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[III.1.]
All wealth has become industrial wealth, the wealth of labour;
and industry is accomplished labour, just as the factory
system is the perfected essence of industry, that is of labour,
and just as industrial 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 over man and become, in its most general form, a
world-historical power.
Re p. XXXIX.
or XXXIV (note
by Marx, unclear in MS, X or V?) [XXXIV
links to Proudhon subject matter in this Notebook - other editors believe
XXXIX refers to a lost page of notebook 2 --Ed./GT]
The antithesis between lack
of property and property, so long as it is not understood as
the antithesis of labour and capital, remains an indifferent
antithesis, not grasped in its active connection, in its internal
relation, not yet grasped as a contradiction. It can find expression
in this first form even without the advanced development of private
property (as in ancient Rome, Turkey, etc.). It does not yet appear
as having been established by private property itself. But labour,
the subjective essence of private property as exclusion of property, and
capital, objective labour as exclusion of labour, constitute private
property as its developed state of contradiction--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 nevertheless with labour
as its essence. Its form of existence is therefore capital, which
is to be annulled "as such" (Proudhon). Or a particular form
of labour--labour levelled down, fragmented, and therefore unfree--is
conceived as the source of private property's perniciousness and
of its existence in estrangement from men. For instance, Fourier, who,
like the Physiocrats, also conceives agricultural labour to be
at least the exemplary type, whereas Saint-Simon declares
in contrast that industrial labour as such is the essence, and
accordingly aspires to the exclusive rule of the industrialists
and the improvement of the workers' condition. Finally, communism is
the positive expression 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 generalisation and consummation
of it. As such it appears in a twofold form: on the one hand, the
dominion of material property bulks so large that it 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 only purpose of life and existence is direct, physical possession.
The category of the worker is not abolished, but extended to
everybody.
[IV.1.]
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[III.2.]
The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the
community to the world of things. Finally, this movement of opposing universal
private property to private property finds expression in the brutish form
of opposing to marriage (certainly a form of exclusive private
property) the community of women, in which a woman becomes
a piece of communal and common property. It may be said
that this idea of the community of women gives away the secret of
this as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism. Just as woman
passes from marriage to general prostitution, so the entire world of wealth
(that is, of man's objective substance) passes from the relationship of
exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal
prostitution with the community. This type of communism--since it negates
the personality of man in every sphere--is but the logical expression
of private property, which is this negation. General envy constituting
itself as a power is the disguise in which greed reestablishes
itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of
every piece of private property as such is at least turned against
wealthier private property in the form of envy and the impulse
to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and impulse even
constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination
of this envy, of this levelling-down, proceeding from the preconceived
minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this
annulment of private property is really an appropriation is actually proved
by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation,
the regression to the unnatural
[IV.2.]
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