Karl Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Wages ...

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43property. This is because the earth ceases to be an object of barter,and through free labor and free employment once again becomesauthentic, personal property for man. One great advantage of thedivision of the land is that its masses, who are no longer preparedto tolerate servitude, are destroyed by property in a different wayfrom those in industry.As for large landed property, its apologists have alwayssophistically identified the economic advantages inherent in largescaleagriculture with large landed property, as if these advantageswould not on the one hand attain their fullest degree ofdevelopment and on the other hand become socially useful for thefirst time once property abolished. Similarly, they have attackedthe trading spirit of the small landowners, as if large-scalelandownership, even in its feudal form, did not already containwithin it the elements of barter—not to mention the modernEnglish form, in which the feudalism of the landowner iscombined with the huckstering and the industry of the tenantfarmer.Just as large-scale landed property can return the reproach ofmonopoly made against it by the advocated of division of the land,for the division of the land is also based on the monopoly ofprivate property, so can the advocates of division return thereproach of partition, for partition of the land also exists—thoughin a rigid, ossified form—on the large estates. Indeed, division isthe universal basis of private property. Besides, as the division oflanded property leads once more to large landed property in theform of capital wealth, feudal landed property inevitably advancestowards division or at least falls into the hands of the capitalists,however much it might twist and turn.For large-scale landed property, as in England, drives theoverwhelming majority of the population into the arms of industryand reduces its own workers to total misery. In this way, it createsand increases the power of its enemy, capital and industry, bydriving the poor and an entire range of activities over to the otherside. It makes the majority of the country industrial, and henceantagonistic to landed property. Where industry has acquiredgreat power, as in England, it gradually forces large landedproperty to give up its monopoly against foreign countries andobliges it to compete with foreign landed property. For under therule of industry, landed property could maintain its feudalproportions only by means of a monopoly against foreigncountries, so as to protect itself against the universal laws of tradewhich contradict its feudal nature. Once exposed to competition, itis forced to obey the laws of competition, just like any othercommodity which is subject to them. It too begins to fluctuate, toincrease and diminish, to fly from one hand into another, and nolaw is any longer capable of keeping it in a few predestined hands,or, at any event, surrender to the power of the industrialcapitalists.Finally, large landed property, which has been forciblypreserved in this way and which has given rise alongside itself toan extensive industry, leads more rapidly to a crisis than does thedivision of landed property, alongside which the power ofindustry invariably takes second place.It is clear from the case of England that large landed propertyhas cast off its feudal character and assumed an industrialcharacter insofar as it wants to make as much money as possible. Ityields the owner the biggest possible rent and the tenant thebiggest possible profit on his capital. As a consequence, theagricultural workers have already been reduced to a minimum,and the class of tenant farmers already represents within landedproperty the might of industry and capital. As a result of foreigncompetition, ground rent more or less ceases to be an independentsource of income. A large part of the landowners is forced to takeover from the tenants, some of whom are consequently reduced tothe proletariat. On the other hand, many tenants will takepossession of landed property; for the big landowners, who havegiven themselves up for the most part to squandering theircomfortable revenue and are generally not capable of large-scaleagricultural management, in many cases have neither the capitalnor the ability to exploit the land. Therefore, a section of the biglandowners is also ruined. Eventually wages, which have alreadybeen reduced to a minimum, must be reduced even further inorder to meet the new competition, This then leads necessarily torevolution.Landed property had to develop in each of these two ways, inorder to experience in both of them its necessary decline; just asindustry had to ruin itself both in the form of monopoly and in theform of competition before it could believe in man.44
45Estranged LaborWe have started out from the premises of political economy.We have accepted its language and its laws. We presupposedprivate property; the separation of labor, capital, and land, andlikewise of wages, profit, and capital; the division of labor;competition; the conception of exchange value, etc. From politicaleconomy itself, using its own words, we have shown that theworker sinks to the level of a commodity, and moreover the mostwretched commodity of all; that the misery of the worker is ininverse proportion to the power and volume of his production; thatthe necessary consequence of competition is the accumulation ofcapital in a few hands and hence the restoration of monopoly in amore terrible form; and that, finally, the distinction betweencapitalist and landlord, between agricultural worker and industrialworker, disappears and the whole of society must split into the twoclasses of property owners and propertyless workers.Political economy proceeds from the fact of private property. Itdoes not explain it. It grasps the material process of privateproperty, the process through which it actually passes, in generaland abstract formulae which it then takes as laws. It does notComprehend these laws—i.e., it does not show how they arise fromthe nature of private property. Political economy fails to explainthe reason for the division between labor and capital. For example,when it defines the relation of wages to profit, it takes the interestsof the capitalists as the basis of its analysis—i.e., it assumes what itis supposed to explain. Similarly, competition is frequentlybrought into the argument and explained in terms of externalcircumstances. Political economy teaches us nothing about theextent to which these external and apparently accidental circumstancesare only the expression of a necessary development. Wehave seen how exchange itself appears to political economy as anaccidental fact. The only wheels which political economy sets inmotion are greed, and the war of the avaricious—Competition.Precisely because political economy fails to grasp theinterconnections within the movement, it was possible to oppose,for example, the doctrine of competition to the doctrine ofmonopoly, the doctrine of craft freedom to the doctrine of theguild, and the doctrine of the division of landed property to thedoctrine of the great estate; for competition, craft freedom, anddivision of landed property were developed and conceived only asaccidental, deliberate, violent consequences of monopoly, of theguilds, and of feudal property, and not as their necessary,inevitable, and natural consequences.We now have to grasp the essential connection betweenprivate property, greed, the separation of labor, capital and landedproperty, exchange and competition, value and the devaluation[Entwertung] of man, monopoly, and competition, etc.—theconnection between this entire system of estrangement[Entfremdung] and the money system.We must avoid repeating the mistake of the politicaleconomist, who bases his explanations on some imaginaryprimordial condition. Such a primordial condition explainsnothing. It simply pushes the question into the grey and nebulousdistance. It assumes as facts and events what it is supposed todeduce—namely, the necessary relationships between two things,between, for example, the division of labor and exchange.Similarly, theology explains the origin of evil by the fall of Man—i.e., it assumes as a fact in the form of history what it shouldexplain.We shall start out from a present-day economic fact.The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, themore his production increases in power and extent. The workerbecomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities heproduces. The devaluation of the human world grows in directproportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labor notonly produces commodities; it also produces itself and the workersas a commodity and it does so in the same proportion in which itproduces commodities in general.This fact simply means that the object that labor produces, itsproduct, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a powerindependent of the producer. The product of labor is laborembodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification oflabor. The realization of labor is its objectification. In the sphere ofpolitical economy, this realization of labor appears as a loss ofreality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to theobject, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation[Entäusserung].So much does the realization of labor appear as loss of realitythat the worker loses his reality to the point of dying of starvation.So much does objectification appear as loss of the object that the46
Page 3 and 4: 5and brings about, the accumulation
Page 5 and 6: 9degree into other areas, for the r
Page 7 and 8: 13if it is low, then it is much in
Page 9 and 10: 17given for the use of it; wherever
Page 11 and 12: 21This means that, quite apart from
Page 13 and 14: 2526eliminating human labor has it
Page 15 and 16: 2930tools than what would have been
Page 17 and 18: 3334the ordinary profits of farming
Page 19 and 20: 37proportion to the interest which
Page 21: 41still the appearance of a relatio
Page 25 and 26: 49product of the worker’s activit
Page 27 and 28: 53estranged, alienated labor. We ha
Page 29: 57relation between this man, who is

Karl Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Wages ...

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