workers sinks into beggary or starvation.The worker’s existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every othercommodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find abuyer. And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the richand the capitalists. Should supply exceed demand, then one of the constituent parts of the price —profit, rent or wages — is paid below its rate, [a part of these] factors is therefore withdrawn fromthis application, and thus the market price gravitates [towards the] natural price as the center-point. But (1) where there is considerable division of labor it is most difficult for the worker todirect his labor into other channels; (2) because of his subordinate relation to the capitalist, he isthe first to suffer.Thus in the gravitation of market price to natural price it is the worker who loses most of all andnecessarily. And it is just the capacity of the capitalist to direct his capital into another channelwhich either renders the worker, who is restricted to some particular branch of labor, destitute, orforces him to submit to every demand of this capitalist.The accidental and sudden fluctuations in market price hit rent less than they do that part of theprice which is resolved into profit and wages; but they hit profit less than they do wages. In mostcases, for every wage that rises, one remains stationary and one falls.The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses whenthe latter loses. Thus, the worker does not gain if the capitalist keeps the market price above thenatural price by virtue of some manufacturing or trading secret, or by virtue of monopoly or thefavorable situation of his land.Furthermore, the prices of labor are much more constant than the prices of provisions. Often theystand in inverse proportion. In a dear year wages fall on account of the decrease in demand, butrise on account of the increase in the prices of provisions — and thus balance. In any case, anumber of workers are left without bread. In cheap years wages rise on account of the rise indemand, but decrease on account of the fall in the prices of provisions — and thus balance.Another respect in which the worker is at a disadvantage: 4Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptThe labor prices of the various kinds of workers show much wider differences than the profitsin the various branches in which capital is applied. In labor all the natural, spiritual, and socialvariety of individual activity is manifested and is variously rewarded, whilst dead capital alwayskeeps the same pace and is indifferent to real individual activity.In general we should observe that in those cases where worker and capitalist equally suffer, theworker suffers in his very existence, the capitalist in the profit on his dead mammon.The worker has to struggle not only for his physical means of subsistence; he has to struggle toget work, i.e., the possibility, the means, to perform his activity.Let us take the three chief conditions in which society can find itself and consider the situation ofthe worker in them:(1) If the wealth of society declines the worker suffers most of all, and for the following reason:although the working class cannot gain so much as can the class of property owners in aprosperous state of society, no one suffers so cruelly from its decline as the working class.(2) Let us now take a society in which wealth is increasing. This condition is the only onefavorable to the worker. Here competition between the capitalists sets in. The demand for workersexceeds their supply. But:In the first place, the raising of wages gives rise to overwork among the workers. The more theywish to earn, the more must they sacrifice their time and carry out slave-labor, completely losingall their freedom, in the service of greed. Thereby they shorten their lives. This shortening of theirlife-span is a favorable circumstance for the working class as a whole, for as a result of it an ever-fresh supply of labor becomes necessary. This class has always to sacrifice a part of itself in ordernot to be wholly destroyed.Furthermore: When does a society find itself in a condition of advancing wealth? When thecapitals and the revenues of a country are growing. But this is only possible:(a) As the result of the accumulation of much labor, capital being accumulated labor; as the result,therefore, of the fact that more and more of his products are being taken away from the worker,that to an increasing extent his own labor confronts him as another man’s property and that themeans of his existence and his activity are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalist.(b) The accumulation of capital increases the division of labor, and the division of labor increasesthe number of workers. Conversely, the number of workers increases the division of labor, just asthe division of labor increases the accumulation of capital. With this division of labor on the onehand and the accumulation of capital on the other, the worker becomes ever more exclusivelydependent on labor, and on a particular, very one-sided, machine-like labor at that. Just as he isthus depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine and from being a manbecomes an abstract activity and a belly, so he also becomes ever more dependent on everyfluctuation in market price, on the application of capital, and on the whim of the rich. Equally, theincrease in the class of people wholly dependent on work intensifies competition among theworkers, thus lowering their price. In the factory system this situation of the worker reaches itsclimax.(c) In an increasingly prosperous society only the richest of the rich can continue to live onmoney interest. Everyone else has to carry on a business with his capital, or venture it in trade. Asa result, the competition between the capitalists becomes more intense. The concentration ofcapital increases, the big capitalists ruin the small, and a section of the erstwhile capitalists sinksinto the working class, which as a result of this supply again suffers to some extent a depressionof wages and passes into a still greater dependence on the few big capitalists. The number ofcapitalists having been diminished, their competition with respect to the workers scarcely existsany longer; and the number of workers having been increased, their competition amongthemselves has become all the more intense, unnatural, and violent. Consequently, a section of 5Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptthe working class falls into beggary or starvation just as necessarily as a section of the middlecapitalists falls into the working class.Hence even in the condition of society most favorable to the worker, the inevitable result for theworker is overwork and premature death, decline to a mere machine, a bond servant of capital,which piles up dangerously over and against him, more competition, and starvation or beggary fora section of the workers.The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist’s mania to get rich, which he, however,can only satisfy by the sacrifice of his mind and body. The raising of wages presupposes andentails the accumulation of capital, and thus sets the product of labor against the worker assomething ever more alien to him. Similarly, the division of labor renders him ever more one-sided and dependent, bringing with it the competition not only of men but also of machines. Sincethe worker has sunk to the level of a machine, he can be confronted by the machine as acompetitor. Finally, as the amassing of capital increases the amount of industry and therefore thenumber of workers, it causes the same amount of industry to manufacture a larger amount ofproducts, which leads to over-production and thus either ends by throwing a large section ofworkers out of work or by reducing their wages to the most miserable minimum.Such are the consequences of a state of society most favorable to the worker — namely, of a stateof growing, advancing wealth.Eventually, however, this state of growth must sooner or later reach its peak. What is theworker’s position now?3) “In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches both the wagesof labor and the profits of stock would probably be very low the competition foremployment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labor to whatwas barely sufficient to keep up the number of laborers, and, the country beingalready fully peopled, that number could never be augmented.” [Adam Smith,Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, p. 84.]The surplus would have to die.Thus in a declining state of society — increasing misery of the worker; in an advancing state —misery with complications; and in a fully developed state of society — static misery.Since, however, according to Smith, a society is not happy, of which the greater part suffers —yet even the wealthiest state of society leads to this suffering of the majority — and since theeconomic system7 (and in general a society based on private interest) leads to this wealthiestcondition, it follows that the goal of the economic system is the unhappiness of society.Concerning the relationship between worker and capitalist we should add that the capitalist ismore than compensated for rising wages by the reduction in the amount of labor time, and thatrising wages and rising interest on capital operate on the price of commodities like simple andcompound interest respectively.Let us put ourselves now wholly at the standpoint of the political economist, and follow him incomparing the theoretical and practical claims of the workers.He tells us that originally and in theory the whole product of labor belongs to the worker. But atthe same time he tells us that in actual fact what the worker gets is the smallest and utterlyindispensable part of the product — as much, only, as is necessary for his existence, not as ahuman being, but as a worker, and for the propagation, not of humanity, but of the slave class ofworkers.The political economist tells us that everything is bought with labor and that capital is nothing butaccumulated labor; but at the same time he tells us that the worker, far from being able to buyeverything, must sell himself and his humanity. 6Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptWhilst the rent of the idle landowner usually amounts to a third of the product of the soil, and theprofit of the busy capitalist to as much as twice the interest on money, the “something more”which the worker himself earns at the best of times amounts to so little that of four children ofhis, two must starve and die.Whilst according to the political economists it is solely through labor that man enhances the valueof the products of nature, whilst labor is man’s active possession, according to this same politicaleconomy the landowner and the capitalist, who qua landowner and capitalist are merelyprivileged and idle gods, are everywhere superior to the worker and lay down the law to him.Whilst according to the political economists labor is the sole unchanging price of things, there isnothing more fortuitous than the price of labor, nothing exposed to greater fluctuations.Whilst the division of labor raises the productive power of labor and increases the wealth andrefinement of society, it impoverishes the worker and reduces him to a machine. Whilst laborbrings about the accumulation of capital and with this the increasing prosperity of society, itrenders the worker ever more dependent on the capitalist, leads him into competition of a newintensity, and drives him into the headlong rush of overproduction, with its subsequentcorresponding slump.Whilst the interest of the worker, according to the political economists, never stands opposed tothe interest of society, society always and necessarily stands opposed to the interest of the worker.According to the political economists, the interest of the worker is never opposed to that ofsociety: (1) because the rising wages are more than compensated by the reduction in the amountof labor time, together with the other consequences set forth above; and (2) because in relation tosociety the whole gross product is the net product, and only in relation to the private individualhas the net product any significance.But that labor itself, not merely in present conditions but insofar as its purpose in general is themere increase of wealth — that labor itself, I say, is harmful and pernicious — follows from thepolitical economist’s line of argument, without his being aware of it.In theory, rent of land and profit on capital are deductions suffered by wages. In actual fact,however, wages are a deduction which land and capital allow to go to the worker, a concessionfrom the product of labor to the workers, to labor.When society is in a state of decline, the worker suffers most severely. The specific severity ofhis burden he owes to his position as a worker, but the burden as such to the position of society.But when society is in a state of progress, the ruin and impoverishment of the worker is theproduct of his labor and of the wealth produced by him. The misery results, therefore, from theessence of present-day labor itself.Society in a state of maximum wealth — an ideal, but one which is approximately attained, andwhich at least is the aim of political economy as of civil society — means for the workers staticmisery.It goes without saying that the proletarian, i.e., the man who, being without capital and rent, livespurely by labor, and by a one-sided, abstract labor, is considered by political economy only as aworker. Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same asany horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is notworking, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion,to the statistical tables, to politics and to the poor-house overseer.Let us now rise above the level of political economy and try to answer two questions on the basisof the above exposition, which has been presented almost in the words of the politicaleconomists: 7Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscript(1) What in the evolution of mankind is the meaning of this reduction of the greater part ofmankind to abstract labor?(2) What are the mistakes committed by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wagesand in this way to improve the situation of the working class, or regard equality of wages (asProudhon does) as the goal of social revolution?In political economy labor occurs only in the form of activity as a source of livelihood.“It can be asserted that those occupations which presuppose specific talents orlonger training have become on the whole more lucrative; whilst the proportionatereward for mechanically monotonous activity in which one person can be trainedas easily and quickly as another has fallen with growing competition, and wasinevitably bound to fall. And it is just this sort of work which in the present stateof the organization of labor is still by far the commonest. If therefore a worker inthe first category now earns seven times as much as he did, say, fifty years ago,whilst the earnings of another in the second category have remained unchanged,then of course both are earning on the average four times as much. But if the firstcategory comprises only a thousand workers in a particular country, and thesecond a million, then 999,000 are no better off than fifty years ago — and theyare worse off if at the same time the prices of the necessaries of life have risen.With such superficial calculations of averages people try to deceive themselvesabout the most numerous class of the population. Moreover, the size of the wageis only one factor in the estimation of the worker’s income, because it is essentialfor the measurement of the latter to take into account the certainty of its duration— which is obviously out of the question in the anarchy of so-called freecompetition, with its ever-recurring fluctuations and periods of stagnation. Finally,the hours of work customary formerly and now have to be considered. And for theEnglish cotton-workers these have been increased, as a result of the entrepreneurs’mania for profit. to between twelve and sixteen hours a day during the pasttwenty-five years or so — that is to say, precisely during the period of theintroduction of labor-saving machines; and this increase in one country and in onebranch of industry inevitably asserted itself elsewhere to a greater or lesser degree,for the right of the unlimited exploitation of the poor by the rich is still universallyrecognised.” (Wilhelm Schulz, Die Bewegung der Production, p. 65)“But even if it were as true as it is false that the average income of every class ofsociety has increased, the income-differences and relative income-distances maynevertheless have become greater and the contrasts between wealth and povertyaccordingly stand out more sharply. For just because total production rises — andin the same measure as it rises — needs, desires and claims also multiply and thusrelative poverty can increase whilst absolute poverty diminishes. The Samoyedliving on fish oil and rancid fish is not poor because in his secluded society allhave the same needs. But in a state that is forging ahead, which in the course of adecade, say, increased by a third its total production in proportion to thepopulation, the worker who is getting as much at the end of ten years as at thebeginning has not remained as well off, but has become poorer by a third.” (Ibid.pp. 65-66)But political economy knows the worker only as a working animal — as a beast reduced to thestrictest bodily needs.“To develop in greater spiritual freedom, a people must break their bondage totheir bodily needs — they must cease to be the slaves of the body. They must,above all, have time at their disposal for spiritual creative activity and spiritualenjoyment. The developments in the labor organism gain this time. Indeed, with 8Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptnew motive forces and improved machinery, a single worker in the cotton millsnow often performs the work formerly requiring a hundred, or even 250 to 350workers. Similar results can be observed in all branches of production, becauseexternal natural forces are being compelled to participate to an ever-greater degreein human labor. If the satisfaction of a given amount of material needs formerlyrequired a certain expenditure of time and human effort which has later beenreduced by half, then without any loss of material comfort the scope for spiritualactivity and enjoyment has been simultaneously extended by as much.... But againthe way in which the booty, that we win from old Kronos himself in his mostprivate domain, is shared out is still decided by the dice-throw of blind, unjustChance. In France it has been calculated that at the present stage in thedevelopment of production an average working period of five hours a day byevery person capable of work could suffice for the satisfaction of all the materialinterests of society.... Notwithstanding the time saved by the perfecting ofmachinery. the duration of the slave-labor performed by a large population in thefactories has only increased.” (Schulz, op. cit., pp. 67, 68.)“The transition from compound manual labor rests on a break-down of the latterinto its simple operations. At first, however, only some of the uniformly-recurringoperations will devolve on machines, while some will devolve on men. From thenature of things, and from confirmatory experience, it is clear that unendinglymonotonous activity of this kind is as harmful to the mind as to the body; thus thiscombination of machinery with mere division of labor among a greater number ofhands must inevitably show all the disadvantages of the latter. Thesedisadvantages appear, among other things, in the greater mortality of factoryworkers.... Consideration has not been given ... to this big distinction as to how farmen work through machines or how far as machines.” (Ibid. p. 69)“In the future life of the peoples, however, the inanimate forces of nature workingin machines will be our slaves and serfs.” (Ibid. p. 74)“The English spinning mills employ 196,818 women and only 158,818 men. Forevery 100 male workers in the cotton mills of Lancashire there are 103 femaleworkers, and in Scotland as many as 209. In the English flax mills of Leeds, forevery 100 male workers there were found to be 147 female workers. In Dundeeand on the east coast of Scotland as many as 280. In the English silk mills ... manyfemale workers; male workers predominate in the wool-mills where the workrequires greater physical strength. In 1833, no fewer than 38,927 women wereemployed alongside 18,593 men in the North American cotton mills. As a resultof the changes in the labor organism, a wider sphere of gainful employment hasthus fallen to the share of the female sex.... Women now occupying aneconomically more independent position ... the two sexes are drawn closertogether in their social conditions.” (Ibid. pp. 71, 72)“Working in the English steam- and water-driven spinning mills in 1835 were:20,558 children between the ages of eight and twelve; 35,867 between the ages oftwelve and thirteen; and, lastly, 108,208 children between the ages of thirteen andeighteen.... Admittedly, further advances in mechanization, by more and moreremoving all monotonous work from human hands, are operating in the directionof a gradual elimination of this evil. But standing in the way of these more rapidadvances is the very circumstance that the capitalists can, in the easiest andcheapest fashion, appropriate the energies of the lower classes down to thechildren, to be used instead of mechanical devices.” (Ibid. pp. 70-71)“Lord Brougham’s call to the workers — ‘Become capitalists’. ... This is the evilthat millions are able to earn a bare subsistence for themselves only by strenuous 9Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptlabor which shatters the body and cripples them morally and intellectually; thatthey are even obliged to consider the misfortune of finding such work a piece ofgood fortune.” (Ibid. p. 60)“In order to live, then, the non-owners are obliged to place themselves, directly orindirectly, at the service of the owners — to put themselves, that is to say, into aposition of dependence upon them.” (Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d’économie soc.,etc., p. 409)“Servants — pay: workers — wages; employees — salary or emoluments.” (Ibid.pp. 409-410)“To hire out one’s labor”, “to lend one’s labor at interest”, “to work in another’splace.”“To hire out the materials of labor”, “to lend the materials of labor at interest”, “tomake others work in one’s place.” (Ibid. p. 411)“Such an economic order condemns men to occupations so mean, to a degradationso devastating and bitter, that by comparison savagery seems like a kinglycondition.... (Ibid. pp. 417, 418) “Prostitution of the non-owning class in all itsforms.” (Ibid. p. 421f) “Ragmen.”Charles Loudon in the book Solution du problème de la population, etc., Paris, 18428, declaresthe number of prostitutes in England to be between sixty and seventy thousand. The number ofwomen of doubtful virtue is said to be equally large (p. 228).“The average life of these unfortunate creatures on the streets, after they haveembarked on their career of vice, is about six or seven years. To maintain thenumber of sixty to seventy thousand prostitutes, there must be in the threekingdoms at least eight to nine thousand women who commit themselves to thisabject profession each year, or about twenty-four new victims each day — anaverage of one per hour; and it follows that if the same proportion holds good overthe whole surface of the globe, there must constantly be in existence one and ahalf million unfortunate women of this kind”. (Ibid. p. 229)“The numbers of the poverty-stricken grow with their poverty, and at the extremelimit of destitution human beings are crowded together in the greatest numberscontending with each other for the right to suffer.... In 1821 the population ofIreland was 6,801,827. In 1831 it had risen to 7,764,010 — an increase of 14 percent in ten years. In Leinster, the wealthiest province, the population increased byonly 8 per cent; whilst in Connaught, the most poverty-stricken province, theincrease reached 21 per cent. (Extract from the Enquiries Published in England onIreland, Vienna, 1840.)” (Buret, De la misère, etc., t. 1, pp. 36, 37)Political economy considers labor in the abstract as a thing; “labor is acommodity.” If the price is high, then the commodity is in great demand; if theprice is low, then the commodity is in great supply: “the price of labor as acommodity must fall lower and lower.” (Buret, op. cit.) This is made inevitablepartly by the competition between capitalist and worker, partly by the competitionamongst the workers. “The working population, the seller of labor, is necessarilyreduced to accepting the most meager part of the product.... Is the theory of laboras a commodity anything other than a theory of disguised bondage?” (Ibid. p. 43)“Why then has nothing but an exchange-value been seen in labor?” (Ibid. p. 44)The large workshops prefer to buy the labor of women and children, because thiscosts less than that of men. (Op. cit.) “The worker is not at all in the position of afree seller vis-à-vis the one who employs him.... The capitalist is always free toemploy labor, and the worker is always forced to sell it. The value of labor is 10Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptcompletely destroyed if it is not sold every instant. Labor can neither beaccumulated nor even be saved, unlike true [commodities].“Labor is life, and if life is not each day exchanged for food, it suffers and soonperishes. To claim that human life is a commodity, one must, therefore, admitslavery.” (Ibid. pp. 49, 50) If then labor is a commodity, it is a commodity withthe most unfortunate attributes. But even by the principles of political economy itis no commodity, for it is not the “free result of a free transaction.” The presenteconomic regime “simultaneously lowers the price and the remuneration of labor;it perfects the worker and degrades the man.” (Ibid. pp. 52, 53) “Industry hasbecome a war, and commerce a gamble.” (Ibid. p. 62)The cotton-working machines (in England) alone represent 84,000,000 manualworkers. (Ibid. p. 193)Up to the present, industry has been in a state of war, a war of conquest: “It hassquandered the lives of the men who made up its army with the same indifferenceas the great conquerors. Its aim was the possession of wealth, not the happiness ofmen.” (Buret, op. cit., p. 20) “These interests” (that is, economic interests), “freelyleft to themselves ... must necessarily come into conflict; they have no otherarbiter but war, and the decisions of war assign defeat and death to some, in orderto give victory to the others.... It is in the conflict of opposed forces that scienceseeks order and equilibrium: perpetual war, according to it, is the sole means ofobtaining peace; that war is called competition.” (Ibid. p. 23)“The industrial war, to be conducted with success, demands large armies which itcan amass on one spot and profusely decimate. And it is neither from devotion norfrom duty that the soldiers of this army bear the exertions imposed on them, butonly to escape the hard necessity of hunger. They feel neither attachment norgratitude towards their bosses, nor are these bound to their subordinates by anyfeeling of benevolence. They do not know them as men, but only as instruments ofproduction which have to yield as much as possible with as little cost as possible.These populations of workers, ever more crowded together, have not even theassurance of always being employed. Industry, which has called them together,only lets them live while it needs them, and as soon as it can get rid of them itabandons them without the slightest scruple; and the workers are compelled tooffer their persons and their powers for whatever price they can get. The longer,more painful and more disgusting the work they are given, the less they are paid.There are those who, with sixteen hours’ work a day and unremitting exertion,scarcely buy the right not to die.” (Ibid. pp. 68-69)“We are convinced ... as are the commissioners charged with the inquiry into thecondition of the hand-loom weavers, that the large industrial towns would in ashort time lose their population of workers if they were not all the time receivingfrom the neighboring rural areas constant recruitments of healthy men, a constantflow of fresh blood.” (Ibid. p. 362)Profit of Capital1. CapitalWhat is the basis of capital, that is, of private property in the products of other men’s labor?“Even if capital itself does not merely amount to theft or fraud, it still requires thecooperation of legislation to sanctify inheritance.” (Say, Traité d’economiepolitique, t. I. P. 136, footnote)9 11Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptHow does one become a proprietor of productive stock? How does one become owner of theproducts created by means of this stock?By virtue of positive law. (Say, t. II, p. 4 )What does one acquire with capital, with the inheritance of a large fortune, for instance?“The person who [either acquires, or] succeeds to a great fortune, does notnecessarily [acquire or] succeed to any political power [.... ] The power which thatpossession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing; acertain command over all the labor, or over all the produce of labor, which is thenin the market.” (Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, Vol. I, pp. 26-27.)10Capital is thus the governing power over labor and its products. The capitalist possesses thispower, not on account of his personal or human qualities, but inasmuch as he is an owner ofcapital. His power is the purchasing power of his capital, which nothing can withstand.Later we shall see first how the capitalist, by means of capital, exercises his governing powerover labor, then, however, we shall see the governing power of capital over the capitalist himself.What is capital?“A certain quantity of labor stocked and stored up to be employed.” (Adam Smith,op. cit., Vol. I, p. 295.)Capital is stored-up labor.(2) Funds, or stock, is any accumulation of products of the soil or of manufacture. Stock is calledcapital only when it yields to its owner a revenue or profit. (Adam Smith, op. cit., p. 243)2. The Profit of CapitalThe profit or gain of capital is altogether different from the wages of labor. Thisdifference is manifested in two ways: in the first place, the profits of capital areregulated altogether by the value of the capital employed, although the labor ofinspection and direction associated with different capitals may be the same.Moreover in large works the whole of this labor is committed to some principalclerk, whose salary bears no regular proportion to the capital of which he overseesthe management. And although the labor of the proprietor is here reduced almostto nothing, he still demands profits in proportion to his capital. (Adam Smith, op.cit., Vol. I, p. 43)11Why does the capitalist demand this proportion between profit and capital?He would have no interest in employing the workers, unless he expected from thesale of their work something more than is necessary to replace the stock advancedby him as wages and he would have no interest to employ a great stock rather thana small one, unless his profits were to bear some proportion to the extent of hisstock. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 42)The capitalist thus makes a profit, first, on the wages, and secondly on the raw materialsadvanced by him.What proportion, then, does profit bear to capital?If it is already difficult to determine the usual average level of wages at aparticular place and at a particular time, it is even more difficult to determine theprofit on capitals. A change in the price of the commodities in which the capitalistdeals, the good or bad fortune of his rivals and customers, a thousand otheraccidents to which commodities are exposed both in transit and in the warehouses— all produce a daily, almost hourly variation in profit. (Adam Smith, op. cit.,Vol. I, pp. 78-79) But though it is impossible to determine with precision what arethe profits on capitals, some notion may be formed of them from the interest of 12Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptmoney. Wherever a great deal can be made by the use of money, a great deal willbe given for the use of it; wherever little can be made by it, little will be given.(Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 79) The proportion which the usual market rate ofinterest ought to bear to the rate of clear profit, necessarily varies as profit rises orfalls. Double interest is in Great Britain reckoned what the merchants call a good,moderate, reasonable profit, terms which mean no more than a common and usualprofit. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 87)What is the lowest rate of profit? And what the highest?The lowest rate of ordinary profit on capital must always be something more thanwhat is sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which every employmentof stock is exposed. It is this surplus only which is neat or clear profit. The sameholds for the lowest rate of interest. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 86)The highest rate to which ordinary profits can rise is that which in the price of thegreater part of commodities eats up the whole of the rent of the land, and reducesthe wages of labor contained in the commodity supplied to the lowest rate, thebare subsistence of the laborer during his work. The worker must always be fed insome way or other while he is required to work; rent can disappear entirely. Forexample: the servants of the East India Company in Bengal. (Adam Smith, op.cit., Vol. I, pp. 86-87)Besides all the advantages of limited competition which the capitalist may exploit in this case, hecan keep the market price above the natural price by quite decorous means.For one thing, by keeping secrets in trade if the market is at a great distance fromthose who supply it, that is, by concealing a price change, its rise above the naturallevel. This concealment has the effect that other capitalists do not follow him ininvesting their capital in this branch of industry or trade.Then again by keeping secrets in manufacture, which enable the capitalist toreduce the costs of production and supply his commodity at the same or even atlower prices than his competitors while obtaining a higher profit. (Deceiving bykeeping secrets is not immoral? Dealings on the Stock Exchange.) Furthermore,where production is restricted to a particular locality (as in the case of a rarewine), and where the effective demand can never he satisfied. Finally, throughmonopolies exercised by individuals or companies. Monopoly price is the highestpossible. