Selected Works of Karl Marx

vagabondage is strictly connected with the disintegration of the feudal system. As early as thethirteenth century we find isolated epochs of this kind, but only at the end of the fifteenth andbeginning of the sixteenth does this vagabondage make a general and permanent appearance.These vagabonds, who were so numerous that, for instance, Henry VIII of England had 72,000of them hanged, were only prevailed upon to work with the greatest difficulty and through themost extreme necessity, and then only after long resistance. The rapid rise of manufactures,particularly in England, absorbed them gradually.With the advent of manufactures, the various nations entered into a competitive relationship, thestruggle for trade, which was fought out in wars, protective duties and prohibitions, whereasearlier the nations, insofar as they were connected at all, had carried on an inoffensive exchangewith each other. Trade had from now on a political significance.With the advent of manufacture the relationship between worker and employer changed. In theguilds the patriarchal relationship between journeyman and master continued to exist; inmanufacture its place was taken by the monetary relation between worker and capitalist - arelationship which in the countryside and in small towns retained a patriarchal tinge, but in thelarger, the real manufacturing towns, quite early lost almost all patriarchal complexion.Manufacture and the movement of production in general received an enormous impetus throughthe extension of commerce which came with the discovery of America and the sea-route to theEast Indies. The new products imported thence, particularly the masses of gold and silver whichcame into circulation and totally changed the position of the classes towards one another,dealing a hard blow to feudal landed property and to the workers; the expeditions ofadventurers, colonisation; and above all the extension of markets into a world market, whichhad now become possible and was daily becoming more and more a fact, called forth a newphase of historical development, into which in general we cannot here enter further. Through thecolonisation of the newly discovered countries the commercial struggle of the nations amongstone another was given new fuel and accordingly greater extension and animosity.The expansion of trade and manufacture accelerated the accumulation of movable capital, whilein the guilds, which were not stimulated to extend their production, natural capital remainedstationary or even declined. Trade and manufacture created the big bourgeoisie; in the guildswas concentrated the petty bourgeoisie, which no longer was dominant in the towns as formerly,but had to bow to the might of the great merchants and manufacturers. Hence the decline of theguilds, as soon as they came into contact with manufacture.The intercourse of nations took on, in the epoch of which we have been speaking, two differentforms. At first the small quantity of gold and silver in circulation involved the ban on the exportof these metals; and industry, for the most part imported from abroad and made necessary by theneed for employing the growing urban population, could not do without those privileges whichcould be granted not only, of course, against home competition, but chiefly against foreign. Thelocal guild privilege was in these original prohibitions extended over the whole nation. Customsduties originated from the tributes which the feudal lords exacted as protective levies againstrobbery from merchants passing through their territories, tributes later imposed likewise by thetowns, and which, with the rise of the modern states, were the Treasury's most obvious means ofraising money.The appearance of American gold and silver on the European markets, the gradual developmentof industry, the rapid expansion of trade and the consequent rise of the non-guild bourgeoisieand of money, gave these measures another significance. The State, which was daily less andless able to do without money, now retained the ban on the export of gold and silver out of fiscalconsiderations; the bourgeois, for whom these masses of money which were hurled onto themarket became the chief object of speculative buying, were thoroughly content with this;privileges established earlier became a source of income for the government and were sold formoney; in the customs legislation there appeared the export duty, which, since it only [placed] ahindrance in the way of industry, had a purely fiscal aim.The second period began in the middle of the seventeenth century and lasted almost to the endof the eighteenth. Commerce and navigation had expanded more rapidly than manufacture,which played a secondary role; the colonies were becoming considerable consumers; and afterlong struggles the separate nations shared out the opening world market among themselves. This