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 53-54)Other fortuitous causes which can raise the profit on capital: the acquisition ofnew territories, or of new branches of trade, often increases the profit on capitaleven in a wealthy country, because they withdraw some capital from the oldbranches of trade, reduce competition, and cause the market to be supplied withfewer commodities, the prices of which then rise: those who deal in thesecommodities can then afford to borrow at a higher rate of interest. (Adam Smith,op. cit., Vol. I, p. 83)The more a commodity comes to be manufactured — the more it becomes anobject of manufacture — the greater becomes that part of the price which resolvesitself into wages and profit in proportion to that which resolves itself into rent. Inthe progress of the manufacture of a commodity, not only the number of profitsincreases, but every subsequent profit is greater than the foregoing; because thecapital from which it is derived must always be greater. The capital whichemploys the weavers, for example, must always be greater than that whichemploys the spinners; because it not only replaces that capital with its profits, butpays, besides, the wages of weavers; and the profits must always bear someproportion to the capital. (Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 45) 13Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptThus the advance made by human labor in converting the product of nature into the manufacturedproduct of nature increases, not the wages of labor, but in part the number of profitable capitalinvestments, and in part the size of every subsequent capital in comparison with the foregoing.More about the advantages which the capitalist derives from the division of labor, later.He profits doubly — first, by the division of labor; and secondly, in general, by the advancewhich human labor makes on the natural product. The greater the human share in a commodity,the greater the profit of dead capital.In one and the same society the average rates of profit on capital are much morenearly on the same level than the wages of the different sorts of labor. (Op. cit.,Vol. I, p. 100.) In the different employments of capital, the ordinary rate of profitvaries with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns.The ordinary profit of stock, though it rises with the risk, does not always seem torise in proportion to it. (Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 99-100.)It goes without saying that profits also rise if the means of circulation become less expensive oreasier available (e.g., paper money).3. The Rule of Capital over Labor and the Motives of the CapitalistThe consideration of his own private profit is the sole motive which determinesthe owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or insome particular branch of the wholesale or retail trade. The different quantities ofproductive Labor which it may put into motion, and the different values which itmay add to the annual produce of the land and labor of his country, according as itis employed in one or other of those different ways, never enter into his thoughts.(Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 335)The most useful employment of capital for the capitalist is that which, risks beingequal, yields him the greatest profit. This employment is not always the mostuseful for society; the most useful employment is that which utilizes theproductive powers of nature. (Say, t. II, pp. 130-31.)The plans and speculations of the employers of capitals regulate and direct all themost important operations of labor, and profit is the end proposed by all thoseplans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise withthe prosperity and fall with the decline of the society. On the contrary, it isnaturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in thecountries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this class, therefore, hasnot the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the othertwo.... The particular interest of the dealers in any particular branch of trade ormanufactures is always in some respects different from, and frequently even insharp opposition to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow thesellers’ competition is always the interest of the dealer.... This is a class of peoplewhose interest is never exactly the same as that of society, a class of people whohave generally an interest to deceive and to oppress the public. (Adam Smith, op.cit., Vol. I, pp. 231-32)4. The Accumulation of Capitals and the Competition among the CapitalistsThe increase of stock, which raises wages, tends to lower the capitalists’ profit,because of the competition amongst the capitalists. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I,p. 78)If, for example, the capital which is necessary for the grocery trade of a particulartown “is divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend tomake both of them sell cheaper than if it were in the hands of one only; and if itwere divided among twenty, their competition would be just so much the greater, 1412Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptand the chance of their combining together, in order to raise the price, just somuch the less.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 322)Since we already know that monopoly prices are as high as possible, since the interest of thecapitalists, even from the point of view commonly held by political economists, stands in hostileopposition to society, and since a rise of profit operates like compound interest on the price of thecommodity (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 87-88), it follows that the sole defense against thecapitalists is competition, which according to the evidence of political economy acts beneficentlyby both raising wages and lowering the prices of commodities to the advantage of the consumingpublic.But competition is only possible if capital multiplies, and is held in many hands. The formation ofmany capital investments is only possible as a result of multilateral accumulation, since capitalcomes into being only by accumulation; and multilateral accumulation necessarily turns intounilateral accumulation. Competition among capitalists increases the accumulation of capital.Accumulation, where private property prevails, is the concentration of capital in the hands of afew, it is in general an inevitable consequence if capital is left to follow its natural course, and itis precisely through competition that the way is cleared for this natural disposition of capital.We have been told that the profit on capital is in proportion to the size of the capital. A largecapital therefore accumulates more quickly than a small capital in proportion to its size, even ifwe disregard for the time being deliberate competition.Accordingly, the accumulation of large capital proceeds much more rapidly than that of smallercapital, quite irrespective of competition. But let us follow this process further.With the increase of capital the profit on capital diminishes, because of competition. The first tosuffer, therefore, is the small capitalist.The increase of capitals and a large number of capital investments presuppose, further, acondition of advancing wealth in the country.“In a country which had acquired its full complement of riches [ ... ] the ordinaryrate of clear profit would be very small, so the usual [market] rate of interestwhich could be afforded out of it would be so low as to render it impossible forany but the very wealthiest people to live upon the interest of their money. Allpeople of [...] middling fortunes would be obliged to superintend themselves theemployment of their own stocks. It would be necessary that almost every manshould be a man of business, or engage in some sort of trade.” (Adam Smith, op.cit., Vol. I, p. 86)This is the situation most dear to the heart of political economy.“The proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems everywhere toregulate the proportion between industry and idleness; wherever capitalpredominates, industry prevails; wherever revenue, idleness.” (Adam Smith, op.cit., Vol. I, p. 301.)What about the employment of capital, then, in this condition of increased competition?“As stock increases, the quantity of stock to be lent at interest grows graduallygreater and greater. As the quantity of stock to be lent at interest increases, theinterest ... diminishes (i) because the market price of things commonly diminishesas their quantity increases. ... and (ii) because with the increase of capitals in anycountry, “it becomes gradually more and more difficult to find within the countrya profitable method of employing any new capital. There arises in consequence acompetition between different capitals, the owner of one endeavoring to getpossession of that employment which is occupied by another. But upon mostoccasions he can hope to jostle that other out of this employment by no other 15Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptmeans but by dealing upon more reasonable terms. He must not only sell what hedeals in somewhat cheaper, but in order to get it to sell, he must sometimes, too,buy it dearer. The demand for productive labor, by the increase of the funds whichare destined for maintaining it, grows every day greater and greater. Laborerseasily find employment, but the owners of capitals find it difficult to get laborersto employ. Their competition raises the wages of labor and sinks the profits ofstock.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 316)Thus the small capitalist has the choice: (1) either to consume his capital, since he can no longerlive on the interest — and thus cease to be a capitalist; or (2) to set up a business himself, sell hiscommodity cheaper, buy dearer than the wealthier capitalist, and pay higher wages — thusruining himself, the market price being already very low as a result of the intense competitionpresupposed. If, however, the big capitalist wants to squeeze out the smaller capitalist, he has allthe advantages over him which the capitalist has as a capitalist over the worker. The larger size ofhis capital compensates him for the smaller profits, and he can even bear temporary losses untilthe smaller capitalist is ruined and he finds himself freed from this competition. In this way, heaccumulates the small capitalist’s profits.Furthermore: the big capitalist always buys cheaper than the small one, because he buys biggerquantities. He can therefore well afford to sell cheaper.But if a fall in the rate of interest turns the middle capitalists from rentiers into businessmen, theincrease in business capital and the resulting smaller profit produce conversely a fall in the rate ofinterest.“When the profits which can be made by the use of a capital are diminished theprice which can be paid for the use of it [...] must necessarily be diminished withthem.” (Adam Smith, loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 316)“As riches, improvement, and population have increased, interest has declined,”and consequently the profits of capitalists, “after these [profits] are diminished,stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than before.[...] A great stock though with small profits, generally increases faster than a smallstock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money.” (op. cit., Vol. I,p. 83)When, therefore, this large capital is opposed by small capitals with small profits, as it is underthe presupposed condition of intense competition, it crushes them completely.The necessary result of this competition is a general deterioration of commodities, adulteration,fake production and universal poisoning, evident in large towns.An important circumstance in the competition of large and small capital is, furthermore, therelation between fixed capital and circulating capital.Circulating capital is a capital which is “employed in raising” provisions,“manufacturing, or purchasing goods, and selling them again. [... ] The capitalemployed in this manner yields no revenue or profit to its employer, while it eitherremains in his possession, or continues in the same shape. [...] His capital iscontinually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it isonly by means of such circulation, or successive exchanges” and transformations“that it can yield him any profit.” Fixed capital consists of capital invested “in theimprovement of land, in the purchase of useful machines and instruments of trade,or in such-like things.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 243-44)“Every saving in the expense of supporting the fixed capital is an improvement ofthe net revenue of the society. The whole capital of the undertaker of every workis necessarily divided between his fixed and his circulating capital. [Marx uses theFrench terms capital fixe and capital circulant. – Ed.] While his whole capital 16Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptremains the same, the smaller the one part, the greater must necessarily be theother. It is the circulating capital which furnishes the materials and wages of labor,and puts industry into motion. Every saving, therefore, in the expense ofmaintaining the fixed capital, which does not diminish the productive powers oflabor, must increase the fund which puts industry into motion.” (Adam Smith, op.cit., Vol. I, p. 257)It is clear from the outset that the relation of fixed capital and circulating capital is much morefavorable to the big capitalist than to the smaller capitalist. The extra fixed capital required by avery big banker as against a very small one is insignificant. Their fixed capital amounts tonothing more than the office. The equipment of the bigger landowner does not increase inproportion to the size of his estate. Similarly, the credit which a big capitalist enjoys comparedwith a smaller one means for him all the greater saving in fixed capital — that is, in the amount ofready money he must always have at hand. Finally, it is obvious that where industrial labor hasreached a high level, and where therefore almost all manual labor has become factory labor, theentire capital of a small capitalist does not suffice to provide him even with the necessary fixedcapital. [As is well known, large-scale cultivation usually provides employment only for a smallnumber of hands. Note by Marx in French.]It is generally true that the accumulation of large capital is also accompanied by a proportionalconcentration and simplification of fixed capital, as compared to the smaller capitalists. The bigcapitalist introduces for himself some kind of organization of the instruments of labor.“Similarly, in the sphere of industry every manufactory and mill is already acomprehensive combination of a large material fortune with numerous and variedintellectual capacities and technical skills serving the common purpose ofproduction.... Where legislation preserves landed property in large units, thesurplus of a growing population flocks into trades, and it is therefore as in GreatBritain in the field of industry, principally, that proletarians aggregate in greatnumbers. Where, however, the law permits the continuous division of the land, thenumber of small, debt-encumbered proprietors increases, as in France; and thecontinuing process of fragmentation throws them into the class of the needy andthe discontented. When eventually this fragmentation and indebtedness reaches ahigher degree still, big landed property once more swallows up small property,just as large-scale industry destroys small industry. And as larger estates areformed again, large numbers of propertyless workers not required for thecultivation of the soil are again driven into industry.” (Schulz, Bewegung derProduction, pp. 58, 59.)“Commodities of the same kind change in character as a result of changes in themethod of production, and especially as a result of the use of machinery. Only bythe exclusion of human power has it become possible to spin from a pound ofcotton worth 3 shillings and 8 pence 350 hanks of a total length of 167 Englishmiles (i.e., 36 German miles), and of a commercial value of 25 guineas.” (op. cit.,p. 62.)“On the average the prices of cotton-goods have decreased in England during thepast 45 years by eleven-twelfths, and according to Marshall’s calculations thesame amount of manufactured goods for which 16 shillings was still paid in 1814is now supplied at 1 shilling and 10 pence. The greater cheapness of industrialproducts expands both consumption at home and the market abroad, and becauseof this the number of workers in cotton has not only not fallen in Great Britainafter the introduction of machines but has risen from forty thousand to one and ahalf million. As to the earnings of industrial entrepreneurs and workers, thegrowing competition between the factory owners has resulted in their profits 17Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptnecessarily falling relative to the amount of products supplied by them. In theyears 1820-33 the Manchester manufacturer’s gross profit on a piece of calico fellfrom four shillings 1 1/3 pence to one shilling 9 pence. But to make up for thisloss, the volume of manufacture has been correspondingly increased. Theconsequence of this is that separate branches of industry experience over-production to some extent, that frequent bankruptcies occur causing property tofluctuate and vacillate unstably within the class of capitalists and masters of labor,thus throwing into the proletariat some of those who have been ruinedeconomically; and that, frequently and suddenly, close-downs or cuts inemployment become necessary, the painful effects of which are always bitterlyfelt by the class of wage-laborers.” (Op. cit., p. 63.)“To hire out one’s labor is to begin one’s enslavement. To hire out the materials oflabor is to establish one’s freedom.... Labor is man; the materials, on the otherhand, contain nothing human.” (Pecqueur, Théorie sociale, etc.)“The material element, which is quite incapable of creating wealth without theother element, labor, acquires the magical virtue of being fertile for them [whoown this material element] as if by their own action they had placed there thisindispensable element.” (Op. cit.)“Supposing that the daily labor of a worker brings him on the average 400 francs ayear and that this sum suffices for every adult to live some sort of crude life, thenany proprietor receiving 2,000 francs in interest or rent, from a farm, a house, etc.,compels indirectly five men to work for him; an income of 100,000 francsrepresents the labor of 250 men, and that of 1,000,000 francs the labor of 2,500individuals (hence, 300 million [Louis Philippe] therefore the labor of 750,000workers).” (Op. cit., pp. 412-13.)‘The human law has given owners the right to use and to abuse — that is to say,the right to do what they will with the materials of labor.... They are in no wayobliged by law to provide work for the propertyless when required and at alltimes, or to pay them always an adequate wage, etc. (Op. cit., p. 413.) “Completefreedom concerning the nature, the quantity, the quality and the expediency ofproduction; concerning the use and the disposal of wealth; and full command overthe materials of all labor. Everyone is free to exchange what belongs to him as hethinks fit, without considering anything other than his own interest as anindividual.” (Op. cit. p. 413.)“Competition is merely the expression of the freedom to exchange, which itself isthe immediate and logical consequence of the individual’s right to use and abuseall the instruments of production. The right to use and abuse, freedom ofexchange, and arbitrary competition — these three economic moments, whichform one unit, entail the following consequences; each produces what he wishes,as he wishes, when he wishes, where he wishes, produces well or produces badly,produces too much or not enough, too soon or too late, at too high a price or toolow a price; none knows whether he will sell, to whom he will sell, how he willsell, when he will sell, where he will sell. And it is the same with regard topurchases. The producer is ignorant of needs and resources, of demand andsupply. He sells when he wishes, when he can, where he wishes, to whom hewishes, at the price he wishes. And he buys in the same way. In all this he is everthe plaything of chance, the slave of the law of the strongest, of the least harassed,of the richest.... Whilst at one place there is scarcity, at another there is glut andwaste. Whilst one producer sells a lot or at a very high price, and at an enormousprofit, the other sells nothing or sells at a loss.... The supply does not know thedemand, and the demand does not know the supply. You produce, trusting to a 18Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscripttaste, a fashion, which prevails amongst the consuming public. But by the timeyou are ready to deliver the commodity, the whim has already passed and hassettled on some other kind of product.... The inevitable consequences:bankruptcies occurring constantly and universally; miscalculations, sudden ruinand unexpected fortunes, commercial crises, stoppages, periodic gluts orshortages; instability and depreciation of wages and profits, the loss or enormouswaste of wealth, time and effort in the arena of fierce competition.” (Op. cit., pp.414-16.)Ricardo in his book [On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (rent of land)]:Nations are merely production-shops; man is a machine for consuming and producing; human lifeis a kind of capital; economic laws blindly rule the world. For Ricardo men are nothing, theproduct everything. In the 26th chapter of the French translation it says:“To an individual with a capital of £20,000 whose profits were £2,000 per annum,it would he a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a hundredor a thousand men.... Is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its netreal income, its rent and profits be the same, it is of no importance whether thenation consists of ten or twelve millions of inhabitants.” — [t. II, pp. 194, 195.]“In fact, says M. Sismondi (Nouveaux principes diconomie politique, t. II, p. 331),nothing remains to be desired but that the King, living quite alone on the island,should by continuously turning a crank cause automatons to do all the work ofEngland.”13“The master who buys the worker’s labor at such a low price that it scarcelysuffices for the worker’s most pressing needs is responsible neither for theinadequacy of the wage nor for the excessive duration of the labor: he himself hasto submit to the law which he imposes.... Poverty is not so much caused by men asby the power of things.” (Buret, op. cit., p. 82.)“The inhabitants of many different parts of Great Britain have not capitalsufficient to improve and cultivate all their lands. The wool of the southerncounties of Scotland is, a great part of it, after a long land carriage through verybad roads, manufactured in Yorkshire, for want of capital to manufacture it athome. There are many little manufacturing towns in Great Britain, of which theinhabitants have not capital sufficient to transport the produce of their ownindustry to those distant markets where there is demand and consumption for it. Ifthere are any merchants among them, they are properly only the agents ofwealthier merchants who reside in some of the greater commercial cities.” (AdamSmith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, pp. 326-27)“The annual produce of the land and labor of any nation can be increased in itsvalue by no other means but by increasing either the number of its productivelaborers, or the productive power of those laborers who had before beenemployed.... In either case an additional capital is almost always required.” (AdamSmith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 306-07.)“As the accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to thedivision of labor, so labor can be more and more subdivided in proportion only asstock is previously more and more accumulated. The quantity of materials whichthe same number of people can work up, increases in a great proportion as laborcomes to be more and more subdivided; and as the operations of each workmanare gradually reduced to a greater degree of simplicity, a variety of new machinescome to be invented for facilitating and abridging those operations. As thedivision of labor advances, therefore, in order to give constant employment to anequal number of workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of 19Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptmaterials and tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things,must be accumulated beforehand. But the number of workmen in every branch ofbusiness generally increases with the division of labor in that branch, or rather it isthe increase of their number which enables them to class and subdividethemselves in this manner.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 241-42)“As the accumulation of stock is previously necessary for carrying on this greatimprovement in the productive powers of labor, so that accumulation naturallyleads to this improvement. The person who employs his stock in maintaininglabor, necessarily wishes to employ it in such a manner as to produce as great aquantity of work as possible. He endeavors, therefore, both to make among hisworkmen the most proper distribution of employment, and to furnish them withthe best machines [... ]. His abilities in both these respects are generally inproportion to the extent of his stock, or to the number of people whom it canemploy. The quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every countrywith the increase of the stock which employs it, but, in consequence of thatincrease, the same quantity of industry produces a much greater quantity of work.”(Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 242) Hence overproduction.“More comprehensive combinations of productive forces ... in industry and tradeby uniting more numerous and more diverse human and natural powers in larger-scale enterprises. Already here and there, closer association of the chief branchesof production. Thus, big manufacturers will try to acquire also large estates inorder to become independent of others for at least a part of the raw materialsrequired for their industry; or they will go into trade in conjunction with theirindustrial enterprises, not only to sell their own manufactures, but also to purchaseother kinds of products and to sell these to their workers. In England, where asingle factory owner sometimes employs ten to twelve thousand workers ... it isalready not uncommon to find such combinations of various branches ofproduction controlled by one brain, such smaller states or provinces within thestate. Thus, the mine owners in the Birmingham area have recently taken over thewhole process of iron production, which was previously distributed amongvarious entrepreneurs and owners, (See “Der bergmännische Distrikt beiBirmingham,” Deutsche Vierteljahr-Schrift No. 3, 1838.) Finally in the largejoint-stock enterprises which have become so numerous, we see far-reachingcombinations of the financial resources of many participants with the scientificand technical knowledge and skills of others to whom the carrying-out of the workis handed over. The capitalists are thereby enabled to apply their savings in morediverse ways and perhaps even to employ them simultaneously in agriculture,industry and commerce. As a consequence their interest becomes morecomprehensive, and the contradictions between agricultural, industrial, andcommercial interests are reduced and disappear. But this increased possibility ofapplying capital profitably in the most diverse ways cannot but intensify theantagonism between the propertied and the non-propertied classes.” (Schulz, op.cit., pp. 40-4l.)The enormous profit which the landlords of houses make out of poverty. House rent stands ininverse proportion to industrial poverty. So does the interest obtained from the vices of the ruinedproletarians. (Prostitution, drunkenness, pawnbroking.)The accumulation of capital increases and the competition between capitalists decreases, whencapital and landed property are united in the same hand, also when capital is enabled by its size tocombine different branches of production.Indifference towards men. Smith’s twenty lottery-tickets.14 Say’s net and gross revenue. |XVI|| 20Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptRent of LandLandlords’ right has its origin in robbery. (Say, t. 1) The landlords, like all othermen, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for the naturalproduce of the earth. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 44.)“The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonableprofit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This,no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions.... The landlord demands”(1) “a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon theexpense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent.” (2) “Thoseimprovements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, butsometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however,the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they hadbeen all made by his own.” (3) “He sometimes demands rent for what is altogetherincapable of human improvement.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 131.)Smith cites as an instance of the last case kelp,“a species of seaweed, which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful formaking glass, soap, etc. It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly inScotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high-water mark, which are twiceevery day covered with the sea, and of which the produce, therefore, was neveraugmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is boundedby a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as much as for his corn fields.The sea in the neighborhood of the Islands of Shetland is more than commonlyabundant in fish, which make a great part of the subsistence of their inhabitants.But in order to profit by the produce of the water they must have a habitation uponthe neighboring land. The rent of the landlord is in proportion, not to what thefarmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and by thewater.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 131.)“This rent may be considered as the produce of those powers of nature, the use ofwhich the landlord lends to the farmer. It is greater or smaller according to thesupposed extent of those powers, or in other words, according to the supposednatural or improved fertility of the land. It is the work of nature which remainsafter deducting or compensating everything which can be regarded as the work ofman.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 324-25.)“The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, isnaturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord mayhave laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take;but to what the farmer can afford to give.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., p. 131.)Of the three original classes, that of the landlords is the one “whose revenue coststhem neither labor nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, andindependent of any plan or project of their own”. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p.230.)We have already learnt that the size of the rent depends on the degree of fertility of the land.Another factor in its determination is situation.“The rent of land not only varies with its fertility, whatever be its produce, butwith its situation whatever be its fertility.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 133.)“The produce of land, mines, and fisheries, when their natural fertility is equal, isin proportion to the extent and proper application of the capitals employed aboutthem. When the capitals are equal and equally well applied, it is in proportion totheir natural fertility.” (Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 249.) 21Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptThese propositions of Smith are important, because, given equal costs of production and capitalof equal size, they reduce the rent of land to the greater or lesser fertility of the soil. Therebyshowing clearly the perversion of concepts in political economy, which turns the fertility of theland into an attribute of the landlord.Now, however, let us consider the rent of land as it is formed in real life.The rent of land is established as a result of the struggle between tenant and landlord. We findthat the hostile antagonism of interests, the struggle, the war is recognised throughout politicaleconomy as the basis of social organization.Let us see now what the relations are between landlord and tenant.“In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavors to leave him no greatershare of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which hefurnishes the seed, pays the labor, and purchases and maintains the cattle andother instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stockin the neighborhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant cancontent himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave himany more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever partof its price is over and above this share, he naturally endeavors to reserve tohimself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can affordto pay in the actual circumstances of the land. [.... ] This portion, however, maystill be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent for which it is naturallymeant that land should for the most part be let.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp.130-31)“The landlords,” says Say, “operate a certain kind of monopoly against thetenants. The demand for their commodity, site and soil, can go on expandingindefinitely; but there is only a given, limited amount of their commodity.... Thebargain struck between landlord and tenant is always advantageous to the formerin the greatest possible degree.... Besides the advantage he derives from the natureof the case, he derives a further advantage from his position, his larger fortune andgreater credit and standing. But the first by itself suffices to enable him and himalone to profit from the favorable circumstances of the land. The opening of acanal, or a road; the increase of population and of the prosperity of a district,always raises the rent.... Indeed, the tenant himself may improve the ground at hisown expense; but he only derives the profit from this capital for the duration of hislease, with the expiry of which it remains with the proprietor of the land;henceforth it is the latter who reaps the interest thereon, without having made theoutlay, for there is now a proportionate increase in the rent.” (Say, t. II.)“Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highestwhich the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land.” (AdamSmith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 130.)“The rent of an estate above ground commonly amounts to what is supposed to bea third of the gross produce; and it is generally a rent certain and independent ofthe occasional variations in the crop.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 153.) Thisrent “is seldom less than a fourth ... of the whole produce”. (Op. cit., Vol. I, p.325.)Rent cannot be paid on all commodities. For instance, in many districts no rent is paid for stones.“Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market ofwhich the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock which must be employedin bringing them thither, together with its ordinary profits. If the ordinary price ismore than this, the surplus part of it will naturally go to the rent of the land. If it is 2215Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptnot more, though the commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rentto the landlord. Whether the price is or is not more depends upon the demand.”(Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 132.)“Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price ofcommodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or low wages andprofit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.”(Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 132.)Food belongs to the products which always yield a rent.As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means oftheir subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand. It can always purchaseor command a greater or smaller quantity of labor, and somebody can always befound who is willing to do something in order to obtain it. The quantity of labor,indeed, which it can purchase is not always equal to what it could maintain, ifmanaged in the most economical manner, on account of the high wages which aresometimes given to labor. But it can always purchase such a quantity of labor as itcan maintain, according to the rate at which the sort of labor is commonlymaintained in the neighborhood.“But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what issufficient to maintain all the labor necessary for bringing it to market [.... ] Thesurplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employedthat labor, together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for arent to the landlord.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 132-33.)“Food is in this manner not only the original source of rent, but every other part ofthe produce of land which afterwards affords rent derives that part of its valuefrom the improvement of the powers of labor in producing food by means of theimprovement and cultivation of land.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 150.)“Human food seems to be the only produce of land which always and necessarilyaffords some rent to the landlord.” (Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 147.)“Countries are populous not in proportion to the number of people whom theirproduce can clothe and lodge, but in proportion to that of those whom it can feed.”(Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 149.)“After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind.” Theyusually yield a rent, but not inevitably. (Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 147.)Let us now see how the landlord exploits everything from which society benefits.(1) The rent of land increases with population. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 146.)(2) We have already learnt from Say how the rent of land increases with railways, etc., with theimprovement, safety, and multiplication of the means of communication.(3) “Every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends either directlyor indirectly to raise the real rent of land, to increase the real wealth of thelandlord, his power of purchasing the labor, or the produce of the labor of otherpeople.“The extension of improvement and cultivation tends to raise it directly. Thelandlord’s share of the produce necessarily increases with the increase of theproduce.“That rise in the real price of those parts of the rude produce of land [...] the rise inthe price of cattle, for example, tends too to raise the rent of land directly, and in astill greater proportion. The real value of the landlord’s share, his real commandof the labor of other people, not only rises with the real value of the produce, butthe proportion of his share to the whole produce rises with it. That produce, after 23Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptthe rise in its real price, requires no more labor to collect it than before. A smallerproportion of it will, therefore, be sufficient to replace, with the ordinary profit,the stock which employs that labor. A greater proportion of it must, consequently,belong to the landlord.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 228-29.)The greater demand for raw produce, and therefore the rise in value, may in part result from theincrease of population and from the increase of their needs. But every new invention, every newapplication in manufacture of a previously unused or little-used raw material, augments rent.Thus, for example, there was a tremendous rise in the rent of coal mines with the advent of therailways, steamships, etc.Besides this advantage which the landlord derives from manufacture, discoveries, and labor, thereis yet another, as we shall presently see.(4) “All those improvements in the productive powers of labor, which tenddirectly to reduce the real price of manufactures, tend indirectly to raise the realrent of land. The landlord exchanges that part of his rude produce, which is overand above his own consumption, or what comes to the same thing, the price ofthat part of it, for manufactured produce. Whatever reduces the real price of thelatter, raises that of the former. An equal quantity of the former becomes therebyequivalent to a greater quantity of the latter; and the landlord is enabled topurchase a greater quantity of the conveniences, ornaments, or luxuries, which hehas occasion for.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 229)But it is silly to conclude, as Smith does, that since the landlord exploits every benefit whichcomes to society the interest of the landlord is always identical with that of society. (Op. cit., Vol.I, p. 230.) In the economic system, under the rule of private property, the interest which anindividual has in society is in precisely inverse proportion to the interest society has in him —just as the interest of the usurer in the spendthrift is by no means identical with the interest of thespendthrift.We shall mention only in passing the landlord’s obsession with monopoly directed against thelanded property of foreign countries, from which the Corn Laws16, for instance, originate.Likewise, we shall here pass over medieval serfdom, the slavery in the colonies, and themiserable condition of the country folk, the day-laborers, in Great Britain. Let us confineourselves to the propositions of political economy itself.(1) The landlord being interested in the welfare of society means, according to the principles ofpolitical economy, that he is interested in the growth of its population and manufacture, in theexpansion of its needs — in short, in the increase of wealth; and this increase of wealth is, as wehave already seen, identical with the increase of poverty and slavery. The relation betweenincreasing house rent and increasing poverty is an example of the landlord’s interest in society,for the ground rent, the interest obtained from the land on which the house stands, goes up withthe rent of the house.(2) According to the political economists themselves, the landlord’s interest is inimically opposedto the interest of the tenant farmer-and thus already to a significant section of society.(3) As the landlord can demand all the more rent from the tenant farmer the less wages the farmerpays, and as the farmer forces down wages all the lower the more rent the landlord demands, itfollows that the interest of the landlord is just as hostile to that of the farm workers as is that ofthe manufacturers to their workers. He likewise forces down wages to the minimum.(4) Since a real reduction in the price of manufactured products raises the rent of land, thelandowner has a direct interest in lowering the wages of industrial workers, in competitionamongst the capitalists, in over-production, in all the misery associated with industrialproduction. 24Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscript(5) While, thus, the landlord’s interest, far from being identical with the interest of society, standsinimically opposed to the interest of tenant farmers, farm laborers, factory workers and capitalists,on the other hand, the interest of one landlord is not even identical with that of another, onaccount of the competition which we will now consider.In general the relationship of large and small landed property is like that of big and small capital.But in addition, there are special circumstances which lead inevitably to the accumulation of largelanded property and to the absorption of small property by it.(1) Nowhere does the relative number of workers and implements decrease more with increasesin the size of the stock than in landed property. Likewise, the possibility of all-round exploitation,of economizing production costs, and of effective division of labor, increases nowhere more withthe size of the stock than in landed property. However small a field may be, it requires for itsworking a certain irreducible minimum of implements (plough, saw, etc.), whilst the size of apiece of landed property can be reduced far below this minimum.(2) Big landed property accumulates to itself the interest on the capital which the tenant farmerhas employed to improve the land. Small landed property has to employ its own capital, andtherefore does not get this profit at all.(3) While every social improvement benefits the big estate, it harms small property, because itincreases its need for ready cash.(4) Two important laws concerning this competition remain to be considered:(a) The rent of the cultivated land, of which the produce is human food, regulatesthe rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I,p. 144.)Ultimately, only the big estate can produce such food as cattle, etc. Therefore it regulates the rentof other land and can force it down to a minimum.The small landed proprietor working on his own land stands then to the big landowner in thesame relation as an artisan possessing his own tool to the factory owner. Small property in landhas become a mere instrument of labor.17 Rent entirely disappears for the small proprietor; thereremains to him at the most the interest on his capital, and his wages. For rent can be driven downby competition till it is nothing more than the interest on capital not invested by the proprietor.(b) In addition, we have already learnt that with equal fertility and equally efficient exploitationof lands, mines and fisheries, the produce is proportionate to the size of the capital. Hence thevictory of the big landowner. Similarly, where equal capitals are employed the product isproportionate to the fertility. Hence, where capitals are equal, victory goes to the proprietor of themore fertile soil.(c) “A mine of any kind may be said to be either fertile or barren, according as thequantity of mineral which can be brought from it by a certain quantity of labor isgreater or less than what can be brought by an equal quantity from the greater partof other mines of the same kind.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 151.)“The most fertile coal-mine, too, regulates the price of coal at all the other minesin its neighborhood. Both the proprietor and the undertaker of the work find, theone that he can get a greater rent, the other that he can get a greater profit, bysomewhat underselling all their neighbors. Their neighbors are soon obliged tosell at the same price, though they cannot so well afford it, and though it alwaysdiminishes, and sometimes takes away altogether both their rent and their profit.Some works are abandoned altogether; others can afford no rent, and can bewrought only by the proprietor.” (Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 152-53.)“After the discovery of the mines of Peru, the silver mines of Europe were, thegreater part of them, abandoned.... This was the case, too, with the mines of Cuba 25Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptand St. Domingo, and even with the ancient mines of Peru, after the discovery ofthose of Potosi.” (Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 154.)What Smith here says of mines applies more or less to landed property generally:(d) “The ordinary market price of land, it is to be observed, depends everywhereupon the ordinary market rate of interest.... If the rent of land should fall short ofthe interest of money by a greater difference, nobody would buy land, whichwould soon reduce its ordinary price. On the contrary, if the advantages shouldmuch more than compensate the difference, everybody would buy land, whichagain would soon raise its ordinary price.” (Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 320.)From this relation of rent of land to interest on money it follows that rent must fall more andmore, so that eventually only the wealthiest people can live on rent. Hence the ever greatercompetition between landowners who do not lease their land to tenants. Ruin of some of these;further accumulation of large landed property.This competition has the further consequence that a large part of landed property falls into thehands of the capitalists and that capitalists thus become simultaneously landowners, just as thesmaller landowners are on the whole already nothing more than capitalists. Similarly, a section oflarge landowners become at the same time industrialists.The final consequence is thus the abolition of the distinction between capitalist and landowner, sothat there remain altogether only two classes of the population — the working class and the classof capitalists. This huckstering with landed property, the transformation of landed property into acommodity, constitutes the final overthrow of the old and the final establishment of the moneyaristocracy.(1) We will not join in the sentimental tears wept over this by romanticism. Romanticism alwaysconfuses the shamefulness of huckstering the land with the perfectly rational consequence,inevitable and desirable within the realm of private property, of the huckstering of privateproperty in land. In the first place, feudal landed property is already by its very nature hucksteredland — the earth which is estranged from man and hence confronts him in the shape of a fewgreat lords.The domination of the land as an alien power over men is already inherent in feudal landedproperty. The serf is the adjunct of the land. Likewise, the lord of an entailed estate, the first-bornson, belongs to the land. It inherits him. Indeed, the dominion of private property begins withproperty in land — that is its basis. But in feudal landed property the lord at least appears as theking of the estate. Similarly, there still exists the semblance of a more intimate connectionbetween the proprietor and the land than that of mere material wealth. The estate is individualizedwith its lord: it has his rank, is baronial or ducal with him, has his privileges, his jurisdiction, hispolitical position, etc. It appears as the inorganic body of its lord. Hence the proverb nulle terresans maître [There is no land without its master. – Ed.], which expresses the fusion of nobilityand landed property. Similarly, the rule of landed property does not appear directly as the rule ofmere capital. For those belonging to it, the estate is more like their fatherland. It is a constrictedsort of nationality.In the same way, feudal landed property gives its name to its lord, as does a kingdom to its king.His family history, the history of his house, etc. — all this individualizes the estate for him andmakes it literally his house, personifies it. Similarly those working on the estate have not theposition of day-laborers; but they are in part themselves his property, as are serfs; and in part theyare bound to him by ties of respect, allegiance, and duty. His relation to them is therefore directlypolitical, and has likewise a human, intimate side. Customs, character, etc., vary from one estateto another and seem to be one with the land to which they belong; whereas later, it is only hispurse and not his character, his individuals , which connects a man with an estate. Finally, thefeudal lord does not try to extract the utmost advantage from his land. Rather, he consumes what 26Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptis there and calmly leaves the worry of producing to the serfs and the tenants. Such is nobility’srelationship to landed property, which casts a romantic glory on its lords.It is necessary that this appearance be abolished — that landed property, the root of privateproperty, be dragged completely into the movement of private property and that it become acommodity; that the rule of the proprietor appear as the undisguised rule of private property, ofcapital, freed of all political tincture; that the relationship between proprietor and worker bereduced to the economic relationship of exploiter and exploited; that all [ ... ] a personalrelationship between the proprietor and his property cease, property becoming merely objective,material wealth; that the marriage of convenience should take the place of the marriage of honorwith the land; and that the land should likewise sink to the status of a commercial value, like man.It is essential that that which is the root of landed property — filthy self-interest — make itsappearance, too, in its cynical form. It is essential that the immovable monopoly turn into themobile and restless monopoly, into competition; and that the idle enjoyment of the products ofother people’s blood and sweat turn into a bustling commerce in the same commodity. Lastly, it isessential that in this competition landed property, in the form of capital, manifest its dominionover both the working class and the proprietors themselves who are either being ruined or raisedby the laws governing the movement of capital. The medieval proverb nulle terre sans seigneur[There is no land without its lord. – Ed.] is thereby replaced by that other proverb, l’argent n’apas de maître [Money knows no master. – Ed.], wherein is expressed the complete domination ofdead matter over man.(2) Concerning the argument of division or non-division of landed property, the following is to beobserved.The division of landed property negates the large-scale monopoly of property in land — abolishesit; but only by generalizing this monopoly. It does not abolish the source of monopoly, privateproperty. It attacks the existing form, but not the essence, of monopoly. The consequence is that itfalls victim to the laws of private property. For the division of landed property corresponds to themovement of competition in the sphere of industry. In addition to the economic disadvantages ofsuch a dividing-up of the instruments of labor, and the dispersal of labor (to be clearlydistinguished from the division of labor: in separated labor the work is not shared out amongstmany, but each carries on the same work by himself, it is a multiplication of the same work), thisdivision [of land], like that competition [in industry], necessarily turns again into accumulation.Therefore, where the division of landed property takes place, there remains nothing for it but toreturn to monopoly in a still more malignant form, or to negate, to abolish the division of landedproperty itself. To do that, however, is not to return to feudal ownership, but to abolish privateproperty in the soil altogether. The first abolition of monopoly is always its generalization, thebroadening of its existence. The abolition of monopoly, once it has come to exist in its utmostbreadth and inclusiveness, is its total annihilation. Association, applied to land, shares theeconomic advantage of large-scale landed property, and first brings to realization the originaltendency inherent in [land] division, namely, equality. In the same way association also re-establishes, now on a rational basis, no longer mediated by serfdom, overlordship and the sillymysticism of property, the intimate ties of man with the earth, since the earth ceases to be anobject of huckstering, and through free labor and free enjoyment becomes once more a truepersonal property of man. A great advantage of the division of landed property is that the masses,which can no longer resign themselves to servitude, perish through property in a different waythan in industry.As for large landed property, its defenders have always, sophistically, identified the economicadvantages offered by large-scale agriculture with large-scale landed property, as if it were notprecisely as a result of the abolition of property that this advantage, for one thing, would receiveits greatest possible extension, and, for another, only then would be of social benefit. In the sameway, they have attacked the huckstering spirit of small landed property, as if large landed 27Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptproperty did not contain huckstering latent within it, even in its feudal form — not to speak of themodern English form, which combines the landlord’s feudalism with the tenant farmer’shuckstering and industry.Just as large landed property can return the reproach of monopoly leveled against it by partitionedland, since partitioned land is also based on the monopoly of private property, so can partitionedlanded property likewise return to large landed property the reproach of partition, since partitionalso prevails there, though in a rigid and frozen form. Indeed, private property rests altogether onpartitioning. Moreover, just as division of the land leads back to large landed property as a formof capital wealth, so must feudal landed property necessarily lead to partitioning or at least fallinto the hands of the capitalists, turn and twist as it may.For large landed property, as in England, drives the overwhelming majority of the population intothe arms of industry and reduces its own workers to utter wretchedness. Thus, it engenders andenlarges the power of its enemy, capital, industry, by throwing poor people and an entire activityof the country on to the other side. It makes the majority of the people of the country industrialand thus opponents of large landed property. Where industry has attained to great power, as inEngland at the present time, it progressively forces from large landed property its monopolyagainst foreign countries and throws it into competition with landed property abroad. For underthe sway of industry landed property could keep its feudal grandeur secure only by means ofmonopolies against foreign countries, thereby protecting itself against the general laws of trade,which are incompatible with its feudal character. Once thrown into competition, landed propertyobeys the laws of competition, like every other commodity subjected to competition. It beginsthus to fluctuate, to decrease and to increase, to fly from one hand to another; and no law cankeep it any longer in a few predestined hands. The immediate consequence is the splitting up ofthe land amongst many hands, and in any case subjection to the power of industrial capitals.Finally, large landed property which has been forcibly preserved in this way and which hasbegotten by its side a tremendous industry leads to crisis even more quickly than the partitioningof land, in comparison with which the power of industry remains constantly of second rank.Large landed property, as we see in England, has already cast off its feudal character and adoptedan industrial character insofar as it is aiming to make as much money as possible. To the owner ityields the utmost possible rent, to the tenant farmer the utmost possible profit on his capital. Theworkers on the land, in consequence, have already been reduced to the minimum, and the class oftenant farmers already represents within landed property the power of industry and capital. As aresult of foreign competition, rent in most cases can no longer form an independent income. Alarge number of landowners are forced to displace tenant farmers, some of whom in this way [ ...]sink into the proletariat. On the other hand, many tenant farmers will take over landed property;for the big proprietors, who with their comfortable incomes have mostly given themselves over toextravagance and for the most part are not competent to conduct large-scale agriculture, oftenpossess neither the capital nor the ability for the exploitation of the land. Hence a section of thisclass, too, is completely ruined. Eventually wages, which have already been reduced to aminimum, must be reduced yet further, to meet the new competition. This then necessarily leadsto revolution.Landed property had to develop in each of these two ways so as to experience in both itsnecessary downfall, just as industry both in the form of monopoly and in that of competition hadto ruin itself so as to learn to believe in man. |XXI|| 28Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscript[Estranged Labor]||XXII| We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We have accepted itslanguage and its laws. We presupposed private property, the separation of labor, capital and land,and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land – likewise division of labor, competition, theconcept of exchange value, etc. On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, wehave shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the mostwretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to thepower and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is theaccumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terribleform; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like that between thetiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apartinto the two classes – property owners and propertyless workers.Political economy starts with the fact of private property; it does not explain it to us. It expressesin general, abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes,and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these laws – i.e., it does notdemonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property. Political economy throws nolight on the cause of the division between labor and capital, and between capital and land. When,for example, it defines the relationship of wages to profit, it takes the interest of the capitalists tobe the ultimate cause, i.e., it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain. Similarly,competition comes in everywhere. It is explained from external circumstances. As to how farthese external and apparently accidental circumstances are but the expression of a necessarycourse of development, political economy teaches us nothing. We have seen how exchange itselfappears to it as an accidental fact. The only wheels which political economy sets in motion aregreed, and the war amongst the greedy – competition. [After this paragraph the followingsentence is crossed out in the manuscript: “We now have to examine the nature of this materialmovement of property.” – Ed.]Precisely because political economy does not grasp the way the movement is connected, it waspossible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of competition to the doctrine of monopoly, thedoctrine of the freedom of the crafts to the doctrine of the guild, the doctrine of the division oflanded property to the doctrine of the big estate – for competition, freedom of the crafts and thedivision of landed property were explained and comprehended only as accidental, premeditatedand violent consequences of monopoly, of the guild system, and of feudal property, not as theirnecessary, inevitable and natural consequences.Now, therefore, we have to grasp the intrinsic connection between private property, greed, theseparation of labor, capital and landed property; the connection of exchange and competition, ofvalue and the devaluation of man, of monopoly and competition, etc. – the connection betweenthis whole estrangement and the money system.Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as the political economist does, when hetries to explain. Such a primordial condition explains nothing; it merely pushes the question awayinto a grey nebulous distance. The economist assumes in the form of a fact, of an event, what heis supposed to deduce – namely, the necessary relationship between two things – between, forexample, division of labor and exchange. Thus the theologian explains the origin of evil by thefall of man – that is, he assumes as a fact, in historical form, what has to be explained.We proceed from an actual economic fact.The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his productionincreases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the morecommodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to theincreasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself 29Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptand the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities ingeneral.This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it assomething alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which hasbeen embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’srealization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appearsas loss of realization for the workers;18 objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it;appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.19So much does labor’s realization appear as loss of realization that the worker loses realization tothe point of starving to death. So much does objectification appear as loss of the object that theworker is robbed of the objects most necessary not only for his life but for his work. Indeed, laboritself becomes an object which he can obtain only with the greatest effort and with the mostirregular interruptions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement thatthe more objects the worker produces the less he can possess and the more he falls under the swayof his product, capital.All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of hislabor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself,the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself,the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is thesame in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts hislife into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greaterthis activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not.Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in hisproduct means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it existsoutside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its ownconfronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him assomething hostile and alien.||XXIII| Let us now look more closely at the objectification, at the production of the worker; andin it at the estrangement, the loss of the object, of his product.The worker can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous external world. It is thematerial on which his labor is realized, in which it is active, from which, and by means of whichit produces.But just as nature provides labor with [the] means of life in the sense that labor cannot livewithout objects on which to operate, on the other hand, it also provides the means of life in themore restricted sense, i.e., the means for the physical subsistence of the worker himself.Thus the more the worker by his labor appropriates the external world, sensuous nature, the morehe deprives himself of means of life in two respects: first, in that the sensuous external worldmore and more ceases to be an object belonging to his labor – to be his labor’s means of life; and,second, in that it more and more ceases to be means of life in the immediate sense, means for thephysical subsistence of the worker.In both respects, therefore, the worker becomes a servant of his object, first, in that he receives anobject of labor, i.e., in that he receives work, and, secondly, in that he receives means ofsubsistence. This enables him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as a physical subject. Theheight of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physicalsubject and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker.(According to the economic laws the estrangement of the worker in his object is expressed thus:the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he creates, the morevalueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the more deformedbecomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the 30Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptmore powerful labor becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious laborbecomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature’s servant.)Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not consideringthe direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production. It is true that labor producesfor the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – butfor the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor bymachines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turnsthe other section into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity,cretinism.The direct relationship of labor to its products is the relationship of the worker to the objects ofhis production. The relationship of the man of means to the objects of production and toproduction itself is only a consequence of this first relationship – and confirms it. We shallconsider this other aspect later. When we ask, then, what is the essential relationship of labor weare asking about the relationship of the worker to production.Till now we have been considering the estrangement, the alienation of the worker only in one ofits aspects , i.e., the worker’s relationship to the products of his labor. But the estrangement ismanifested not only in the result but in the act of production, within the producing activity, itself.How could the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in thevery act of production he was estranging himself from himself? The product is after all but thesummary of the activity, of production. If then the product of labor is alienation, production itselfmust be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation. In the estrangementof the object of labor is merely summarized the estrangement, the alienation, in the activity oflabor itself.What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature;that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel contentbut unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body andruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feelsoutside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does notfeel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is thereforenot the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its aliencharacter emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, laboris shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the factthat it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, notto himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination,of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – thatis, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not hisspontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions –eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his humanfunctions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomeshuman and what is human becomes animal.Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But takenabstractly, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimateends, they are animal functions.We have considered the act of estranging practical human activity, labor, in two of its aspects. (1)The relation of the worker to the product of labor as an alien object exercising power over him.This relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuous external world, to the objects of 31Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptnature, as an alien world inimically opposed to him. (2) The relation of labor to the act ofproduction within the labor process. This relation is the relation of the worker to his own activityas an alien activity not belonging to him; it is activity as suffering, strength as weakness,begetting as emasculating, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life – forwhat is life but activity? – as an activity which is turned against him, independent of him and notbelonging to him. Here we have self-estrangement, as previously we had the estrangement of thething.||XXIV| We have still a third aspect of estranged labor to deduce from the two alreadyconsidered.Man is a species-being,20 not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species (hisown as well as those of other things) as his object, but – and this is only another way ofexpressing it – also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treatshimself as a universal and therefore a free being.The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (likethe animal) lives on organic nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the moreuniversal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, air,light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as objects of naturalscience, partly as objects of art – his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which hemust first prepare to make palatable and digestible – so also in the realm of practice theyconstitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these products ofnature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universalityof man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body– both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and theinstrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is notitself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he mustremain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life islinked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity,estranged labor estranges the species from man. It changes for him the life of the species into ameans of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and secondlyit makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in itsabstract and estranged form.For labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the first place merely as a means ofsatisfying a need – the need to maintain physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life ofthe species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, iscontained in the character of its life activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species-character. Life itself appears only as a means to life.The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is itslife activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. Hehas conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious lifeactivity distinguishes man immediately from animal life activity. It is just because of this that heis a species-being. Or it is only because he is a species-being that he is a conscious being, i.e., thathis own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged laborreverses the relationship, so that it is just because man is a conscious being that he makes his lifeactivity, his essential being, a mere means to his existence.In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, manproves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his ownessential being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. Theybuild themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces 32Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptwhat it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man producesuniversally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst manproduces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal’s productbelongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animalforms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilstman knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how toapply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects inaccordance with the laws of beauty.It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be aspecies-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appearsas his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, inreality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man theobject of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his realobjectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into thedisadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.Similarly, in degrading spontaneous, free activity to a means, estranged labor makes man’sspecies-life a means to his physical existence.The consciousness which man has of his species is thus transformed by estrangement in such away that species [-life] becomes for him a means.Estranged labor turns thus:(3) Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-property, into a being alien to him,into a means of his individual existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as externalnature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the product of his labor,from his life activity, from his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When manconfronts himself, he confronts the other man. What applies to a man’s relation to his work, to theproduct of his labor and to himself, also holds of a man’s relation to the other man, and to theother man’s labor and object of labor.In fact, the proposition that man’s species-nature is estranged from him means that one man isestranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature.The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man [stands] to himself, isrealized and expressed only in the relationship in which a man stands to other men.Hence within the relationship of estranged labor each man views the other in accordance with thestandard and the relationship in which he finds himself as a worker.||XXV| We took our departure from a fact of political economy – the estrangement of the workerand his production. We have formulated this fact in conceptual terms as estranged, alienatedlabor. We have analyzed this concept – hence analyzing merely a fact of political economy.Let us now see, further, how the concept of estranged, alienated labor must express and presentitself in real life.If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien power, to whom, then, does itbelong?To a being other than myself.Who is this being?The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principal production (for example, the building oftemples, etc., in Egypt, India and Mexico) appears to be in the service of the gods, and the 33Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscriptproduct belongs to the gods. However, the gods on their own were never the lords of labor. Nomore was nature. And what a contradiction it would be if, the more man subjugated nature by hislabor and the more the miracles of the gods were rendered superfluous by the miracles ofindustry, the more man were to renounce the joy of production and the enjoyment of the productto please these powers.The alien being, to whom labor and the product of labor belongs, in whose service labor is doneand for whose benefit the product of labor is provided, can only be man himself.If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, thenthis can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker’s activity isa torment to him, to another it must give satisfaction and pleasure. Not the gods, not nature, butonly man himself can be this alien power over man.We must bear in mind the previous proposition that man’s relation to himself becomes for himobjective and actual through his relation to the other man. Thus, if the product of his labor, hislabor objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then hisposition towards it is such that someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien,hostile, powerful, and independent of him. If he treats his own activity as an unfree activity, thenhe treats it as an activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion, and the yokeof another man.Every self-estrangement of man, from himself and from nature, appears in the relation in whichhe places himself and nature to men other than and differentiated from himself. For this reasonreligious self-estrangement necessarily appears in the relationship of the layman to the priest, oragain to a mediator, etc., since we are here dealing with the intellectual world. In the realpractical world self-estrangement can only become manifest through the real practicalrelationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement takes place is itself practical.Thus through estranged labor man not only creates his relationship to the object and to the act ofproduction as to powers [in the manuscript Menschen (men) instead of Mächte (powers). – Ed.]that are alien and hostile to him; he also creates the relationship in which other men stand to hisproduction and to his product, and the relationship in which he stands to these other men. Just ashe creates his own production as the loss of his reality, as his punishment; his own product as aloss, as a product not belonging to him; so he creates the domination of the person who does notproduce over production and over the product. Just as he estranges his own activity from himself,so he confers upon the stranger an activity which is not his own.We have until now considered this relationship only from the standpoint of the worker and lateron we shall be considering it also from the standpoint of the non-worker.Through estranged, alienated labor, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labor of aman alien to labor and standing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labor creates therelationship to it of the capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labor). Privateproperty is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of theexternal relation of the worker to nature and to himself.Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labor, i.e., of alienatedman, of estranged labor, of estranged life, of estranged man.True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have obtained the concept ofalienated labor (of alienated life) in political economy. But on analysis of this concept it becomesclear that though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is ratherits consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectualconfusion. Later this relationship becomes reciprocal.Only at the culmination of the development of private property does this, its secret, appear again,namely, that on the one hand it is the product of alienated labor, and that on the other it is themeans by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation. 34Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First ManuscriptThis exposition immediately sheds light on various hitherto unsolved conflicts.(1) Political economy starts from labor as the real soul of production; yet to labor it givesnothing, and to private property everything. Confronting this contradiction, Proudhon has decidedin favor of labor against private property21. We understand, however, that this apparentcontradiction is the contradiction of estranged labor with itself, and that political economy hasmerely formulated the laws of estranged labor.We also understand, therefore, that wages and private property are identical. Indeed, where theproduct, as the object of labor, pays for labor itself, there the wage is but a necessary consequenceof labor’s estrangement. Likewise, in the wage of labor, labor does not appear as an end in itselfbut as the servant of the wage. We shall develop this point later, and meanwhile will only drawsome conclusions. ||XXVI| 22An enforced increase of wages (disregarding all other difficulties, including the fact that it wouldonly be by force, too, that such an increase, being an anomaly, could be maintained) wouldtherefore be nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not win either for the worker orfor labor their human status and dignity.Indeed, even the equality of wages, as demanded by Proudhon, only transforms the relationship ofthe present-day worker to his labor into the relationship of all men to labor. Society is thenconceived as an abstract capitalist.Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labor, and estranged labor is the direct cause ofprivate property. The downfall of the one must therefore involve the downfall of the other.(2) From the relationship of estranged labor to private property it follows further that theemancipation of society from private property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the politicalform of the emancipation of the workers; not that their emancipation alone is at stake, butbecause the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation – and it containsthis because the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production,and all relations of servitude are but modifications and consequences of this relation.Just as we have derived the concept of private property from the concept of estranged, alienatedlabor by analysis, so we can develop every category of political economy with the help of thesetwo factors; and we shall find again in each category, e.g., trade, competition, capital, money onlya particular and developed expression of these first elements.But before considering this phenomenon, however, let us try to solve two other problems.(1) To define the general nature of private property, as it has arisen as a result of estranged labor,in its relation to truly human and social property.(2) We have accepted the estrangement of labor, its alienation, as a fact, and we have analyzedthis fact. How, we now ask, does man come to alienate, to estrange, his labor? How is thisestrangement rooted in the nature of human development? We have already gone a long way tothe solution of this problem by transforming the question of the origin of private property into thequestion of the relation of alienated labor to the course of humanity’s development. For whenone speaks of private property, one thinks of dealing with something external to man. When onespeaks of labor, one is directly dealing with man himself. This new formulation of the questionalready contains its solution.As to (1): The general nature of private property and its relation to truly human property.Alienated labor has resolved itself for us into two components which depend on one another, orwhich are but different expressions of one and the same relationship. Appropriation appears asestrangement, as alienation; and alienation appears as appropriation, estrangement as trulybecoming a citizen.23We have considered the one side – alienated labor in relation to the worker himself, i.e., therelation of alienated labor to itself. The product, the necessary outcome of this relationship, as we 35Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. First Manuscripthave seen, is the property relation of the non-worker to the worker and to labor. Private property,as the material, summary expression of alienated labor, embraces both relations – the relation ofthe worker to work and to the product of his labor and to the non-worker, and the relation of thenon-worker to the worker and to the product of his labor.Having seen that in relation to the worker who appropriates nature by means of his labor, thisappropriation appears as estrangement, his own spontaneous activity as activity for another and asactivity of another, vitality as a sacrifice of life, production of the object as loss of the object to analien power, to an alien person – we shall now consider the relation to the worker, to labor and itsobject of this person who is alien to labor and the worker.First it has to be noted that everything which appears in the worker as an activity of alienation, ofestrangement, appears in the non-worker as a state of alienation, of estrangement.Secondly, that the worker’s real, practical attitude in production and to the product (as a state ofmind) appears in the non-worker who confronting him as a theoretical attitude.||XXVII| Thirdly, the non-worker does everything against the worker which the worker doesagainst himself; but he does not do against himself what he does against the worker.Let us look more closely at these three relations. |XXVII||[First Manuscript breaks off here.] Second ManuscriptAntithesis of Capital and Labor. Landed Property and Capital[....] ||XL| forms the interest on his capital. The worker is the subjective manifestation of the factthat capital is man wholly lost to himself, just as capital is the objective manifestation of the factthat labor is man lost to himself. But the worker has the misfortune to be a living capital, andtherefore an indigent capital, one which loses its interest, and hence its livelihood, every momentit is not working. The value of the worker as capital rises according to demand and supply, andphysically too his existence, his life, was and is looked upon as a supply of a commodity like anyother. The worker produces capital, capital produces him – hence he produces himself, and manas worker, as a commodity, is the product of this entire cycle. To the man who is nothing morethan a worker – and to him as a worker – his human qualities only exist insofar as they exist forcapital alien to him. Because man and capital are alien, foreign to each other, however, and thusstand in an indifferent, external and accidental relationship to each other, it is inevitable that thisforeignness should also appear as something real. As soon, therefore, as it occurs to capital(whether from necessity or caprice) no longer to be for the worker, he himself is no longer forhimself: he has no work, hence no wages, and since he has no existence as a human being butonly as a worker, he can go and bury himself, starve to death, etc. The worker exists as a workeronly when he exists for himself as capital; and he exists as capital only when some capital existsfor him. The existence of capital is his existence, his life; as it determines the tenor of his life in amanner indifferent to him.Political economy, therefore, does not recognize the unemployed worker, the workingman,insofar as he happens to be outside this labor relationship. The rascal, swindler, beggar, theunemployed, the starving, wretched and criminal workingman – these are figures who do notexist for political economy but only for other eyes, those of the doctor, the judge, the grave-digger, and bum-bailiff, etc.; such figures are specters outside its domain. For it, therefore, theworker’s needs are but the one need – to maintain him whilst he is working and insofar as may benecessary to prevent the race of laborers from [dying] out. The wages of labor have thus exactlythe same significance as the maintenance and servicing of any other productive instrument, or asthe consumption of capital in general, required for its reproduction with interest, like the oilwhich is applied to wheels to keep them turning. Wages, therefore, belong to capital’s and thecapitalist’s necessary costs, and must not exceed the bounds of this necessity. It was thereforequite logical for the English factory owners, before the Amendment Bill of 1834, to deduct fromthe wages of the worker the public charity which he was receiving out of the Poor Rate and toconsider this to be an integral part of wages.24Production does not simply produce man as a commodity, the human commodity, man in the roleof commodity; it produces him in keeping with this role as a mentally and physically dehumanizedbeing. – Immorality, deformity, and dulling of the workers and the capitalists. – Its product is theself-conscious and self-acting commodity ... the human commodity.... Great advance of Ricardo,Mill, etc., on Smith and Say, to declare the existence of the human being – the greater or lesserhuman productivity of the commodity – to be indifferent and even harmful. Not how manyworkers are maintained by a given capital, but rather how much interest it brings in, the sum-totalof the annual savings, is said to be the true purpose of production.It was likewise a great and consistent advance of modern ||XLI| English political economy, that,whilst elevating labor to the position of its sole principle, it should at the same time expound withcomplete clarity the inverse relation between wages and interest on capital, and the fact that thecapitalist could normally only gain by pressing down wages, and vice versa. Not the defrauding 37Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Second Manuscriptof the consumer, but the capitalist and the worker taking advantage of each other, is shown to bethe normal relationship.The relations of private property contain latent within them the relation of private property aslabor, the relation of private property as capital, and the mutual relation of these two to oneanother. There is the production of human activity as labor – that is, as an activity quite alien toitself, to man and to nature, and therefore to consciousness and the expression of life – theabstract existence of man as a mere workman who may therefore daily fall from his filled voidinto the absolute void – into his social, and therefore actual, non-existence. On the other hand,there is the production of the object of human activity as capital – in which all the natural andsocial characteristic of the object is extinguished; in which private property has lost its natural andsocial quality (and therefore every political and social illusion, and is not associated with anyapparently human relations); in which the selfsame capital remains the same in the most diversenatural and social manifestations, totally indifferent to its real content. This contradiction, drivento the limit, is of necessity the limit, the culmination, and the downfall of the whole private-property relationship.It is therefore another great achievement of modern English political economy to have declaredrent of land to be the difference in the interest yielded by the worst and the best land undercultivation; to have [exposed] the landowner’s romantic illusions – his alleged social importanceand the identity of his interest with the interest of society, a view still maintained by Adam Smithafter the Physiocrats; and to [have] anticipated and prepared the movement of the real worldwhich will transform the landowner into an ordinary, prosaic capitalist, and thus simplify andsharpen the contradiction [between capital and labor] and hasten its resolution. Land as land, andrent as rent, have lost their distinction of rank and become insignificant capital and interest – orrather, capital and interest that signify only money.The distinction between capital and land, between profit and rent, and between both and wages,and industry, and agriculture, and immovable and movable private property – this distinction isnot rooted in the nature of things, but is a historical distinction, a fixed historical moment in theformation and development of the contradiction between capital and labor. In industry, etc., asopposed to immovable landed property, is only expressed the way in which [industry] came intobeing and the contradiction to agriculture in which industry developed. This distinction onlycontinues to exist as a special sort of work – as an essential, important and life-embracingdistinction – so long as industry (town life) develops over and against landed property(aristocratic feudal life) and itself continues to bear the feudal character of its opposite in the formof monopoly, craft, guild, corporation, etc., within which labor still has a seemingly socialsignificance, still the significance of the real community, and has not yet reached the stage ofindifference to its content, of complete being-for-self 25, i.e., of abstraction from all other being,and hence has not yet become liberated capital.||XLII| But liberated industry, industry constituted for itself as such, and liberated capital, are thenecessary development of labor. The power of industry over its opposite is at once revealed in theemergence of agriculture as a real industry, while previously it left most of the work to the soiland to the slave of the soil, through whom the land cultivated itself. With the transformation ofthe slave into a free worker – i.e., into a hireling – the landlord himself is transformed into acaptain of industry, into a capitalist – a transformation which takes place at first through theintermediacy of the tenant farmer. The tenant farmer, however, is the landowner’s representative– the landowner’s revealed secret: it is only through him that the landowner has his economicexistence – his existence as a private proprietor – for the rent of his land only exists due to thecompetition between the farmers.Thus, in the person of the tenant farmer the landlord has already become in essence a commoncapitalist. And this must come to pass, too, in actual fact: the capitalist engaged in agriculture – 38Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Second Manuscriptthe tenant – must become a landlord, or vice versa. The tenant’s industrial hucksterism is thelandowner’s industrial hucksterism, for the being of the former postulates the being of the latter.But mindful of their contrasting origin, of their line of descent, the landowner knows the capitalistas his insolent, liberated, enriched slave of yesterday and sees himself as a capitalist who isthreatened by him. The capitalist knows the landowner as the idle, cruel, egotistical master ofyesterday; he knows that he injures him as a capitalist, but that it is to industry that he owes all hispresent social significance, his possessions and his pleasures; he sees in him [the landowner] acontradiction to free industry and to free capital – to capital independent of every naturallimitation. This contradiction [between landowner and capitalist] is extremely bitter, and eachside tells the truth about the other. One need only read the attacks of immovable on movableproperty and vice versa to obtain a clear picture of their respective worthlessness. The landownerlays stress on the noble lineage of his property, on feudal souvenirs or reminiscences, the poetryof recollection, on his romantic disposition, on his political importance, etc.; and when he talkseconomics, it is only agriculture that he holds to be productive. At the same time he depicts hisadversary as a sly, hawking, carping, deceitful, greedy, mercenary, rebellious, heart- and soullessperson who is estranged from the community and freely trades it away, who breeds, nourishesand cherishes competition, and with it pauperism, crime, and the dissolution of all social bonds,an extorting, pimping, servile, smooth, flattering, fleecing, dried-up rogue without honor,principles, poetry, substance, or anything else. (Amongst others see the Physiocrat Bergasse,whom Camille Desmoulins flays in his journal, Révolutions de France et de Brabant26; see vonVincke, Lancizolle, Haller, Leo, Kosegarten and also Sismondi.)[See on the other hand the garrulous, old-Hegelian theologian Funke who tells, after Herr Leo,with tears in his eyes how a slave had refused, when serfdom was abolished, to cease being theproperty of the gentry27. See also the patriotic visions of Justus Möser, which distinguishthemselves by the fact that they never for a moment [...] abandon the respectable, petty-bourgeois"home-baked", ordinary, narrow horizon of the philistine, and which nevertheless remain purefancy. This contradiction has given them such an appeal to the German heart. - Note by Marx.]Movable property, for its part, points to the miracles of industry and progress. It is the child ofmodern times, whose legitimate, native-born son it is. It pities its adversary as a simpleton,unenlightened about his own nature (and in this it is completely right), who wants to replacemoral capital and free labor by brute, immoral violence and serfdom. It depicts him as a DonQuixote, who under the guise of bluntness, respectability, the general interest, and stability,conceals incapacity for progress, greedy self-indulgence, selfishness, sectional interest, and evilintent. It declares him an artful monopolist; it pours cold water on his reminiscences, his poetry,and his romanticism by a historical and sarcastic enumeration of the baseness, cruelty,degradation, prostitution, infamy, anarchy and rebellion, of which romantic castles were theworkshops.||XLIII| It claims to have obtained political freedom for everybody; to have loosed the chainswhich fettered civil society; to have linked together different worlds; to have created tradepromoting friendship between the peoples; to have created pure morality and a pleasant culture;to have given the people civilized needs in place of their crude wants, and the means of satisfyingthem. Meanwhile, it claims, the landowner – this idle, parasitic grain-profiteer – raises the priceof the people’s basic necessities and so forces the capitalist to raise wages without being able toincrease productivity, thus impeding [the growth of] the nation’s annual income, theaccumulation of capital, and therefore the possibility of providing work for the people and wealthfor the country, eventually cancelling it, thus producing a general decline – whilst he parasiticallyexploits every advantage of modern civilization without doing the least thing for it, and withouteven abating in the slightest his feudal prejudices. Finally, let him – for whom the cultivation ofthe land and the land itself exist only as a source of money, which comes to him as a present – lethim just take a look at his tenant farmer and say whether he himself is not a downright, fantastic, 39Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Second Manuscriptsly scoundrel who in his heart and in actual fact has for a long time belonged to free industry andto lovely trade, however much he may protest and prattle about historical memories and ethical orpolitical goals. Everything which he can really advance to justify himself is true only of thecultivator of the land (the capitalist and the laborers), of whom the landowner is rather the enemy.Thus he gives evidence against himself. [Movable property claims that] without capital landedproperty is dead, worthless matter; that its civilized victory has discovered and made human laborthe source of wealth in place of the dead thing. (See Paul Louis Courier, Saint-Simon, Ganilh,Ricardo, Mill, McCulloch and Destutt de Tracy and Michel Chevalier.)The real course of development (to be inserted at this point) results in the necessary victory of thecapitalist over the landowner – that is to say, of developed over undeveloped, immature privateproperty – just as in general, movement must triumph over immobility; open, self-consciousbaseness over hidden, unconscious baseness; cupidity over self-indulgence; the avowedly restless,adroit self-interest of enlightenment over the parochial, worldly-wise, respectable, idle andfantastic self-interest of superstition; and money over the other forms of private property.Those states which sense something of the danger attaching to fully developed free industry, tofully developed pure morality and to fully developed philanthropic trade, try, but in vain, to holdin check the capitalization of landed property.Landed property in its distinction from capital is private property – capital – still afflicted withlocal and political prejudices; it is capital which has not yet extricated itself from its entanglementwith the world and found the form proper to itself – capital not yet fully developed. It mustachieve its abstract, that is, its pure, expression in the course of its cosmogony.The character of private property is expressed by labor, capital, and the relations between thesetwo. The movement through which these constituents have to pass is:First. Unmediated or mediated unity of the two.Capital and labor are at first still united. Then, though separated and estranged, they reciprocallydevelop and promote each other as positive conditions.[Second.] The two in opposition, mutually excluding each other. The worker knows the capitalistas his own non-existence, and vice versa: each tries to rob the other of his existence.[Third.] Opposition of each to itself. Capital = stored-up labor = labor. As such it splits intocapital itself and its interest, and this latter again into interest and profit. The capitalist iscompletely sacrificed. He falls into the working class, whilst the worker (but only exceptionally)becomes a capitalist. Labor as a moment of capital – its costs. Thus the wages of labor – asacrifice of capital.Splitting of labor into labor itself and the wages of labor. The worker himself a capital, acommodity.Clash of mutual contradictions. |XLIII|| Third Manuscript28[Private Property and Labor. Political Economy as a Product ofthe Movement of Private Property]||I| Re. p. XXXVI. The subjective essence of private property – private property as activity foritself,29 as subject, as person – is labor. It is therefore evident that only the political economywhich acknowledged labor as its principle – Adam Smith – and which therefore no longer lookedupon private property as a mere condition external to man – that it is this political economy whichhas to be regarded on the one hand as a product of the real energy and the real movement ofprivate property (it is a movement of private property become independent for itself inconsciousness – the modern industry as Self) – as a product of modern industry – and on the otherhand, as a force which has quickened and glorified the energy and development of modernindustry and made it a power in the realm of consciousness.To this enlightened political economy, which has discovered – within private property – thesubjective essence of wealth, the adherents of the Monetary and Mercantile System, who lookupon private property only as an objective substance confronting men, seem therefore to befetishists, Catholics. Engels was therefore right to call Adam Smith the Luther of PoliticalEconomy [See Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy]. Just as Luther recognized religion -faith - as the substance of the external world and in consequence stood opposed to Catholicpaganism – just as he superseded external religiosity by making religiosity the inner substance ofman - just as he negated the priests outside the layman because he transplanted the priest intolaymen’s hearts, just so with wealth: wealth as something outside man and independent of him,and therefore as something to be maintained and asserted only in an external fashion, is doneaway with; that is, this external, mindless objectivity of wealth is done away with, with privateproperty being incorporated in man himself and with man himself being recognized as itsessence. But as a result man is brought within the orbit of private property, just as with Luther heis brought within the orbit of religion. Under the semblance of recognizing man, the politicaleconomy whose principle is labor rather carries to its logical conclusion the denial of man, sinceman himself no longer stands in an external relation of tension to the external substance of privateproperty, but has himself become this tense essence of private property. What was previouslybeing external to oneself – man’s actual externalization – has merely become the act ofexternalizing – the process of alienating.This political economy begins by seeming to acknowledge man (his independence, spontaneity,etc.); then, locating private property in man’s own being, it can no longer be conditioned by thelocal, national or other characteristics of private property as of something existing outside itself.This political economy, consequently, displays a cosmopolitan, universal energy whichoverthrows every restriction and bond so as to establish itself instead as the sole politics, the soleuniversality, the sole limit and sole bond. Hence it must throw aside this hypocrisy in the courseof its further development and come out in its complete cynicism. And this it does – untroubledby all the apparent contradictions in which it becomes involved as a result of this theory – bydeveloping the idea of labor much more one-sidedly, and therefore more sharply and moreconsistently, as the sole essence of wealth; by proving the implications of this theory to be anti-human in character, in contrast to the other, original approach. Finally, by dealing the death-blowto rent – that last, individual, natural mode of private property and source of wealth existingindependently of the movement of labor, that expression of feudal property, an expression whichhas already become wholly economic in character and therefore incapable of resisting politicaleconomy. (The Ricardo school.) There is not merely a relative growth in the cynicism of political 41Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscripteconomy from Smith through Say to Ricardo, Mill, etc., inasmuch as the implications of industryappear more developed and more contradictory in the eyes of the last-named; these latereconomists also advance in a positive sense constantly and consciously further than theirpredecessors in their estrangement from man. They do so, however, only because their sciencedevelops more consistently and truthfully. Because they make private property in its active formthe subject, thus simultaneously turning man into the essence – and at the same time turning manas non-essentiality into the essence – the contradiction of reality corresponds completely to thecontradictory being which they accept as their principle. Far from refuting it, the ruptured ||II|world of industry confirms their self-ruptured principle. Their principle is, after all, the principleof this rupture.The Physiocratic doctrine of Dr. Quesnay forms the transition from the Mercantile System toAdam Smith. Physiocracy represents directly the decomposition of feudal property in economicterms, but it therefore just as directly represents its economic metamorphosis and restoration, savethat now its language is no longer feudal but economic. All wealth is resolved into land andcultivation (agriculture). Land is not yet capital: it is still a special mode of its existence, thevalidity of which is supposed to lie in, and to derive from, its natural peculiarity. Yet land is ageneral natural element, whilst the Mercantile System admits the existence of wealth only in theform of precious metal. Thus the object of wealth – its matter – has straightway obtained thehighest degree of universality within the bounds of nature, insofar as even as nature, it isimmediate objective wealth. And land only exists for man through labor, through agriculture.Thus the subjective essence of wealth has already been transferred to labor. But at the same timeagriculture is the only productive labor. Hence, labor is not yet grasped in its generality andabstraction: it is still bound to a particular natural element as its matter, and it is therefore onlyrecognized in a particular mode of existence determined by nature. It is therefore still only aspecific, particular alienation of man, just as its product is likewise conceived nearly [as] aspecific form of wealth – due more to nature than to labor itself. The land is here still recognizedas a phenomenon of nature independent of man - not yet as capital, i.e., as an aspect of laboritself. Labor appears, rather, as an aspect of the land. But since the fetishism of the old externalwealth, of wealth existing only as an object, has been reduced to a very simple natural element,and since its essence – even if only partially and in a particular form – has been recognized withinits subjective existence, the necessary step forward has been made in revealing the general natureof wealth and hence in the raising up of labor in its total absoluteness (i.e., its abstraction) as theprinciple. It is argued against physiocracy that agriculture, from the economic point of view –that is to say, from the only valid point of view – does not differ from any other industry; and thatthe essence of wealth, therefore, is not a specific form of labor bound to a particular element - aparticular expression of labor – but labor in general.Physiocracy denies particular, external, merely objective wealth by declaring labor to be theessence of wealth. But for physiocracy labor is at first only the subjective essence of landedproperty. (It takes its departure from the type of property which historically appears as thedominant and acknowledged type.) It turns only landed property into alienated man. It annuls itsfeudal character by declaring industry (agriculture) as its essence. But it disavows the world ofindustry and acknowledges the feudal system by declaring agriculture to be the only industry.It is clear that if the subjective essence of industry is now grasped (of industry in opposition tolanded property, i.e., of industry constituting itself as industry), this essence includes within itselfits opposite. For just as industry incorporates annulled landed property, the subjective essence ofindustry at the same time incorporates the subjective essence of landed property.Just as landed property is the first form of private property, with industry at first confronting ithistorically merely as a special kind of property – or, rather, as landed property’s liberated slave –so this process repeats itself in the scientific analysis of the subjective essence of private property,labor. Labor appears at first only as agricultural labor, but then asserts itself as labor in general. 42Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscript||III| All wealth has become industrial wealth, the wealth of labor, and industry is accomplishedlabor, just as the factory system is the perfected essence of industry, that is of labor, and just asindustrial capital is the accomplished objective form of private property.We can now see how it is only at this point that private property can complete its dominion overman and become, in its most general form, a world-historical power.[Private Property and Communism]Re p. XXXIX. The antithesis between lack of property and property, so long as it is notcomprehended as the antithesis of labor and capital, still remains an indifferent antithesis, notgrasped in its active connection, in its internal relation, not yet grasped as a contradiction. It canfind expression in this first form even without the advanced development of private property (asin ancient Rome, Turkey, etc.). It does not yet appear as having been established by privateproperty itself. But labor, the subjective essence of private property as exclusion of property, andcapital, objective labor as exclusion of labor, constitute private property as its developed state ofcontradiction – hence a dynamic relationship driving towards resolution.Re the same page. The transcendence of self-estrangement follows the same course as self-estrangement. Private property is first considered only in its objective aspect – but neverthelesswith labor as its essence. Its form of existence is therefore capital, which is to be annulled “assuch” (Proudhon). Or a particular form of labor – labor leveled down, fragmented, and thereforeunfree – is conceived as the source of private property’s perniciousness and of its existence inestrangement from men. For instance, Fourier, who, like the Physiocrats, also conceivesagricultural labor to be at least the exemplary type, whilst Saint-Simon declares in contrast thatindustrial labor as such is the essence, and accordingly aspires to the exclusive rule of theindustrialists and the improvement of the workers’ condition. Finally, communism is the positiveexpression of annulled private property – at first as universal private property.By embracing this relation as a whole, communism is:(1) In its first form only a generalization and consummation of it [of this relation]. As such itappears in a two-fold form: on the one hand, the dominion of material property bulks so large thatit wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property.It wants to disregard talent, etc., in an arbitrary manner. For it the sole purpose of life andexistence is direct, physical possession. The category of the worker is not done away with, butextended to all men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of thecommunity to the world of things. Finally, this movement of opposing universal private propertyto private property finds expression in the brutish form of opposing to marriage (certainly a formof exclusive private property) the community of women, in which a woman becomes a piece ofcommunal and common property. It may be said that this idea of the community of women givesaway the secret of this as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism.30 Just as womanpasses from marriage to general prostitution, [Prostitution is only a specific expression of thegeneral prostitution of the laborer, and since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitutealone, but also the one who prostitutes – and the latter’s abomination is still greater – thecapitalist, etc., also comes under this head. – Note by Marx]31 so the entire world of wealth (thatis, of man’s objective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with theowner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community. This type ofcommunism – since it negates the personality of man in every sphere – is but the logicalexpression of private property, which is this negation. General envy constituting itself as a poweris the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. Thethought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier privateproperty in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envyand urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism [The manuscript has: 43Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptKommunist. – Ed.] is only the culmination of this envy and of this leveling-down proceedingfrom the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this annulment ofprivate property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entireworld of culture and civilization, the regression to the unnatural ||IV| simplicity of the poor andcrude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but hasnot yet even reached it.The community is only a community of labor, and of equality of wages paid out by communalcapital – by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised toan imagined universality – labor as the category in which every person is placed, and capital asthe acknowledged universality and power of the community.In the approach to woman as the spoil and handmaid of communal lust is expressed the infinitedegradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous,decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner inwhich the direct and natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessaryrelation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationshipman’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man isimmediately his relation to nature – his own natural destination. In this relationship, therefore, issensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence hasbecome nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of man. Fromthis relationship one can therefore judge man’s whole level of development. From the characterof this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himselfand to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of humanbeing to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behavior has becomehuman, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence – theextent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him. This relationship also revealsthe extent to which man’s need has become a human need; the extent to which, therefore, theother person as a person has become for him a need – the extent to which he in his individualexistence is at the same time a social being.The first positive annulment of private property – crude communism – is thus merely one form inwhich the vileness of private property, which wants to set itself up as the positive communitysystem, comes to the surface.(2) Communism (a) still political in nature – democratic or despotic; (ß) with the abolition of thestate, yet still incomplete, and being still affected by private property, i.e., by the estrangement ofman. In both forms communism already is aware of being reintegration or return of man tohimself, the transcendence of human self-estrangement; but since it has not yet grasped thepositive essence of private property, and just as little the human nature of need, it remains captiveto it and infected by it. It has, indeed, grasped its concept, but not its essence.(3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement,and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communismtherefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a returnaccomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. Thiscommunism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanismequals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature andbetween man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, betweenobjectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual andthe species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.||V| The entire movement of history, just as its actual act of genesis – the birth act of its empiricalexistence – is, therefore, for its thinking consciousness the comprehended and known process ofits becoming. Whereas the still immature communism seeks an historical proof for itself – a proof 44Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscriptin the realm of what already exists – among disconnected historical phenomena opposed toprivate property, tearing single phases from the historical process and focusing attention on themas proofs of its historical pedigree (a hobby-horse ridden hard especially by Cabet, Villegardelle,etc.). By so doing it simply makes clear that by far the greater part of this process contradicts itsown claim, and that, if it has ever existed, precisely its being in the past refutes its pretension toreality.It is easy to see that the entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and itstheoretical basis in the movement of private property – more precisely, in that of the economy.This material, immediately perceptible private property is the material perceptible expression ofestranged human life. Its movement – production and consumption – is the perceptible revelationof the movement of all production until now, i.e., the realization or the reality of man. Religion,family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fallunder its general law. The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation ofhuman life, is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement – that is to say, the returnof man from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i.e., social, existence. Religiousestrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness, of man’s inner life, but economicestrangement is that of real life; its transcendence therefore embraces both aspects. It is evidentthat the initial stage of the movement amongst the various peoples depends on whether the truerecognized life of the people manifests itself more in consciousness or in the external world – ismore ideal or real. Communism begins from the outset (Owen) with atheism; but atheism is atfirst far from being communism; indeed, that atheism is still mostly an abstraction.The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy, andthat of communism is at once real and directly bent on action.We have seen how on the assumption of positively annulled private property man produces man –himself and the other man; how the object, being the direct manifestation of his individuality, issimultaneously his own existence for the other man, the existence of the other man, and thatexistence for him. Likewise, however, both the material of labor and man as the subject, are thepoint of departure as well as the result of the movement (and precisely in this fact, that they mustconstitute the point of departure, lies the historical necessity of private property). Thus the socialcharacter is the general character of the whole movement: just as society itself produces man asman, so is society produced by him. Activity and enjoyment, both in their content and in theirmode of existence, are social: social [This word is crossed out in the manuscript. – Ed.] activityand social enjoyment. The human aspect of nature exists only for social man; for only then doesnature exist for him as a bond with man – as his existence for the other and the other’s existencefor him – and as the life-element of human reality. Only then does nature exist as the foundationof his own human existence. Only here has what is to him his natural existence become hishuman existence, and nature become man for him. Thus society is the complete unity of man withnature – the true resurrection of nature – the consistent naturalism of man and the consistenthumanism of nature.||VI| Social activity and social enjoyment exist by no means only in the form of some directlycommunal activity and directly communal enjoyment, although communal activity and communalenjoyment – i.e., activity and enjoyment which are manifested and directly revealed in realassociation with other men – will occur wherever such a direct expression of sociability stemsfrom the true character of the activity’s content and is appropriate to the nature of the enjoyment.But also when I am active scientifically, etc. – an activity which I can seldom perform in directcommunity with others – then my activity is social, because I perform it as a man. Not only is thematerial of my activity given to me as a social product (as is even the language in which thethinker is active): my own existence is social activity, and therefore that which I make of myself,I make of myself for society and with the consciousness of myself as a social being. 45Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptMy general consciousness is only the theoretical shape of that of which the living shape is thereal community, the social fabric, although at the present day general consciousness is anabstraction from real life and as such confronts it with hostility. The activity of my generalconsciousness, as an activity, is therefore also my theoretical existence as a social being.Above all we must avoid postulating “society” again as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual.The individual is the social being. His manifestations of life – even if they may not appear in thedirect form of communal manifestations of life carried out in association with others – aretherefore an expression and confirmation of social life. Man’s individual and species-life are notdifferent, however much – and this is inevitable – the mode of existence of the individual is amore particular or more general mode of the life of the species, or the life of the species is amore particular or more general individual life.In his consciousness of species man confirms his real social life and simply repeats his realexistence in thought, just as conversely the being of the species confirms itself in species-consciousness and exists for itself in its generality as a thinking being.Man, much as he may therefore be a particular individual (and it is precisely his particularitywhich makes him an individual, and a real individual social being), is just as much the totality –the ideal totality – the subjective existence of imagined and experienced society for itself; just ashe exists also in the real world both as awareness and real enjoyment of social existence, and as atotality of human manifestation of life.Thinking and being are thus certainly distinct, but at the same time they are in unity with eachother.Death seems to be a harsh victory of the species over the particular individual and to contradicttheir unity. But the particular individual is only a particular species-being, and as such mortal.<(4) [In the manuscript: “5”. – Ed.] Just as private property is only the perceptible expression ofthe fact that man becomes objective for himself and at the same time becomes to himself astrange and inhuman object; just as it expresses the fact that the manifestation of his life is thealienation of his life, that his realization is his loss of reality, is an alien reality: so, the positivetranscendence of private property – i.e., the perceptible appropriation for and by man of thehuman essence and of human life, of objective man, of human achievements – should not beconceived merely in the sense of immediate, one-sided enjoyment, merely in the sense ofpossessing, of having. Man appropriates his total essence in a total manner, that is to say, as awhole man. Each of his human relations to the world – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling,thinking, observing, experiencing, wanting, acting, loving – in short, all the organs of hisindividual being, like those organs which are directly social in their form, ||VII| are in theirobjective orientation, or in their orientation to the object, the appropriation of the object, theappropriation of human reality. Their orientation to the object is the manifestation of the humanreality, [For this reason it is just as highly varied as the determinations of human essence andactivities. – Note by Marx.] it is human activity and human suffering, for suffering, humanlyconsidered, is a kind of self-enjoyment of man.Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it– when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited,etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all thesedirect realizations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means isthe life of private property – labor and conversion into capital.In the place of all physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement ofall these senses, the sense of having. The human being had to be reduced to this absolute povertyin order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world. [On the category of “having”, seeHess, in the Philosophy of the Deed]. 46Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptThe transcendence of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human sensesand qualities, but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes havebecome, subjectively and objectively, human. The eye has become a human eye, just as its objecthas become a social, human object – an object made by man for man. The senses have thereforebecome directly in their practice theoreticians. They relate themselves to the thing for the sake ofthe thing, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man, [In practice I canrelate myself to a thing humanly only if the thing relates itself humanly to the human being. –Note by Marx.] and vice versa. Need or enjoyment have consequently lost their egotistical nature,and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.In the same way, the senses and enjoyment of other men have become my own appropriation.Besides these direct organs, therefore, social organs develop in the form of society; thus, forinstance, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ for expressing myown life, and a mode of appropriating human life.It is obvious that the human eye enjoys things in a way different from the crude, non-human eye;the human ear different from the crude ear, etc.We have seen that man does not lose himself in his object only when the object becomes for hima human object or objective man. This is possible only when the object becomes for him a socialobject, he himself for himself a social being, just as society becomes a being for him in thisobject.On the one hand, therefore, it is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for man insociety the world of man’s essential powers – human reality, and for that reason the reality of hisown essential powers – that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, becomeobjects which confirm and realize his individuality, become his objects: that is, man himselfbecomes the object. The manner in which they become his depends on the nature of the objectsand on the nature of the essential power corresponding to it; for it is precisely the determinatenature of this relationship which shapes the particular, real mode of affirmation. To the eye anobject comes to be other than it is to the ear, and the object of the eye is another object than theobject of the ear. The specific character of each essential power is precisely its specific essence,and therefore also the specific mode of its objectification, of its objectively actual, living being.Thus man is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking, ||VIII| but with all hissenses.On the other hand, let us look at this in its subjective aspect. Just as only music awakens in manthe sense of music, and just as the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear – is[no] object for it, because my object can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers,therefore can only exist for me insofar as my essential power exists for itself as a subjectivecapacity because the meaning of an object for me goes only so far as my sense goes (has only ameaning for a sense corresponding to that object) – for this reason the senses of the social mandiffer from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’sessential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty ofform – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essentialpowers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also theso-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the humannature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanized nature. Theforming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world down to the present. Thesense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.> For the starving man, it isnot the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as wellbe there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differsfrom that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play;the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specificcharacter of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human 47Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscriptessence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, aswell as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and naturalsubstance.We see how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and suffering,only lose their antithetical character, and – thus their existence as such antitheses only within theframework of society; Whatindeed are we to think of a science which airily abstracts from this large part of human labor andwhich fails to feel its own incompleteness, while such a wealth of human Endeavour, unfoldedbefore it, means nothing more to it than, perhaps, what can be expressed in one word – “need”,“vulgar need”?The natural sciences have developed an enormous activity and have accumulated an ever-growing mass of material. Philosophy, however, has remained just as alien to them as they remainto philosophy. Their momentary unity was only a chimerical illusion. The will was there, but thepower was lacking. Historiography itself pays regard to natural science only occasionally, as afactor of enlightenment, utility, and of some special great discoveries. But natural science hasinvaded and transformed human life all the more practically through the medium of industry; andhas prepared human emancipation, although its immediate effect had to be the furthering of thedehumanization of man. Industry is the actual, historical relationship of nature, and therefore ofnatural science, to man. If, therefore, industry is conceived as the exoteric revelation of man’sessential powers, we also gain an understanding of the human essence of nature or the naturalessence of man. In consequence, natural science will lose its abstractly material – or rather, itsidealistic – tendency, and will become the basis of human science, as it has already become –albeit in an estranged form – the basis of actual human life, and to assume one basis for life and adifferent basis for science is as a matter of course a lie. Sense-perception (see Feuerbach) must be the basis of all science. Only when it proceeds fromsense-perception in the twofold form of sensuous consciousness and sensuous need – is it truescience. All history is the history of preparing and developing “man” to become the object ofsensuous consciousness, and turning the requirements of “man as man” into his needs. History 48Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscriptitself is a real part of natural history – of nature developing into man. Natural science will in timeincorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itselfnatural science: there will be one science.||X| Man is the immediate object of natural science; for immediate, sensuous nature for man is,immediately, human sensuousness (the expressions are identical) – presented immediately in theform of the other man sensuously present for him. Indeed, his own sensuousness first exists ashuman sensuousness for himself through the other man. But nature is the immediate object of thescience of man: the first – object of man – man – is nature, sensuousness; and the particularhuman sensuous essential powers can only find their self-understanding in the science of thenatural world in general, just as they can find their objective realization only in natural objects.The element of thought itself – the element of thought’s living expression – language – is of asensuous nature. The social reality of nature, and human natural science, or the natural science ofman, are identical terms.(5) A being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; and he onlystands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the grace ofanother regards himself as a dependent being. But I live completely by the grace of another if Iowe him not only the maintenance of my life, but if he has, moreover, created my life – if he isthe source of my life. When it is not of my own creation, my life has necessarily a source of thiskind outside of it. The Creation is therefore an idea very difficult to dislodge from popularconsciousness. The fact that nature and man exist on their own account is incomprehensible to it,because it contradicts everything tangible in practical life.The creation of the earth has received a mighty blow from geognosy – i.e., from the sciencewhich presents the formation of the earth, the development of the earth, as a process, as a self-generation. Generatio aequivoca is the only practical refutation of the theory of creation.33Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aristotle has already said: You havebeen begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings –a species-act of human beings – has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that evenphysically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the oneaspect – the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Whohis grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible inthat progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining thesubject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progresswhich drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I canonly answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived atthat question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which Icannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for areasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in sodoing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to provethem to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give upyour question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you thinkof man and nature as non-existent, ||XI| then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too aresurely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your 49Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscriptabstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist thatyou conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?You can reply: I do not want to postulate the nothingness of nature, etc. I ask you about itsgenesis, just as I ask the anatomist about the formation of bones, etc.But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creationof man through human labor, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible,irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man andnature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus becomeevident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question aboutan alien being, about a being above nature and man – a question which implies the admission ofthe unreality of nature and of man – has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as the denial ofthis unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates theexistence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need ofsuch a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness ofman and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man’s positive self-consciousness, no longermediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man’s positive reality, no longermediated through the abolition of private property, through communism. Communism is thepositive mode as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for thenext stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation.Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, butcommunism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society. |XI||34[Human Requirements and Division of Labor Under the Ruleof Private Property and Under Socialism. Division of Labor inBourgeois Society]||XIV| 35 (7) We have seen what significance, given socialism, the wealth of human needsacquires, and what significance, therefore, both a new mode of production and a new object ofproduction obtain: a new manifestation of the forces of human nature and a new enrichment ofhuman nature. Under private property their significance is reversed: every person speculates oncreating a new need in another, so as to drive him to fresh sacrifice, to place him in a newdependence and to seduce him into a new mode of enjoyment and therefore economic ruin. Eachtries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfishneed. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of therealm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a newpotentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering. Man becomes ever poorer as man, hisneed for money becomes ever greater if he wants to master the hostile power. The power of hismoney declines in inverse proportion to the increase in the volume of production: that is, hisneediness grows as the power of money increases.The need for money is therefore the true need produced by the economic system, and it is theonly need which the latter produces. The quantity of money becomes to an ever greater degree itssole effective quality. Just as it reduces everything to its abstract form, so it reduces itself in thecourse of its own movement to quantitative being. Excess and intemperance come to be its truenorm.Subjectively, this appears partly in the fact that the extension of products and needs becomes acontriving and ever-calculating subservience to inhuman, sophisticated, unnatural and imaginaryappetites. Private property does not know how to change crude need into human need. Itsidealism is fantasy, caprice and whim; and no eunuch flatters his despot more basely or uses moredespicable means to stimulate his dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak a favor for 50Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscripthimself than does the industrial eunuch – the producer – in order to sneak for himself a few piecesof silver, in order to charm the golden birds out of the pockets of his dearly beloved neighbors inChrist. He puts himself at the service of the other’s most depraved fancies, plays the pimpbetween him and his need, excites in him morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of his weaknesses– all so that he can then demand the cash for this service of love. (Every product is a bait withwhich to seduce away the other’s very being, his money; every real and possible need is aweakness which will lead the fly to the glue-pot. General exploitation of communal humannature, just as every imperfection in man, is a bond with heaven – an avenue giving the priestaccess to his heart; every need is an opportunity to approach one’s neighbor under the guise of theutmost amiability and to say to him: Dear friend, I give you what you need, but you know theconditio sine qua non; you know the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me; inproviding for your pleasure, I fleece you.)This estrangement manifests itself in part in that the sophistication of needs and of the means [oftheir satisfaction] on one side produces a bestial barbarization, a complete, crude, abstractsimplicity of need, on the other; or rather in that it merely reproduces itself in its opposite. Eventhe need for fresh air ceases to be a need for the worker. Man returns to a cave dwelling, which isnow, however, contaminated with the pestilential breath of civilization, and which he continues tooccupy only precariously, it being for him an alien habitation which can be withdrawn from himany day – a place from which, if he does ||XV| not pay, he can be thrown out any day. For thismortuary he has to pay. A dwelling in the light, which Prometheus in Aeschylus designated asone of the greatest boons, by means of which he made the savage into a human being, ceases toexist for the worker. Light, air, etc. – the simplest animal cleanliness – ceases to be a need forman. Filth, this stagnation and putrefaction of man – the sewage of civilization (speaking quiteliterally) – comes to be the element of life for him. Utter, unnatural depravation, putrefied nature,comes to be his life-element. None of his senses exist any longer, and not only in its humanfashion, but in an inhuman fashion, and therefore not even in an animal fashion. The crudestmethods (and instruments) of human labor are coming back: the treadmill of the Roman slaves,for instance, is the means of production, the means of existence, of many English workers. It isnot only that man has no human needs – even his animal needs cease to exist. The Irishman nolonger knows any need now but the need to eat, and indeed only the need to eat potatoes – andscabby potatoes at that, the worst kind of potatoes. But in each of their industrial towns Englandand France have already a little Ireland. The savage and the animal have at least the need to hunt,to roam, etc. – the need of companionship. The simplification of the machine, of labor is used tomake a worker out of the human being still in the making, the completely immature human being,the child – whilst the worker has become a neglected child. The machine accommodates itself tothe weakness of the human being in order to make the weak human being into a machine.It is true that a controversy now arises in the field of political economy. The one side(Lauderdale, Malthus, etc.) recommends luxury and execrates thrift. The other (Say, Ricardo,etc.) recommends thrift and execrates luxury. But the former admits that it wants luxury in orderto produce labor (i.e., absolute thrift); and the latter admits that it recommends thrift in order toproduce wealth (i.e., luxury). The Lauderdale-Malthus school has the romantic notion that avaricealone ought not to determine the consumption of the rich, and it contradicts its own laws inadvancing extravagance as a direct means of enrichment. Against it, therefore, the other side veryearnestly and circumstantially proves that I do not increase but reduce my possessions by beingextravagant. The Say-Ricardo school is hypocritical in not admitting that it is precisely whim andcaprice which determine production. It forgets the “refined needs”; it forgets that there would beno production without consumption; it forgets that as a result of competition production can onlybecome more extensive and luxurious. It forgets that, according to its views, a thing’s value isdetermined by use, and that use is determined by fashion. It wishes to see only “useful things”produced, but it forgets that production of too many useful things produces too large a uselesspopulation. Both sides forget that extravagance and thrift, luxury and privation, wealth andpoverty are equal.And you must not only stint the gratification of your immediate senses, as by stinting yourself onfood, etc.: you must also spare yourself all sharing of general interests, all sympathy, all trust,etc., if you want to be economical, if you do not want to be ruined by illusions. ||XVII| focuses attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity, and eachstands in an estranged relation to the other. Thus M. Michel Chevalier reproaches Ricardo withhaving ignored ethics. But Ricardo is allowing political economy to speak its own language, andif it does not speak ethically, this is not Ricardo’s fault. M. Chevalier abstracts from politicaleconomy insofar as he moralizes, but he really and necessarily ignores ethics insofar as hepractices political economy. The relationship of political economy to ethics, if it is other than anarbitrary, contingent and therefore unfounded and unscientific relationship, if it is not beingposited for the sake of appearance but is meant to be essential, can only be the relationship of thelaws of political economy to ethics. If there is no such connection, or if the contrary is rather thecase, can Ricardo help it? Moreover, the opposition between political economy and ethics is onlyan apparent opposition and just as much no opposition as it is an opposition. All that happens isthat political economy expresses moral laws in its own way.The meaning which production has in relation to the rich is seen revealed in the meaning which ithas for the poor. Looking upwards the manifestation is always refined, veiled, ambiguous –outward appearance; downwards, it is rough, straightforward, frank – the real thing. The worker’scrude need is a far greater source of gain than the refined need of the rich. The cellar dwellings inLondon bring more to those who let them than do the palaces; that is to say, with reference to thelandlord they constitute greater wealth, and thus (to speak the language of political economy)greater social wealth.Industry speculates on the refinement of needs, it speculates however just as much on theircrudeness, but on their artificially produced crudeness, whose true enjoyment, therefore, is self-stupefaction – this illusory satisfaction of need this civilization contained within the crudebarbarism of need. The English gin shops are therefore the symbolical representations of privateproperty. Their luxury reveals the true relation of industrial luxury and wealth to man. They aretherefore rightly the only Sunday pleasures of the people which the English police treats at leastmildly. |XVII||||XVIII| 36 We have already seen how the political economist establishes the unity of labor andcapital in a variety of ways: (1) Capital is accumulated labor. (2) The purpose of capital withinproduction – partly, reproduction of capital with profit, partly, capital as raw material (material oflabor), and partly, as an automatically working instrument (the machine is capital directly equatedwith labor) – is productive labor. (3) The worker is a capital. (4) Wages belong to costs of capital.(5) In relation to the worker, labor is the reproduction of his life-capital. (6) In relation to thecapitalist, labor is an aspect of his capital’s activity.Finally, (7) the political economist postulates the original unity of capital and labor as the unity ofthe capitalist and the worker; this is the original state of paradise. The way in which these twoaspects, ||XIX| as two persons, confront each other is for the political economist an accidentalevent, and hence only to be explained by reference to external factors. (See Mill.) 53Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptThe nations which are still dazzled by the sensuous glitter of precious metals, and are thereforestill fetish-worshipers of metal money, are not yet fully developed money-nations. Contrast ofFrance and England.The extent to which the solution of theoretical riddles is the task of practice and effected throughpractice, the extent to which true practice is the condition of a real and positive theory, is shown,for example, in fetishism. The sensuous consciousness of the fetish-worshipper is different fromthat of the Greek, because his sensuous existence is different. The abstract enmity between senseand spirit is necessary so long as the human feeling for nature, the human sense of nature, andtherefore also the natural sense of man, are not yet produced by man’s own labor.Equality is nothing but a translation of the German “Ich = Ich”37 into the French, i.e., politicalform. Equality as the basis of communism is its political justification, and it is the same as whenthe German justifies it by conceiving man as universal self-consciousness. Naturally, thetranscendence of the estrangement always proceeds from that form of the estrangement which isthe dominant power: in Germany, self-consciousness; in France, equality, because it is politics; inEngland, real, material, practical need taking only itself as its standard. It is from this standpointthat Proudhon is to be criticized and appreciated.If we characterize communism itself because of its character as negation of the negation, as theappropriation of the human essence through the intermediary of the negation of private property –as being not yet the true, self-originating position but rather a position originating from privateproperty [...] in old-German fashion – in the way of Hegel’s phenomenology – [...] finished as aconquered moment and […] one might be satisfied by it, in his consciousness [...] of the humanbeing only by real [...] transcendence of his thought now as before […], since with him thereforethe real estrangement of the life of man remains, and remains all the more, the more one isconscious of it as such, hence it [the negation of this estrangement] can be accomplished solelyby bringing about communism.In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is quite sufficient. It takesactual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will lead to it; and thismovement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitutein actual fact a very rough and protracted process. But we must regard it as a real advance to haveat the outset gained a consciousness of the limited character as well as of the goal of thishistorical movement – and a consciousness which reaches out beyond it.When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end.But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need – the need for society– and what appears as a means becomes an end. In this practical process the most splendid resultsare to be observed whenever French socialist workers are seen together. Such things as smoking,drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring them together.Company, association, and conversation, which again has society as its end, are enough for them;the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of manshines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.||XX| The quarrel between the political economists about luxury and thrift is, therefore, only the quarrelbetween that political economy which has achieved clarity about the nature of wealth, and thatpolitical economy which is still afflicted with romantic, anti-industrial memories. Neither side,however, knows how to reduce the subject of the controversy to its simple terms, and neithertherefore can make short work of the other. |XXI||||XXXIV| 40 Moreover, rent of land qua rent of land has been overthrown, since, contrary to theargument of the Physiocrats which maintains that the landowner is the only true producer,modern political economy has proved that the landowner as such is rather the only completelyunproductive rentier. According to this theory, agriculture is the business of the capitalist, whoinvests his capital in it provided he can expect the usual profit. The claim of the Physiocrats – thatlanded property, as the sole productive property, should alone pay state taxes and therefore shouldalone approve them and participate in the affairs of state – is transformed into the oppositeposition that the tax on the rent of land is the only tax on unproductive income, and is thereforethe only tax not detrimental to national production. It goes without saying that from this point ofview also the political privilege of landowners no longer follows from their position as principaltax-payers.Everything which Proudhon conceives as a movement of labor against capital is only themovement of labor in the determination of capital, of industrial capital, against capital notconsumed as capital, i.e., not consumed industrially. And this movement is proceeding along itstriumphant road – the road to the victory of industrial capital. It is clear, therefore, that only whenlabor is grasped as the essence of private property, can the economic process as such be analyzedin its real concreteness.Society, as it appears to the political economist, is civil society41 in which every individual is atotality of needs and only ||XXXV| exists for the other person, as the other exists for him, insofaras each becomes a means for the other. The political economist reduces everything (just as doespolitics in its Rights of Man) to man, i.e., to the individual whom he strips of all determinatenessso as to class him as capitalist or worker.The division of labor is the economic expression of the social character of labor within theestrangement. Or, since labor is only an expression of human activity within alienation, of themanifestation of life as the alienation of life, the division of labor, too, is therefore nothing elsebut the estranged, alienated positing of human activity as a real activity of the species or asactivity of man as a species-being.As for the essence of the division of labor – and of course the division of labor had to beconceived as a major driving force in the production of wealth as soon as labor was recognized as 56Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscriptthe essence of private property – i.e., as for the estranged and alienated form of human activity asan activity of the species – the political economists are very vague and self-contradictory about it.Adam Smith: “This division of labor [...] is not originally the effect of any humanwisdom [...]. It is the necessary, [...] slow and gradual consequence of [...] thepropensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. [...] Thispropensity” to trade is probably a “necessary consequence of the use of reason andof speech [...]. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race ofanimals.” The animal, when it is grown up, is entirely independent. “Man hasalmost constant occasion for the help of others, and it is in vain for him to expectit from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can appealto their personal interest, and show them that it is for their own advantage to dofor him what he requires of them. [...] We address ourselves, not to their humanitybut to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of theiradvantages. [...]“As it is by treaty, by barter, and by purchase that we obtain from one another thegreater part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need of, so it is thissame trucking disposition which originally gives occasion to the division of labor.In a tribe of hunters or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, forexample, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. He frequentlyexchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at lastthat he can in this manner get more cattle and venison than if he himself went tothe field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making ofbows, etc., grows to be his chief business [...]“The difference of natural talents in different men […] is not [...] so much thecause as the effect of the division of labor.... Without the disposition to truck [...]and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary andconveniency of life [....] All must have had [...] the same work to do, and therecould have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion toany great difference of talents.“As it is this disposition which forms that difference of talents among men so it isthis same disposition which renders that difference useful. Many tribes of animals[... ] of the same species derive from nature a much more remarkable distinctionof genius, than what, antecedent to custom and education, appears to take placeamong men. By nature a philosopher is not in talent and in intelligence half sodifferent from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhoundfrom a spaniel, or this last from a shepherd’s dog. Those different tribes ofanimals, however, though all of the same species, are of scarce any use to oneanother. The mastiff cannot add to the advantages of his strength ||XXXVI| bymaking use of the swiftness of the greyhound, etc. The effects of these differenttalents or grades of intelligence, for want of the power or disposition to barter andexchange, cannot be brought into a common stock, and do not in the leastcontribute to the better accommodation and conveniency of the species. Eachanimal is still obliged to support and defend itself, separately and independently,and derives no sort of advantage from that variety of talents with which nature hasdistinguished its fellows. Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilargeniuses are of use to one another; the different produces of their respectivetalents, by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, asit were, into a common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of theproduce of other men’s industry he has occasion for. [...] 57Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscript“As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labor, sothe extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, inother words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no personcan have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, forwant of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his ownlabor, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produceof other men’s labor as he has occasion for ...”In an advanced state of society “every man thus lives by exchanging and becomesin some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly acommercial society.” (See Destutt de Tracy [, Élémens d’idéologie, Paris, 1826,pp. 68 and 78]: “Society is a series of reciprocal exchanges; commerce containsthe whole essence of society.”) ... The accumulation of capitals mounts with thedivision of labor, and vice versa.”So much for Adam Smith.“If every family produced all that it consumed, society could keep going althoughno exchange of any sort took place; without being fundamental, exchange isindispensable in our advanced state of society. The division of labor is a skillfuldeployment of man’s powers; it increases society’s production – its power and itspleasures – but it curtails, reduces the ability of every person taken individually.Production cannot take place without exchange.”Thus J. B. Say.“The powers inherent in man are his intelligence and his physical capacity forwork. Those which arise from the condition of society consist of the capacity todivide up labor and to distribute different jobs amongst different people ... and thepower to exchange mutual services and the products which constitute these means.The motive which impels a man to give his services to another is self- interest – herequires a reward for the services rendered. The right of exclusive private propertyis indispensable to the establishment of exchange amongst men.” “Exchange anddivision of labor reciprocally condition each other.”Thus Skarbek.Mill presents developed exchange – trade – as a consequence of the division of labor.“The agency of man can be traced to very simple elements. He can, in fact, donothing more than produce motion. He can move things towards one another, andhe can separate them from one another: ||XXXVII| the properties of matterperform all the rest.” “In the employment of labor and machinery, it is often foundthat the effects can be increased by skillful distribution, by separating all thoseoperations which have any tendency to impede one another, and by bringingtogether all those operations which can be made in any way to aid one another. Asmen in general cannot perform many different operations with the same quicknessand dexterity with which they can by practice learn to perform a few, it is alwaysan advantage to limit as much as possible the number of operations imposed uponeach. For dividing labor, and distributing the powers of men and machinery, to thegreatest advantage, it is in most cases necessary to operate upon a large scale; inother words, to produce the commodities in greater masses. It is this advantagewhich gives existence to the great manufactories; a few of which, placed in themost convenient situations, frequently supply not one country, but manycountries, with as much as they desire of the commodity produced.”Thus Mill. 58Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptThe whole of modern political economy agrees, however, that division of labor and wealth ofproduction, division of labor and accumulation of capital, mutually determine each other; just asit agrees that only private property which is at liberty to follow its own course can produce themost useful and comprehensive division of labor.Adam Smith’s argument can be summarized as follows: Division of labor bestows on laborinfinite productive capacity. It stems from the propensity to exchange and barter, a specificallyhuman propensity which is probably not accidental, but is conditioned by the use of reason andspeech. The motive of those who engage in exchange is not humanity but egoism. The diversity ofhuman talents is more the effect than the cause of the division of labor, i.e., of exchange. Besides,it is only the latter which makes such diversity useful. The particular attributes of the differentbreeds within a species of animal are by nature much more marked than the degrees of differencein human aptitude and activity. But because animals are unable to engage in exchange, noindividual animal benefits from the difference in the attributes of animals of the same species butof different breeds. Animals are unable to combine the different attributes of their species, and areunable to contribute anything to the common advantage and comfort of the species. It is otherwisewith men, amongst whom the most dissimilar talents and forms of activity are of use to oneanother, because they can bring their different products together into a common stock, fromwhich each can purchase. As the division of labor springs from the propensity to exchange, so itgrows and is limited by the extent of exchange – by the extent of the market. In advancedconditions, every man is a merchant, and society is a commercial society.Say regards exchange as accidental and not fundamental. Society could exist without it. Itbecomes indispensable in the advanced state of society. Yet production cannot take place withoutit. Division of labor is a convenient, useful means – a skillful deployment of human powers forsocial wealth; but it reduces the ability of each person taken individually. The last remark is a stepforward on the part of Say.Skarbek distinguishes the individual powers inherent in man – intelligence and the physicalcapacity for work – from the powers derived from society – exchange and division of labor,which mutually condition one another. But the necessary premise of exchange is private property.Skarbek here expresses in an objective form what Smith, Say, Ricardo, etc., say when theydesignate egoism and self-interest as the basis of exchange, and buying and selling as theessential and adequate form of exchange.Mill presents trade as the consequence of the division of labor. With him human activity isreduced to mechanical motion. Division of labor and use of machinery promote wealth ofproduction. Each person must be entrusted with as small a sphere of operations as possible.Division of labor and use of machinery, in their turn, imply large-scale production of wealth, andhence of products. This is the reason for large manufactories.||XXXVIII| The examination of division of labor and exchange is of extreme interest, becausethese are perceptibly alienated expressions of human activity and essential power as a species-activity and -power.To assert that division of labor and exchange rest on private property is nothing but asserting thatlabor is the essence of private property – an assertion which the political economist cannot proveand which we wish to prove for him. Precisely in the fact that division of labor and exchange areaspects of private property lies the twofold proof, on the one hand that human life requiredprivate property for its realization, and on the other hand that it now requires the supersession ofprivate property.Division of labor and exchange are the two phenomena which lead the political economist toboast of the social character of his science, while in the same breath he gives unconsciousexpression to the contradiction in his science – the motivation of society by unsocial, particularinterests. 59Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptThe factors we have to consider are: Firstly, the propensity to exchange – the basis of which isfound in egoism – is regarded as the cause or reciprocal effect of the division of labor. Sayregards exchange as not fundamental to the nature of society. Wealth – production – is explainedby division of labor and exchange. The impoverishment of individual activity, and its loss ofcharacter as a result of the division of labor, are admitted. Exchange and division of labor areacknowledged as the sources of the great diversity of human talents – a diversity which in its turnbecomes useful as a result of exchange. Skarbek divides man’s essential powers of production –or productive powers – into two parts: (1) those which are individual and inherent in him – hisintelligence and his special disposition, or capacity, for work; and (2) those derived from societyand not from the actual individual – division of labor and exchange.Furthermore, the division of labor is limited by the market. Human labor is simple mechanicalmotion: the main work is done by the material properties of the objects. The fewest possibleoperations must be apportioned to any one individual. Splitting-up of labor and concentration ofcapital; the insignificance of individual production and the production of wealth in largequantities. Meaning of free private property within the division of labor. |XXXVIII||[The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society]||XL|42If man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological phenomena in the[narrower] [This word cannot be clearly deciphered in the manuscript. – Ed.] sense, but trulyontological43 affirmation of being (of nature), and if they are only really affirmed because theirobject exists for them as a sensual object, then it is clear that:1. They have by no means merely one mode of affirmation, but rather that the distinct characterof their existence, of their life, is constituted by the distinct mode of their affirmation. In whatmanner the object exists for them, is the characteristic mode of their gratification.2. Wherever the sensuous affirmation is the direct annulment of the object in its independent form(as in eating, drinking, working up of the object, etc.), this is the affirmation of the object.3. Insofar as man, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the affirmation of the object byanother is likewise his own gratification.4. Only through developed industry – i.e., through the medium of private property – does theontological essence of human passion come into being, in its totality as well as in its humanity;the science of man is therefore itself a product of man’s own practical activity.5. The meaning of private property – apart from its estrangement – is the existence of essentialobjects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity.By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the property of appropriating allobjects, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is theomnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as an omnipotent being. Money is the procurerbetween man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that whichmediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the otherperson.“What, man! confound it, hands and feetAnd head and backside, all are yours!And what we take while life is sweet,Is that to be declared not ours?Six stallions, say, I can afford,Is not their strength my property?I tear along, a sporting lord,As if their legs belonged to me.”Goethe: Faust (Mephistopheles) 60Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptShakespeare in Timon of Athens:“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, Gods,I am no idle votarist! ... Thus much of this willmake black white, foul fair,Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.... Why, thisWill lug your priests and servants from your sides,Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:This yellow slaveWill knit and break religions, bless the accursed;Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thievesAnd give them title, knee and approbationWith senators on the bench: This is itThat makes the wappen’d widow wed again;She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous soresWould cast the gorge at, this embalms and spicesTo the April day again. Come, damned earth,Thou common whore of mankind, that putt’s oddsAmong the rout of nations.”And also later:“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorceTwixt natural son and sire! thou bright defilerOf Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snowThat lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God!That solder’s close impossibilities,And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue,||XLII| To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtueSet them into confounding odds, that beastsMay have the world in empire!”Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money. To understand him, let us begin, first ofall, by expounding the passage from Goethe.That which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which moneycan buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is theextent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essentialpowers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I amugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for theeffect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individualcharacteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame.I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honored, and hence its possessor. Moneyis the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble ofbeing dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain ofall things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people forhimself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: “is”. – Ed.] power over the clever not more cleverthan the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for,possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities intotheir contrary? 61Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third ManuscriptIf money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with natureand man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not,therefore, also the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as well as thereal binding agent – the [...] [In the manuscript one word cannot be deciphered. – Ed.] chemicalpower of society.Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of money:1. It is the visible divinity – the transformation of all human and natural properties into theircontraries, the universal confounding and distorting of things: impossibilities are solderedtogether by it.2. It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the fraternization ofimpossibilities – the divine power of money – lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienatingand self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my individual essential powersare incapable, I am able to do by means of money. Money thus turns each of these powers intosomething which in itself it is not – turns it, that is, into its contrary.If I long for a particular dish or want to take the mail-coach because I am not strong enough to goby foot, money fetches me the dish and the mail-coach: that is, it converts my wishes fromsomething in the realm of imagination, translates them from their meditated, imagined or desiredexistence into their sensuous, actual existence – from imagination to life, from imagined beinginto real being. In effecting this mediation, [money] is the truly creative power.No doubt the demand also exists for him who has no money, but his demand is a mere thing ofthe imagination without effect or existence for me, for a third party, for the [others], ||XLIII| andwhich therefore remains even for me unreal and objectless. The difference between effectivedemand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my wish, etc., isthe difference between being and thinking, between the idea which exists within me merely as anidea and the idea which exists as a real object outside of me.If I have no money for travel, I have no need – that is, no real and realizable need – to travel. If Ihave the vocation for study but no money for it, I have no vocation for study – that is, noeffective, no true vocation. On the other hand, if I have really no vocation for study but have thewill and the money for it, I have an effective vocation for it. Money as the external, universalmedium and faculty (not springing from man as man or from human society as society) forturning an image into reality and reality into a mere image, transforms the real essential powersof man and nature into what are merely abstract notions and therefore imperfections andtormenting chimeras, just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras – essential powerswhich are really impotent, which exist only in the imagination of the individual – into realpowers and faculties. In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the general distortingof individualities which turns them into their opposite and confers contradictory attributes upontheir attributes.Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds ofsociety, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, loveinto hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant,idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it isthe general confounding and confusing of all things – the world upside-down – the confoundingand confusing of all natural and human qualities.He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As money is not exchanged for any onespecific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for 62Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Third Manuscriptthe entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it thereforeserves to exchange every quality for every other, even contradictory, quality and object: it is thefraternization of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you canexchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be anartistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be aperson with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations toman and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of yourreal individual life. If you love without evoking love in return – that is, if your loving as lovingdoes not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person youdo not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent – a misfortune. |XLIII|| [Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole]||XI| (6) This is perhaps the place at which, by way of explanation and justification, we mightoffer some considerations in regard to the Hegelian dialectic generally and especially itsexposition in the Phänomenologie and Logik and also, lastly, the relation [to it] of the moderncritical movement.44So powerful was modern German criticism’s preoccupation with the past – so completely was itsdevelopment entangled with the subject-matter – that here prevailed a completely uncriticalattitude to the method of criticizing, together with a complete lack of awareness about theapparently formal, but really vital question: how do we now stand as regards the Hegeliandialectic? This lack of awareness about the relationship of modern criticism to the Hegelianphilosophy as a whole and especially to the Hegelian dialectic has been so great that critics likeStrauss and Bruno Bauer still remain within the confines of the Hegelian logic; the formercompletely so and the latter at least implicitly so in his Synoptiker (where, in opposition toStrauss, he replaces the substance of “abstract nature” by the “self-consciousness” of abstractman), and even in Das entdeckte Christenthum. Thus in Das entdeckte Christenthum, forexample, you get:“As though in positing the world, self-consciousness does not posit that which isdifferent [from itself] and in what it is creating it does not create itself, since it inturn annuls the difference between what it has created and itself, since it itself hasbeing only in creating and in the movement – as though its purpose were not thismovement?” etc.; or again: “They” (the French materialists) “have not yet beenable to see that it is only as the movement of self-consciousness that themovement of the universe has actually come to be for itself, and achieved unitywith itself.” [Pp. 113, 114-15.]Such expressions do not even show any verbal divergence from the Hegelian approach, but on thecontrary repeat it word for word.||XII| How little consciousness there was in relation to the Hegelian dialectic during the act ofcriticism (Bauer, the Synoptiker), and how little this consciousness came into being even after theact of material criticism, is proved by Bauer when, in his Die gute Sache der Freiheit, hedismisses the brash question put by Herr Gruppe – “What about logic now?” – by referring him tofuture critics.45But even now – now that Feuerbach both in his Thesen in the Anekdota and, in detail, in thePhilosophie der Zukunft has in principle overthrown the old dialectic and philosophy; now thatthat school of criticism, on the other hand, which was incapable of accomplishing this, has all thesame seen it accomplished and has proclaimed itself pure, resolute, absolute criticism that hascome into the clear with itself; now that this criticism, in its spiritual pride, has reduced the wholeprocess of history to the relation between the rest of the world and itself (the rest of the world, incontrast to itself, falling under the category of “the masses”) and dissolved all dogmatic antithesesinto the single dogmatic antithesis of its own cleverness and the stupidity of the world – theantithesis of the critical Christ and Mankind, the “rabble”; now that daily and hourly it hasdemonstrated its own excellence against the dullness of the masses; now, finally, that it hasproclaimed the critical Last Judgment in the shape of an announcement that the day isapproaching when the whole of decadent humanity will assemble before it and be sorted by it intogroups, each particular mob receiving its testimonium paupertatis; now that it has made known inprint its superiority to human feelings as well as its superiority to the world, over which it sitsenthroned in sublime solitude, only letting fall from time to time from its sarcastic lips the ringinglaughter of the Olympian Gods – even now, after all these delightful antics of idealism (i.e., ofYoung Hegelianism) expiring in the guise of criticism – even now it has not expressed the 64Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophysuspicion that the time was ripe for a critical settling of accounts with the mother of YoungHegelianism – the Hegelian dialectic – and even had nothing to say about its critical attitudetowards the Feuerbachian dialectic. This shows a completely uncritical attitude to itself.Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and whohas made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy.The extent of his achievement, and the unpretentious simplicity with which he, Feuerbach, givesit to the world, stand in striking contrast to the opposite attitude (of the others).Feuerbach’s great achievement is:(1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded bythought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man;hence equally to be condemned;(2) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the social relationshipof “man to man” the basic principle of the theory;(3) His opposing to the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, theself-supporting positive, positively based on itself.Feuerbach explains the Hegelian dialectic (and thereby justifies starting out from the positivefacts which we know by the senses) as follows:Hegel sets out from the estrangement of substance (in logic, from the infinite, abstractlyuniversal) – from the absolute and fixed abstraction; which means, put popularly, that he sets outfrom religion and theology.Secondly, he annuls the infinite, and posits the actual, sensuous, real, finite, particular(philosophy, annulment of religion and theology).Thirdly, he again annuls the positive and restores the abstraction, the infinite – restoration ofreligion and theology.Feuerbach thus conceives the negation of the negation only as a contradiction of philosophy withitself – as the philosophy which affirms theology (the transcendent, etc.) after having denied it,and which it therefore affirms in opposition to itself.The positive position or self-affirmation and self-confirmation contained in the negation of thenegation is taken to be a position which is not yet sure of itself, which is therefore burdened withits opposite, which is doubtful of itself and therefore in need of proof, and which, therefore, is nota position demonstrating itself by its existence – not an acknowledged ||XIII| position; hence it isdirectly and immediately confronted by the position of sense-certainty based on itself. [Feuerbachalso defines the negation of the negation, the definite concept, as thinking surpassing itself inthinking and as thinking wanting to be directly awareness, nature, reality. – Note by Marx46]But because Hegel has conceived the negation of the negation, from the point of view of thepositive relation inherent in it, as the true and only positive, and from the point of view of thenegative relation inherent in it as the only true act and spontaneous activity of all being, he hasonly found the abstract, logical, speculative expression for the movement of history, which is notyet the real history of man as a given subject, but only the act of creation, the history of the originof man.We shall explain both the abstract form of this process and the difference between this process asit is in Hegel in contrast to modern criticism, in contrast to the same process in Feuerbach’sWesen des Christenthums, or rather the critical form of this in Hegel still uncritical process.Let us take a look at the Hegelian system. One must begin with Hegel’s Phänomenologie, the truepoint of origin and the secret of the Hegelian philosophy. 65Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s PhilosophyPhenomenology.A. Self-consciousness.I. Consciousness. (α) Certainty at the level of sense-experience; or the “this” andmeaning. (ß) Perception, or the thing with its properties, and deception. (γ) Forceand understanding, appearance and the supersensible world.II. Self-consciousness. The truth of certainty of self. (a) Independence anddependence of self-consciousness; mastery and servitude. (b) Freedom of self-consciousness. Stoicism, skepticism, the unhappy consciousness.III. Reason. Reason’s certainty and reason’s truth. (a) Observation as a process ofreason. Observation of nature and of self-consciousness. (b) Realization ofrational self-consciousness through its own activity. Pleasure and necessity. Thelaw of the heart and the insanity of self-conceit. Virtue and the course of theworld. (c) The individuality which is real in and for itself. The spiritual animalkingdom and the deception or the real fact. Reason as lawgiver. Reason whichtests laws.B. Mind.I. True mind, ethics. II. Mind in self-estrangement, culture. III. Mind certain ofitself, morality.C. Religion. Natural religion; religion of art; revealed religion.D. Absolute knowledge.Hegel’s Encyklopädie, beginning as it does with logic, with pure speculative thought, and endingwith absolute knowledge – with the self-conscious, self-comprehending philosophic or absolute(i.e., superhuman) abstract mind – is in its entirety nothing but the display, the self-objectification, of the essence of the philosophic mind, and the philosophic mind is nothing butthe estranged mind of the world thinking within its self-estrangement – i.e., comprehending itselfabstractly.Logic – mind’s coin of the realm, the speculative or mental value of man and nature – its essencewhich has grown totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal – is alienatedthinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man: abstractthinking.Then: The externality of this abstract thinking ... nature, as it is for this abstract thinking. Natureis external to it – its self-loss; and it apprehends nature also in an external fashion, as abstractthought, but as alienated abstract thinking. Finally, mind, this thinking returning home to its ownpoint of origin – the thinking which as the anthropological, phenomenological, psychological,ethical, artistic and religious mind is not valid for itself, until ultimately it finds itself, and affirmsitself, as absolute knowledge and hence absolute, i.e., abstract, mind, thus receiving its consciousembodiment in the mode of existence corresponding to it. For its real mode of existence isabstraction.There is a double error in Hegel.The first emerges most clearly in the Phänomenologie, the birth-place of the Hegelianphilosophy. When, for instance, wealth, state-power, etc., are understood by Hegel as entitiesestranged from the human being, this only happens in their form as thoughts ... They are thought-entities, and therefore merely an estrangement of pure, i.e., abstract, philosophical thinking. Thewhole process therefore ends with absolute knowledge. It is precisely abstract thought fromwhich these objects are estranged and which they confront with their presumption of reality. Thephilosopher – who is himself an abstract form of estranged man – takes himself as the criterion ofthe estranged world. The whole history of the alienation process [Entäußerungsgeschichte] andthe whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the 66Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophyproduction of abstract (i.e., absolute) ||XVII| 47 thought – of logical, speculative thought. Theestrangement, [Entfremdung] which therefore forms the real interest of the transcendence[Aufhebung] of this alienation [Entäußerung], is the opposition of in itself and for itself, ofconsciousness and self-consciousness, of object and subject – that is to say, it is the oppositionbetween abstract thinking and sensuous reality or real sensuousness within thought itself. Allother oppositions and movements of these oppositions are but the semblance, the cloak, theexoteric shape of these oppositions which alone matter, and which constitute the meaning of theseother, profane oppositions. It is not the fact that the human being objectifies himself inhumanly, inopposition to himself, but the fact that he objectifies himself [selbst sich vergegenständlicht] indistinction from and in opposition to abstract thinking, that constitutes the posited essence of theestrangement [Entfremdung] and the thing to be superseded [aufzuhebende].||XVIII| The appropriation of man’s essential powers, which have become objects – indeed, alienobjects – is thus in the first place only an appropriation occurring in consciousness, in purethought, i.e., in abstraction: it is the appropriation of these objects as thoughts and as movementsof thought. Consequently, despite its thoroughly negative and critical appearance and despite thegenuine criticism contained in it, which often anticipates far later development, there is alreadylatent in the Phänomenologie as a germ, a potentiality, a secret, the uncritical positivism and theequally uncritical idealism of Hegel’s later works – that philosophic dissolution and restoration ofthe existing empirical world.In the second place: the vindication of the objective world for man – for example, the realizationthat sensuous consciousness is not an abstractly sensuous consciousness but a humanly sensuousconsciousness, that religion, wealth, etc., are but the estranged world of human objectification, ofman’s essential powers put to work and that they are therefore but the path to the true humanworld – this appropriation or the insight into this process appears in Hegel therefore in this form,that sense, religion, state power, etc., are spiritual entities; for only mind is the true essence ofman, and the true form of mind is thinking mind, theological, speculative mind.The human character of nature and of the nature created by history – man’s products – appears inthe form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind – thought-entities. The Phänomenologie is, therefore, a hidden, mystifying and still uncertain criticism; butinasmuch as it depicts man’s estrangement, even though man appears only as mind, there lieconcealed in it all the elements of criticism, already prepared and elaborated in a manner oftenrising far above the Hegelian standpoint. The “unhappy consciousness”, the “honestconsciousness”, the struggle of the “noble and base consciousness”, etc., etc. – these separatesections contain, but still in an estranged form, the critical elements of whole spheres such asreligion, the state, civil life, etc. Just as entities, objects, appear as thought-entities, so the subjectis always consciousness or self-consciousness; or rather the object appears only as abstractconsciousness, man only as self-consciousness: the distinct forms of estrangement which maketheir appearance are, therefore, only various forms of consciousness and self-consciousness. Justas in itself abstract consciousness (the form in which the object is conceived) is merely a momentof distinction of self-consciousness, what appears as the result of the movement is the identity ofself-consciousness with consciousness – absolute knowledge – the movement of abstract thoughtno longer directed outwards but proceeding now only within its own self: that is to say, thedialectic of pure thought is the result. |XVIII||||XXIII| 48 The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and of its final outcome, thedialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceivesthe self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienationand as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labor and comprehendsobjective man – true, because real man – as the outcome of man’s own labor. The real, activeorientation of man to himself as a species-being, or his manifestation as a real species-being (i.e., 67Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophyas a human being), is only possible if he really brings out all his species-powers – somethingwhich in turn is only possible through the cooperative action of all of mankind, only as the resultof history – and treats these powers as objects: and this, to begin with, is again only possible inthe form of estrangement.We shall now demonstrate in detail Hegel’s one-sidedness – and limitations as they are displayedin the final chapter of the Phänomenologie, “Absolute Knowledge” – a chapter which containsthe condensed spirit of the Phänomenologie, the relationship of the Phänomenologie tospeculative dialectic, and also Hegel’s consciousness concerning both and their relationship toone another.Let us provisionally say just this much in advance: Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern politicaleconomy.49 He grasps labor as the essence of man – as man’s essence which stands the test: hesees only the positive, not the negative side of labor. Labor is man’s coming-to-be for himselfwithin alienation, or as alienated man. The only labor which Hegel knows and recognizes isabstractly mental labor. Therefore, that which constitutes the essence of philosophy – thealienation of man who knows himself, or alienated science thinking itself - Hegel grasps as itsessence; and in contradistinction to previous philosophy he is therefore able to combine itsseparate aspects, and to present his philosophy as the philosophy. What the other philosophers did– that they grasped separate phases of nature and of human life as phases of self-consciousness,namely, of abstract self-consciousness – is known to Hegel as the doings of philosophy. Hence hisscience is absolute.Let us now turn to our subject.“Absolute Knowledge”. The last chapter of the “Phänomenologie”.The main point is that the object of consciousness is nothing else but self-consciousness, or thatthe object is only objectified self-consciousness – self-consciousness as object. (Positing of man =self-consciousness).The issue, therefore, is to surmount the object of consciousness. Objectivity as such is regarded asan estranged human relationship which does not correspond to the essence of man, to self-consciousness. The reappropriation of the objective essence of man, produced within the orbit ofestrangement as something alien, therefore denotes not only the annulment of estrangement, butof objectivity as well. Man, that is to say, is regarded as a non-objective, spiritual being.The movement of surmounting the object of consciousness is now described by Hegel in thefollowing way:The object reveals itself not merely as returning into the self – this is according to Hegel the one-sided way of apprehending this movement, the grasping of only one side. Man is equated withself. The self, however, is only the abstractly conceived man – man created by abstraction. Manis selfish. His eye, his ear, etc., are selfish. In him every one of his essential powers has thequality of selfhood. But it is quite false to say on that account “self-consciousness has eyes, ears,essential powers”. Self-consciousness is rather a quality of human nature, of the human eye, etc.;it is not human nature that is a quality of ||XXIV| self-consciousness.The self-abstracted entity, fixed for itself, is man as abstract egoist – egoism raised in its pureabstraction to the level of thought. (We shall return to this point later.)For Hegel the human being – man – equals self-consciousness. All estrangement of the humanbeing is therefore nothing but estrangement of self-consciousness. The estrangement of self-consciousness is not regarded as an expression – reflected in the realm of knowledge and thought– of the real estrangement of the human being. Instead, the actual estrangement – that whichappears real – is according to its innermost, hidden nature (which is only brought to light byphilosophy) nothing but the manifestation of the estrangement of the real human essence, of self-consciousness. The science which comprehends this is therefore called phenomenology. All 68Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophyreappropriation of the estranged objective essence appears therefore, as incorporation into self-consciousness: The man who takes hold of his essential being is merely the self-consciousnesswhich takes hold of objective essences. Return of the object into the self is therefore thereappropriation of the object.Expressed in all its aspects, the surmounting of the object of consciousness means:(1) That the object as such presents itself to consciousness as something vanishing.(2) That it is the alienation of self-consciousness which posits thinghood.50(3) That this alienation has, not merely a negative but a positive significance(4) That it has this meaning not merely for us or intrinsically, but for self-consciousness itself.(5) For self-consciousness, the negative of the object, or its annulling of itself, has positivesignificance – or it knows this futility of the object – because of the fact that it alienates itself, forin this alienation it posits itself as object, or, for the sake of the indivisible unity of being-for-itself, posits the object as itself.(6) On the other hand, this contains likewise the other moment, that self-consciousness has alsojust as much superseded this alienation and objectivity and resumed them into itself, being thus athome in its other-being as such.(7) This is the movement of consciousness and this is therefore the totality of its moments.(8) Consciousness must similarly be related to the object in the totality of its determinations andhave comprehended it in terms of each of them. This totality of its determinations makes theobject intrinsically a spiritual being; and it becomes so in truth for consciousness through theapprehending of each one of the determinations as self, or through what was called above thespiritual attitude to them.51As to (1): That the object as such presents itself to consciousness as something vanishing – this isthe above-mentioned return of the object into the self.As to (2): The alienation of self-consciousness posits thinghood. Because man equals self-consciousness, his alienated, objective essence, or thinghood, equals alienated self-consciousness,and thinghood is thus posited through this alienation (thinghood being that which is an object forman and an object for him is really only that which is to him an essential object, therefore hisobjective essence. And since it is not real man, nor therefore nature – man being human nature –who as such is made the subject, but only the abstraction of man – self-consciousness, sothinghood cannot be anything but alienated self-consciousness). It is only to be expected that aliving, natural being equipped and endowed with objective (i.e., material) essential powers shouldhave real natural objects of his essence; and that his self-alienation should lead to the positing ofa real, objective world, but within the framework of externality, and, therefore, an overwhelmingworld not belonging to his own essential being. There is nothing incomprehensible or mysteriousin this. It would be mysterious, rather, if it were otherwise. But it is equally clear that a self-consciousness by its alienation can posit only thinghood, i.e., only an abstract thing, a thing ofabstraction and not a real thing.52 It is ||XXVI| clear, further, that thinghood is therefore utterlywithout any independence, any essentiality vis-à-vis self-consciousness; that on the contrary it isa mere creature – something posited by self-consciousness. And what is posited, instead ofconfirming itself, is but confirmation of the act of positing which for a moment fixes its energy asthe product, and gives it the semblance – but only for a moment – of an independent, realsubstance.Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling andinhaling all the forces of nature, posits his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by hisexternalisation, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is thesubjectivity of objective essential powers, whose action, therefore, must also be somethingobjective. An objective being acts objectively, and he would not act objectively if the objective 69Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophydid not reside in the very nature of his being. He only creates or posits objects, because he isposited by objects – because at bottom he is nature. In the act of positing, therefore, this objectivebeing does not fall from his state of “pure activity” into a creating of the object; on the contrary,his objective product only confirms his objective activity, his activity as the activity of anobjective, natural being.Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism andmaterialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how onlynaturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.Hunger is a natural need; it therefore needs a nature outside itself, an object outside itself, inorder to satisfy itself, to be stilled. Hunger is an acknowledged need of my body for an objectexisting outside it, indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential being. Thesun is the object of the plant – an indispensable object to it, confirming its life – just as the plantis an object of the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun’sobjective essential power.A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part inthe system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A beingwhich is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., it is notobjectively related. Its being is not objective.||XXVII| A non-objective being is a non-being.Suppose a being which is neither an object itself, nor has an object. Such a being, in the firstplace, would be the unique being: there would exist no being outside it – it would exist solitaryand alone. For as soon as there are objects outside me, as soon as I am not alone, I am another –another reality than the object outside me. For this third object I am thus a different reality thanitself; that is, I am its object. Thus, to suppose a being which is not the object of another being isto presuppose that no objective being exists. As soon as I have an object, this object has me for anobject. But a non-objective being is an unreal, non-sensuous thing – a product of mere thought(i.e., of mere imagination) – an abstraction. To be sensuous, that is, to be really existing, means tobe an object of sense, to be a sensuous object, to have sensuous objects outside oneself – objectsof one’s sensuousness. To be sensuous is to suffer.Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being – and because he feels that hesuffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object. And as everything naturalhas to come into being, man too has his act of origin – history – which, however, is for him a 70Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophyknown history, and hence as an act of origin it is a conscious self-transcending act of origin.History is the true natural history of man (on which more later).Thirdly, because this positing of thinghood is itself only an illusion, an act contradicting thenature of pure activity, it has to be canceled again and thinghood denied.Re 3, 4, 5 and 6. (3) This externalization [Entäußerung] of consciousness has not merely anegative but a positive significance, and (4) it has this meaning not merely for us or intrinsically,but for consciousness itself. For consciousness the negative of the object, its annulling of itself,has positive significance – i.e., consciousness knows this nullity of the object – because italienates itself; for, in this alienation it knows itself as object, or, for the sake of the indivisibleunity of being-for-itself, the object as itself. (6) On the other hand, there is also this other momentin the process, that consciousness has also just as much superseded this alienation and objectivityand resumed them into itself, being thus at home in its other-being as such.As we have already seen, the appropriation of what is estranged and objective, or the annullingof objectivity in the form of estrangement (which has to advance from indifferent strangeness toreal, antagonistic estrangement), means likewise or even primarily for Hegel that it is objectivitywhich is to be annulled, because it is not the determinate character of the object, but rather itsobjective character that is offensive and constitutes estrangement for self-consciousness. Theobject is therefore something negative, self-annulling – a nullity. This nullity of the object has notonly a negative but a positive meaning for consciousness, since this nullity of the object isprecisely the self-confirmation of the non-objectivity, of the ||XXVIII| abstraction of itself. Forconsciousness itself the nullity of the object has a positive meaning because it knows this nullity,the objective being, as its self-alienation; because it knows that it exists only as a result of its ownself-alienation....The way in which consciousness is, and in which something is for it, is knowing. Knowing is itssole act. Something therefore comes to be for consciousness insofar as the latter knows thissomething. Knowing is its sole objective relation.It, consciousness, then, knows the nullity of the object (i.e., knows the non-existence of thedistinction between the object and itself, the non-existence of the object for it) because it knowsthe object as its self-alienation; that is, it knows itself – knows knowing as object – because theobject is only the semblance of an object, a piece of mystification, which in its essence, however,is nothing else but knowing itself, which has confronted itself with itself and hence hasconfronted itself with a nullity – a something which has no objectivity outside the knowing. Or:knowing knows that in relating itself to an object it is only outside itself – that it only externalizesitself; that it itself only appears to itself as an object – or that that which appears to it as an objectis only itself.On the other hand, says Hegel, there is here at the same time this other moment, thatconsciousness has just as much annulled and reabsorbed this externalisation and objectivity,being thus at home in its other-being as such.In this discussion all the illusions of speculation are brought together.First of all: consciousness, self-consciousness, is at home in its other-being as such. It is therefore– or if we here abstract from the Hegelian abstraction and put the self-consciousness of maninstead of self-consciousness – it is at home in its other being as such. This implies, for one thing,that consciousness (knowing as knowing, thinking as thinking) pretends to be directly the other ofitself – to be the world of sense, the real world, life – thought surpassing itself in thought(Feuerbach).53 This aspect is contained herein, inasmuch as consciousness as mere consciousnesstakes offence not at estranged objectivity, but at objectivity as such.Secondly, this implies that self-conscious man, insofar as he has recognized and superseded thespiritual world (or his world’s spiritual, general mode of being) as self-alienation, neverthelessagain confirms it in this alienated shape and passes it off as his true mode of being – re- 71Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophyestablishes it, and pretends to be at home in his other-being as such. Thus, for instance, aftersuperseding religion, after recognizing religion to be a product of self-alienation he yet findsconfirmation of himself in religion as religion. Here is the root of Hegel’s false positivism, or ofhis merely apparent criticism: this is what Feuerbach designated as the positing, negating and re-establishing of religion or theology – but it has to be expressed in more general terms. Thusreason is at home in unreason as unreason. The man who has recognized that he is leading analienated life in law, politics, etc., is leading his true human life in this alienated life as such. Self-affirmation, self-confirmation in contradiction with itself – in contradiction both with theknowledge of and with the essential being of the object – is thus true knowledge and life.There can therefore no longer be any question about an act of accommodation on Hegel’s partvis-à-vis religion, the state, etc., since this lie is the lie of his principle.||XXIX| If I know religion as alienated human self-consciousness, then what I know in it asreligion is not my self-consciousness, but my alienated self-consciousness confirmed in it. Itherefore know my self-consciousness that belongs to itself, to its very nature, confirmed not inreligion but rather in annihilated and superseded religion.In Hegel, therefore, the negation of the negation is not the confirmation of the true essence,effected precisely through negation of the pseudo-essence. With him the negation of the negationis the confirmation of the pseudo-essence, or of the self-estranged essence in its denial; or it is thedenial of this pseudo-essence as an objective being dwelling outside man and independent of him,and its transformation into the subject.A peculiar role, therefore, is played by the act of superseding in which denial and preservation,i.e., affirmation, are bound together.Thus, for example, in Hegel’s philosophy of law, civil law superseded equals morality, moralitysuperseded equals the family, the family superseded equals civil society, civil society supersededequals the state, the state superseded equals world history. In the actual world civil law, morality,the family, civil society, the state, etc., remain in existence, only they have become moments –states of the existence and being of man – which have no validity in isolation, but dissolve andengender one another, etc. They have become moments of motion.In their actual existence this mobile nature of theirs is hidden. It appears and is made manifestonly in thought, in philosophy. Hence my true religious existence is my existence in thephilosophy of religion; my true political existence is my existence in the philosophy of law; mytrue natural existence, existence in the philosophy of nature; my true artistic existence, existencein the philosophy of art; my true human existence, my existence in philosophy. Likewise the trueexistence of religion, the state, nature, art, is the philosophy of religion, of nature, of the state andof art. If, however, the philosophy of religion, etc., is for me the sole true existence of religionthen, too, it is only as a philosopher of religion that I am truly religious, and so I deny realreligious sentiment and the really religious man. But at the same time I assert them, in part withinmy own existence or within the alien existence which I oppose to them – for this is only theirphilosophic expression – and in part I assert them in their distinct original shape, since for methey represent merely the apparent other-being, allegories, forms of their own true existence (i.e.,of my philosophical existence) hidden under sensuous disguises.In just the same way, quality superseded equals quantity, quantity superseded equals measure,measure superseded equals essence, essence superseded equals appearance, appearancesuperseded equals actuality, actuality superseded equals the concept, the concept supersededequals objectivity, objectivity superseded equals the absolute idea, the absolute idea supersededequals nature, nature superseded equals subjective mind, subjective mind superseded equalsethical objective mind, ethical mind superseded equals art, art superseded equals religion,religion superseded equals absolute knowledge.54 72Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s PhilosophyOn the one hand, this act of superseding is a transcending of a conceptual entity; thus, privateproperty as a concept is transcended in the concept of morality. And because thought imaginesitself to be directly the other of itself, to be sensuous reality – and therefore takes its own actionfor sensuous, real action – this superseding in thought, which leaves its object in existence in thereal world, believes that it has really overcome it. On the other hand, because the object has nowbecome for it a moment of thought, thought takes it in its reality too to be self-confirmation ofitself – of self-consciousness, of abstraction.||XXX| From the one point of view the entity which Hegel supersedes in philosophy is thereforenot real religion, the real state, or real nature, but religion itself already as an object ofknowledge, i.e., dogmatics; the same with jurisprudence, political science and natural science.From the one point of view, therefore, he stands in opposition both to the real thing and toimmediate, unphilosophic science or the unphilosophic conceptions of this thing. He thereforecontradicts their conventional conceptions. [The conventional conception of theology,jurisprudence, political science, natural science, etc. – Ed.]On the other hand, the religious, etc., man can find in Hegel his final confirmation.It is now time to formulate the positive aspects of the Hegelian dialectic within the realm ofestrangement.(a) Supersession as an objective movement of retracting the alienation into self. This is theinsight, expressed within the estrangement, concerning the appropriation of the objective essencethrough the supersession of its estrangement; it is the estranged insight into the realobjectification of man, into the real appropriation of his objective essence through theannihilation of the estranged character of the objective world, through the supersession of theobjective world in its estranged mode of being. In the same way atheism, being the supersessionof God, is the advent of theoretic humanism, and communism, as the supersession of privateproperty, is the vindication of real human life as man’s possession and thus the advent of practicalhumanism, or atheism is humanism mediated with itself through the supersession of religion,whilst communism is humanism mediated with itself through the supersession of privateproperty. Only through the supersession of this mediation – which is itself, however, a necessarypremise – does positively self-deriving humanism, positive humanism, come into being.But atheism and communism are no flight, no abstraction, no loss of the objective world createdby man – of man’s essential powers born to the realm of objectivity; they are not a returning inpoverty to unnatural, primitive simplicity. On the contrary, they are but the first real emergence,the actual realization for man of man’s essence and of his essence as something real.Thus, by grasping the positive meaning of self-referred negation (although again in estrangedfashion) Hegel grasps man’s self-estrangement, the alienation of man’s essence, man’s loss ofobjectivity and his loss of realness as self-discovery, manifestation of his nature, objectificationand realization. (b) However, apart from, or rather in consequence of, the referral already described, this actappears in Hegel:First as a merely formal, because abstract, act, because the human being itself is taken to be onlyan abstract, thinking being, conceived merely as self-consciousness. And,Secondly, because the exposition is formal and abstract, the supersession of the alienationbecomes a confirmation of the alienation; or, for Hegel this movement of self-genesis and self-objectification in the form of self-alienation and self-estrangement is the absolute, and hencefinal, expression of human life – of life with itself as its aim, of life at peace with itself, and inunity with its essence. 73Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s PhilosophyThis movement, in its abstract ||XXXI| form as dialectic, is therefore regarded as truly human life,and because it is nevertheless an abstraction – an estrangement of human life – it is regarded as adivine process, but as the divine process of man, a process traversed by man’s abstract, pure,absolute essence that is distinct from himself.Thirdly, this process must have a bearer, a subject. But the subject only comes into being as aresult. This result – the subject knowing itself as absolute self-consciousness – is therefore God,absolute Spirit, the self-knowing and self-manifesting idea. Real man and real nature becomemere predicates – symbols of this hidden, unreal man and of this unreal nature. Subject andpredicate are therefore related to each other in absolute reversal – a mystical subject-object or asubjectivity reaching beyond the object – the absolute subject as a process, as subject alienatingitself and returning from alienation into itself, but at the same time retracting this alienation intoitself, and the subject as this process; a pure, incessant revolving within itself.First. Formal and abstract conception of man’s act of self-creation or self-objectification.Hegel having posited man as equivalent to self-consciousness, the estranged object – theestranged essential reality of man – is nothing but consciousness, the thought of estrangementmerely – estrangement’s abstract and therefore empty and unreal expression, negation. Thesupersession of the alienation is therefore likewise nothing but an abstract, empty supersession ofthat empty abstraction – the negation of the negation. The rich, living, sensuous, concrete activityof self-objectification is therefore reduced to its mere abstraction, absolute negativity – anabstraction which is again fixed as such and considered as an independent activity – as sheeractivity. Because this so-called negativity is nothing but the abstract, empty form of that realliving act, its content can in consequence be merely a formal content produced by abstractionfrom all content. As a result therefore one gets general, abstract forms of abstraction pertaining toevery content and on that account indifferent to, and, consequently, valid for, all content – thethought-forms or logical categories torn from real mind and from real nature. (We shall unfoldthe logical content of absolute negativity further on.)Hegel’s positive achievement here, in his speculative logic, is that the definite concepts, theuniversal fixed thought-forms in their independence vis-à-vis nature and mind are a necessaryresult of the general estrangement of the human being and therefore also of a human thought, andthat Hegel has therefore brought these together and presented them as moments of theabstraction-process. For example, superseded being is essence, superseded essence is concept, theconcept superseded is ... absolute idea. But what, then, is the absolute idea? It supersedes its ownself again, if it does not want to traverse once more from the beginning the whole act ofabstraction, and to satisfy itself with being a totality of abstractions or the self-comprehendingabstraction. But abstraction comprehending itself as abstraction knows itself to be nothing: itmust abandon itself – abandon abstraction – and so it arrives at an entity which is its exactopposite – at nature. Thus, the entire logic is the demonstration that abstract thought is nothing initself; that the absolute idea is nothing for itself; that only nature is something.||XXXII| The absolute idea, the abstract idea, which“considered with regard to its unity with itself is intuiting (Logic § 244), andwhich (loc. cit.) “in its own absolute truth resolves to let the moment of itsparticularity or of initial characterization and other-being, the immediate idea, asits reflection, go forth freely from itself as nature” (loc. cit.),this whole idea which behaves in such a strange and bizarre way, and which has given theHegelians such terrible headaches, is from beginning to end nothing else but abstraction (i.e., theabstract thinker), which, made wise by experience and enlightened concerning its truth, resolvesunder various (false and themselves still abstract) conditions to abandon itself and to replace itsself-absorption, nothingness, generality and indeterminateness by its other-being, the particular,and the determinate; resolves to let nature, which it held hidden in itself only as an abstraction, as 74Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophya thought-entity, go forth freely from itself; that is to say, this idea resolves to forsake abstractionand to have a look at nature free of abstraction. The abstract idea, which without mediationbecomes intuiting, is indeed nothing else but abstract thinking that gives itself up and resolves onintuition. This entire transition from logic to natural philosophy is nothing else but the transition –so difficult to effect for the abstract thinker, who therefore describes it in such an adventurousway – from abstracting to intuiting. The mystical feeling which drives the philosopher forwardfrom abstract thinking to intuiting is boredom – the longing for content.(The man estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his essence – that is, from thenatural and human essence. His thoughts are therefore fixed mental forms dwelling outside natureand man. Hegel has locked up all these fixed mental forms together in his logic, interpreting eachof them first as negation – that is, as an alienation of human thought – and then as negation of thenegation – that is, as a superseding of this alienation, as a real expression of human thought. Butas this still takes place within the confines of the estrangement, this negation of the negation is inpart the restoring of these fixed forms in their estrangement; in part a stopping at the last act – theact of self-reference in alienation – as the true mode of being of these fixed mental forms; * –[* (This means that what Hegel does is to put in place of these fixed abstractionsthe act of abstraction which revolves in its own circle. We must therefore give himthe credit for having indicated the source of all these inappropriate concepts whichoriginally appertained to particular philosophers; for having brought themtogether; and for having created the entire compass of abstraction as the object ofcriticism, instead of some specific abstraction.) (Why Hegel separates thoughtfrom the subject we shall see later; at this stage it is already clear, however, thatwhen man is not, his characteristic expression cannot be human either, and soneither could thought be grasped as an expression of man as a human and naturalsubject endowed with eyes, ears, etc., and living in society, in the world, and innature.) – Note by Marx]– and in part, to the extent that this abstraction apprehends itself and experiences an infiniteweariness with itself, there makes its appearance in Hegel, in the form of the resolution torecognize nature as the essential being and to go over to intuition, the abandonment of abstractthought – the abandonment of thought revolving solely within the orbit of thought, of thoughtsans eyes, sans teeth, sans ears, sans everything.)||XXXIII| But nature too, taken abstractly, for itself – nature fixed in isolation from man – isnothing for man. It goes without saying that the abstract thinker who has committed himself tointuiting, intuits nature abstractly. Just as nature lay enclosed in the thinker in the form of theabsolute idea, in the form of a thought-entity – in a shape which was obscure and enigmatic evento him – so by letting it emerge from himself he has really let emerge only this abstract nature,only nature as a thought-entity – but now with the significance that it is the other-being ofthought, that it is real, intuited nature – nature distinguished from abstract thought. Or, to talk inhuman language, the abstract thinker learns in his intuition of nature that the entities which hethought to create from nothing, from pure abstraction – the entities he believed he was producingin the divine dialectic as pure products of the labor of thought, for ever shuttling back and forth initself and never looking outward into reality – are nothing else but abstractions fromcharacteristics of nature. To him, therefore, the whole of nature merely repeats the logicalabstractions in a sensuous, external form. He once more resolves nature into these abstractions.Thus, his intuition of nature is only the act of confirming his abstraction from the intuition ofnature [Let us consider for a moment Hegel’s characteristics of nature and the transition fromnature to the mind. Nature has resulted as the idea in the form of the other-being. Since the id .. ]– is only the conscious repetition by him of the process of creating his abstraction. Thus, forexample, time equals negativity referred to itself (Hegel, Encyclopädie der philosophischenWissenschaften im Grundrisse, p. 238). To the superseded becoming as being there corresponds, 75Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophyin natural form, superseded movement as matter. Light is reflection-in-itself, the natural form.Body as moon and comet is the natural form of the antithesis which according to logic is on theone side the positive resting on itself and on the other side the negative resting on itself. The earthis the natural form of the logical ground, as the negative unity of the antithesis, etc.Nature as nature – that is to say, insofar as it is still sensuously distinguished from that secretsense hidden within it – nature isolated, distinguished from these abstractions is nothing – anothing proving itself to be nothing – is devoid of sense, or has only the sense of being anexternality which has to be annulled.“In the finite-teleological position is to be found the correct premise that naturedoes not contain within itself the absolute purpose.” [§ 245.]Its purpose is the confirmation of abstraction.“Nature has shown itself to be the idea in the form of other-being. Since the ideais in this form the negative of itself or external to itself, nature is not just relativelyexternal vis-à-vis this idea, but externality constitutes the form in which it exists asnature.” [§ 247.]Externality here is not to be understood as the world of sense which manifests itself and isaccessible to the light, to the man endowed with senses. It is to be taken here in the sense ofalienation, of a mistake, a defect, which ought not to be. For what is true is still the idea. Nature isonly the form of the idea’s other-being. And since abstract thought is the essence, that which isexternal to it is by its essence something merely external. The abstract thinker recognizes at thesame time that sensuousness – externality in contrast to thought shuttling back and forth withinitself – is the essence of nature. But he expresses this contrast in such a way as to make thisexternality of nature, its contrast to thought, its defect, so that inasmuch as it is distinguishedfrom abstraction, nature is something defective.||XXXIV| An entity which is defective not merely for me or in my eyes but in itself – intrinsically– has something outside itself which it lacks. That is, its essence is different from it itself. Naturehas therefore to supersede itself for the abstract thinker, for it is already posited by him as apotentially superseded being.“For us, mind has nature for its premise, being nature’s truth and for that reasonits absolute prius. In this truth nature has vanished, and mind has resulted as theidea arrived at being-for-itself, the object of which, as well as the subject, is theconcept. This identity is absolute negativity, for whereas in nature the concept hasits perfect external objectivity, this its alienation has been superseded, and in thisalienation the concept has become identical with itself. But it is this identitytherefore, only in being a return out of nature.” [§ 381.]“As the abstract idea, revelation is unmediated transition to, the coming-to-be of,nature; as the revelation of the mind, which is free, it is the positing of nature asthe mind’s world – a positing which, being reflection, is at the same time, apresupposing of the world as independently existing nature. Revelation inconception is the creation of nature as the mind’s being, in which the mindprocures the affirmation and the truth of its freedom.” “The absolute is mind. Thisis the highest definition of the absolute.” [§ 384.] |XXXIV|| Notes1. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is the first work in which Marx tried tosystematically elaborate problems of political economy from the standpoint of his maturingdialectical-materialist and communist views and also to synthesize the results of his critical review ofprevailing philosophic and economic theories. Apparently, Marx began to write it in order to clarifythe problems for himself. But in the process of working on it he conceived the idea of publishing awork analysing the economic system of bourgeois society in his time and its ideological trends.Towards the end of his stay in Paris, on February 1, 1845, Marx signed a contract with Carl Leske, aDarmstadt publisher, concerning the publication of his work entitled A Critique of Politics and ofPolitical Economy. It was to be based on his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 andperhaps also on his earlier manuscript Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Thisplan did not materialize in the 1840s because Marx was busy writing other works and, to some extent,because the contract with the publisher was cancelled in September 1846, the latter being afraid tohave transactions with such a revolutionary-minded author. However, in the early 1850s Marxreturned to the idea of writing a book on economics. Thus, the manuscripts of 1844 are connected withthe conception of a plan which led many years later to the writing of Capital.The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts is an unfinished work and in part a rough draft. Aconsiderable part of the text has not been preserved. What remains comprises three manuscripts, eachof which has its own pagination (in Roman figures). The first manuscript contains 27 pages, of whichpages I-XII and XVII-XXVII are divided by two vertical lines into three columns supplied withheadings written in beforehand: “Wages of Labor,” “Profit of Capital” (this section has alsosubheadings supplied by the author) and “Rent of Land.” It is difficult to tell the order in which Marxfilled these columns. All the three columns on p. VII contain the text relating to the section “Wages ofLabor.” Pages XIII to XVI are divided into two columns and contain texts of the sections “Wages ofLabor” (pp. XIII-XV), “Profit of Capital” (pp. XIII-XVI) and “Rent of Land” (p. XVI). On pagesXVII to XXI, only the column headed “Rent of Land” is filled in. From page XXII to page XXVII, onwhich the first manuscript breaks off, Marx wrote across the three columns disregarding the headings.The text of these pages is published as a separate section entitled by the editors according to itscontent “Estranged Labor.”Of the second manuscript only the last four pages have survived (pp. XL-XLIII).The third manuscript contains 41 pages (not counting blank ones) divided into two columns andnumbered by Marx himself from I to XLIII (in doing so he omitted two numbers, XXII and XXV).Like the extant part of the second manuscript, the third manuscript has no author’s headings; the texthas been arranged and supplied with the headings by the editors.Sometimes Marx departed from the subject matter and interrupted his elucidation of one question toanalyze another. Pages XXXIX-XL contain the Preface to the whole work which is given before thetext of the first manuscript. The text of the section dealing with the critical analysis of Hegel’sdialectic, to which Marx referred in the Preface as the concluding chapter and which was scattered onvarious pages, is arranged in one section and put at the end in accordance with Marx’s indications.In order to give the reader a better visual idea of the structure of the work, the text reproduces invertical lines the Roman numbers of the sheets of the manuscripts, and the Arabic numbers of thecolumns in the first manuscript. The notes indicate where the text has been rearranged. Passagescrossed out by Marx with a vertical line are enclosed in pointed brackets; separate words or phrasescrossed out by the author are given in footnotes only when they supplement the text. The general titleand the headings of the various parts of the manuscripts enclosed in square brackets are supplied bythe editors on the basis of the author’s formulations. In some places the text has been broken up intoparagraphs by the editors. Quotations from the French sources cited by Marx in French or in his own 77Notestranslation into German, are given in English in both cases and the French texts as quoted by Marx aregiven in the footnotes. Here and elsewhere Marx’s rendering of the quotations or free translation isgiven in small type but without quotation marks. Emphasis in quotations, belonging, as a rule, toMarx, as well as that of the quoted authors, is indicated everywhere by italics.The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 was first published by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow in the language of the original: Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Bd. 3,1932.In English this work was first published in 1959 by the Foreign Languages Publishing House (nowProgress Publishers), Moscow, translated by Martin Milligan.2. This refers to Bruno Bauer’s reviews of books, articles and pamphlets on the Jewish question,including Marx’s article on the subject in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, which werepublished in the monthly Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (issue No. 1, December 1843, and issue No.IV, March 1844) under the title “Von den neuesten Schriften über die Judenfrage.” Most of theexpressions quoted are taken from these reviews. The expressions “utopian phrase” and “compactmass” can he found in Bruno Bauer’s unsigned article, “Was ist jetzt der Gegenstand der Kritik?”published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, issue No. VIII, July 1844. A detailed critical appraisalof this monthly was later on given by Marx and Engels in the book Die heilige Familie, oder Kritikder kritischen Kritik (see this edition, Vol. 4, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism).3. Marx apparently refers to Weitling’s works: Die Menschheit, wie sie ist und wie sie sein sollte,1838, and Garantien der Harmonic und Freiheit, Vivis, 1842.Moses Hess published three articles in the collection Ein-und-zwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz(Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland), Erster Teil (Zürich und Winterthur, 1843), issued by GeorgHerwegh. These articles, entitled “Sozialismus und Kommunismus,” “Philosophie der Tat” and “DieEine und die ganze Freiheit,” were published anonymously. The first two of them had a note –“Written by the author of ‘Europäische Triarchie’.”4. The term “element” in the Hegelian philosophy means a vital element of thought. It is used to stressthat thought is a process, and that therefore elements in a system of thought are also phases in amovement. The term “feeling” (Empfindung) denotes relatively low forms of mental life in which nodistinction is made between the subjective and objective.5. Shortly after writing this Preface Marx fulfilled his intention in The Holy Family, or Critique ofCritical Criticism, written in collaboration with Engels (see Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,Collected Works, Vol. 4).6. The expression “common humanity” (in the manuscript in French, “simple humanity”) wasborrowed by Marx from the first volume (Chapter VIII) of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which heused in Garnier’s French translation (Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations,Paris, 1802, t. I, p. 138). All the subsequent references were given by Marx to this publication, thesynopsis of which is contained in his Paris Notebooks with excerpts on political economy. Thisedition is reproduced on the MIA and Marx’s citations are linked to the text.7. Marx uses the German term “Nationalökonomie” to denote both the economic system in the senseof science or theory, and the economic system itself.8. Loudon’s work was a translation into French of an English manuscript apparently never publishedin the original. The author did publish in English a short pamphlet - The Equilibrium of Populationand Sustenance Demonstrated, Leamington, 1836.9. Unlike the quotations from a number of other French writers such as Constantin Pecqueur andEugéne Buret, which Marx gives in French in this work, the excerpts from J. B. Say’s book are givenin his German translation. 78Notes10. From this page of the manuscript quotations from Adam Smith’s book (in the French translation),which Marx cited so far sometimes in French and sometimes in German, are, as a rule, given inGerman. In this book the corresponding pages of the English edition are substituted for the French bythe editors and Marx’s references are given in square brackets (see Note 6).11. The text published in small type here and below is not an exact quotation from Smith but asummary of the corresponding passages from his work. Such passages are subsequently given in smalltype but without quotation marks.12. The preceding page (VII) of the first manuscript does not contain any text relating to the sections“Profit of Capital” and “Rent of Land” (see Note 1).13. The whole paragraph, including the quotation from Ricardo’s book in the French translation byFrancisco Solano Constancio: Des principes de l’économie politique, et de 1’impôt, 2-e éd., Paris,1835, T. II, pp. 194-95 (see the corresponding English edition On the Principles of Political Economy,and Taxation, London, 1817), and from Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes d’économie politique..., Paris,1819, T. II., p. 331, is an excerpt from Eugéne Buret’s book De la misère des classes laborieuses enAngleterre et en France.... Paris, 1840, T. I, pp. 6-7, note.14. The allusion is to the following passage: “In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizesought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for onethat succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty.”(Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, Bk. 1, p. 94.)15. See Note 12.16. The Corn Laws – a series of laws in England (the first of which dated back to the 15th century)which imposed high duties on imported corn with the aim of maintaining high prices on it in the homemarket. In the first third of the 19th century several laws were passed (in 1815, 1822 and so on)changing the conditions of corn imports, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced, which raisedimport duties on corn while lowering prices on the home market and, on the contrary, lowered importduties while raising prices.In 1838 the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League, whichwidely exploited the popular discontent at rising corn prices. While agitating for the abolition of thecorn duties and demanding complete freedom of trade, the League strove to weaken the economic andpolitical positions of the landed aristocracy and to lower workers’ wages.The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws endedin their repeal in 1846.17. Pages XIII to XV are divided into two columns and not three like the other pages of the firstmanuscript; they contain no text relating to the section “Rent of Land.” On page XVI, which also hastwo columns, this text is in the first column, while on the following pages it is in the second.18. Marx, still using Hegel’s terminology and his approach to the unity of the opposites, counterposesthe term “Verwirklichung” (realization) to “Entwirklichung” (loss of realization).19. In this manuscript Marx frequently uses two similar German terms, “Entäusserung” and“Entfremdung,” to express the notion of “alienation.” In the present edition the former is generallytranslated as “alienation,” the latter as “estrangement,” because in the later economic works (Theoriesof Surplus-Value) Marx himself used the word “alienation” as the English equivalent of the term“Entäusserung.”20. The term “species-being” (Gattungswesen) is derived from Ludwig Feuerbach’s philosophywhere it is applied to man and mankind as a whole.21. Apparently Marx refers to Proudhon’s book Qu’est-ce que la propriété?, Paris, 1841. 79Notes22. This passage shows that Marx here uses the category of wages in a broad sense, as an expressionof antagonistic relations between the classes of capitalists and of wage-workers. Under “the wages” heunderstands “the wage-labor,” the capitalist system as such. This idea was apparently elaborated indetail in that part of the manuscript which is now extant.23. This apparently refers to the conversion of individuals into members of civil society which isconsidered as the sphere of property, of material relations that determine all other relations. In thiscase Marx refers to the material relations of society based on private property and the antagonism ofdifferent classes.24. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 deprived poor people considered able to work (includingchildren) of any public relief except a place in the workhouse, where they were compelled to work.25. In the manuscript “sein für sich selbst,” which is an expression of Hegel’s term “für sich’ (foritself) as opposed to “an sich” (in itself). In the Hegelian philosophy the former means roughlyexplicit, conscious or defined in contrast to “an sich,” a synonym for immature, implicit orunconscious.26. This refers to Revolutions de France et de Brabant, par Camille Desmoulins. Second Trimestre,contenant mars, avril et mai, Paris, l’an 1ier, 1790, N. 16, p. 139 sq.; N. 23, p. 425 s.; N. 26, p. 580s.27. This refers to Georg Ludwig Wilhelm Funke, Die aus der unbeschrdnklen Theilbarkeit desGrundeigenthums hervorgehenden Nachtheile, Hamburg und Gotha, 1839, p. 56, in which there is areference to Heinrich Leo, Studien und Skizzen zu einer Vaturlehre des Slaates, Halle, 1833, p. 102.28. The third manuscript is a thick notebook the last few pages of which are blank. The pages aredivided into two columns by a vertical line, not for the purpose of dividing the text according to theheadings but for purely technical reasons. The text of the first three sections comprises pp. I-XI, XIV-XXI, XXXIV-XXXVIII and was written as a supplement to the missing pages of the secondmanuscript. Pages XI-XIII, XVII, XVIII, XXIII, XXIV, XXVI, XXXIV contain the text of theconcluding chapter dealing with the criticism of Hegel’s dialectic (on some pages it is writtenalongside the text of other sections). In some places the manuscript contains the author’s remarkstestifying to his intention to unite into a single whole various passages of this section separated fromeach other by the text of other sections. Pages XXIX-XL comprise the draft Preface. Finally, the texton the last pages (XLI-XLIII) is a self-contained essay on the power of money in bourgeois society.29. The manuscript has “als für sich seiende Tätigkeit.” For the meaning of the terms “für sich” and“an sich” in Hegel’s philosophy see Note 25.30. Marx refers to the rise of the primitive, crude equalitarian tendencies among the representatives ofutopian communism at the early stages of its development. Among the medieval religiouscommunistic communities, in particular, there was current a notion of the common possession ofwomen as a feature of the future society depicted in the spirit of consumer communism ideals. In1534-35 the German Anabaptists, who seized power in Münster, tried to introduce polygamy inaccordance with this view. Tommaso Campanella, the author of Civitas Solis (early 17th century),rejected monogamy in his ideal society. The primitive communistic communities were alsocharacterized by asceticism and a hostile attitude to science and works of art. Some of these primitiveequalitarian features, the negative attitude to the arts in particular, were inherited by the communisttrends of the first half of the 19th century, for example, by the members of the French secret societiesof the 1830s and 1840s (“worker-egalitarians,” “humanitarians,” and so on) comprising the followersof Babeuf (for a characterization of these see Engels, “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent”(Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 3, pp. 396-97)).31. This note is given by Marx on page V of the manuscript where it is separated by a horizontal linefrom the main text, but according to its meaning it refers to this sentence. 80Notes32. This part of the manuscript shows clearly the peculiarity of the terminology used by Marx in hisworks. At the time he had not worked out terms adequately expressing the conceptions of scientificcommunism he was then evolving and was still under the influence of Feuerbach in that respect.Hence the difference in the use of words in his early and subsequent, mature writings. In the Economicand Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 the word “socialism” is used to denote the stage of society atwhich it has carried out a revolutionary transformation, abolished private property, class antagonisms,alienation and so on. In the same sense Marx used the expression “communism equals humanism.” Atthat time he understood the term “communism as such” not as the final goal of revolutionarytransformation but as the process of this transformation, development leading up to that goal, a lowerstage of the process.33. This expression apparently refers to the theory of the English geologist Sir Charles Lyell who, inhis three-volume work The Principles of Geology (1830-33), proved the evolution of the earth’s crustand refuted the popular theory of cataclysms. Lyell used the term “historical geology” for his theory.The term “geognosy” was introduced by the 18th-century German scientist Abraham Werner, aspecialist in mineralogy, and it was used also by Alexander Humboldt.34. This statement is interpreted differently by researchers. Many of them maintain that Marx heremeant crude equalitarian communism, such as that propounded by Babeuf and his followers. Whilerecognizing the historic role of that communism, he thought it impossible to ignore its weak points. Itseems more justifiable, however, to interpret this passage proceeding from the peculiarity of termsused in the manuscript (see Note 32). Marx here used the term “communism” to mean not the higherphase of classless society (which he at the time denoted as “socialism” or “communism equallinghumanism”) but movement (in various forms, including primitive forms of equalitarian communism atthe early stage) directed at its achievement, a revolutionary transformation process of transition to it.Marx emphasized that this process should not be considered as an end in itself, but that it is anecessary, though a transitional, stage in attaining the future social system, which will becharacterized by new features distinct from those proper to this stage.35. Page XI (in part) and pages XII and XIII are taken up by a text relating to the concluding chapter(see Note 28).36. The greater part of this page as well as part of the preceding page (XVII) comprises a text relatingto the concluding chapter (see Note 28).37. Apparently Marx refers to a formula of the German philosopher Johann Fichte, an adherent ofsubjective idealism.38. A part of this page of the manuscript is ripped off, about three lines are missing. – Ed.39. See this work, pp. 20-23. – Ed.40. The preceding pages starting from p. XXI, which is partly taken up by a text relating to thissection, contain the text of the concluding chapter.41. In some of his early writings Marx already uses the term “bürgerliche Gesellschaft” to mean twothings: (1) in a broader sense, the economic system of society regardless of the historical stage of itsdevelopment, the sum total of material relations which determine political institutions and ideology,and (2) in the narrow sense, the material relations of bourgeois society (later on, that society as awhole), of capitalism. Hence, the term has been translated according to its concrete meaning in thecontext as “civil society” in the first case and “bourgeois society” in the second.42. The two previous pages of the manuscript contain the draft Preface to the whole work, which ispublished on pages 1-2.43. Ontology – in some philosophic systems a theory about being, about the nature of things. 81Notes44. Originally the section on the Hegelian dialectic was apparently conceived by Marx as aphilosophical digression in the section of the third manuscript which is published under the heading“Private Property and Communism” and was written together with other sections as an addition toseparate pages of the second manuscript. Therefore Marx marked the beginning of this section (p. XIin the manuscript) as point 6, considering it to be the continuation of the five points of the precedingsection. He marked as point 7 the beginning of the following section, headed “Human Requirementsand Division of Labor Under the Rule of Private Property,” on page XIV of the manuscript. However,when dealing with this subject on subsequent pages of his manuscript, Marx decided to collect thewhole material into a separate, concluding chapter and mentioned this in his draft Preface. Thechapter, like a number of other sections of the manuscript, was not finished. While writing it, Marxmade special excerpts from the last chapter (“Absolute Knowledge”) of Hegel’s Phänomenologie desGeistes, which are in the same notebook as the third manuscript (these excerpts are not reproduced inthis edition).45. The reference is not quite accurate. On page 193 of the work mentioned, Bruno Bauer polemicisesnot against the anti-Hegelian Herr Gruppe but against the Right Hegelian Marheineke.46. Marx here refers to Feuerbach’s critical observations on Hegel in §§ 29-30 of his Grundsätze derPhilosophie der Zukunft.This note is given at the bottom of page XIII of the third manuscript without any indication what itrefers to. The asterisk after the sentence to which it seems to refer is given by the editors.47. Here on page XVII of the third manuscript (part of which comprises a text relating to the section“Human Requirements and Division of Labor Under the Rule of Private Property”) Marx gave thenote: “see p. XIII,” which proves that this text is the continuation of the section dealing with thecritical analysis of the Hegelian dialectic begun on pp. XI-XII.48. At the end of page XVIII of the third manuscript there is a note by Marx: “continued on p. XXII.”However number XXII was omitted by Marx in paging. The text of the given chapter is continued onthe page marked by the author as XXIII, which is also confirmed by his remark on it: “see p. XVIII.”49. Marx apparently refers here not only to the identity of Hegel’s views on labor and some othercategories of political economy with those of the English classical economists but also to his profoundknowledge of economic writings. In lectures he delivered at Jena University in 1803-04 Hegel citedAdam Smith’s work. In his Philosophie des Rechts (§ 189) he mentions Smith, Say and Ricardo andnotes the rapid development of economic thought.50. Hegel uses the term “thinghood” (Dingheit) in his work Phänomenologie des Geistes to denote anabstract, universal, mediating link in the process of cognition; “thinghood” reveals the generality ofthe specific properties of individual things. The synonym for it is “pure essence” (das reine Wesen).51. These eight points of the “surmounting of the object of consciousness,” expressed “in all itsaspects,” are copied nearly word for word from §§ 1 and 3 of the last chapter (“Absolute Knowledge”)of Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes.52. Number XXV was omitted by Marx in paging the third manuscript.53. Marx refers to § 30 of Feuerbach’s Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft, which says: “Hegelis a thinker who surpasses himself in thinking.”54. This enumeration gives the major categories of Hegel’s Encyclopädie der philosophischenWissenschaften in the order in which they are examined by Hegel. Similarly, the categoriesreproduced by Marx above (on p. 65), from “civil law” to “world history,” are given in the order inwhich they appear in Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts. 。