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[XX.2.]
There is a form
of inactive, extravagant wealth given over wholly to pleasure, the enjoyer
of which on the one hand behaves as a mere ephemeral individual
frantically spending himself to no purpose, and also regards the slave-labour
of other (human sweat and blood) as the prey of his cupidity. He
therefore knows man himself, and hence also his own self, as a
sacrificed and futile being. With such wealth contempt of man makes
its appearance, partly as arrogance and as squandering
of what can give sustenance to a hundred human lives, and partly as the
infamous illusion that his own unbridled extravagance and ceaseless, unproductive
consumption is the condition of the other's labour and therefore
of his subsistence. He regards the realisation of the essential
powers of man only as the realisation of his own excesses, his whims
and capricious, bizarre notions. This wealth which, on the other hand, again
knows wealth as a mere means, as something that is good for nothing but
to be annihilated and which is therefore at once slave and master, at once
magnanimous and base, capricious, presumptuous, conceited, refined, cultured
and witty - this wealth has not yet wealth as an utterly alien
power over itself: it sees in it, rather, only its own power, and (not)
wealth but enjoyment [is its final] aim.
This […]
[XXI.2.] |
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[XX.1.]
<When political economy deems that demand and supply always balance
each other, it immediately forgets that according to its own claim (theory
of population) the supply of people always exceeds the demand,
and that, therefore, in the essential result of the whole production process
the existence of man--the disparity between demand and supply gets its
most striking expression.
The extent to which money, which appears as a means, constitutes true
power and the sole end--the extent to which in general the means
which turns me into a being, which gives me possession of the alien
objective being, is an end in itself... can be clearly seen from
the fact that landed property, wherever land is the source of life, and
horse and sword, wherever these are the true means of
life, are also acknowledged as the true political powers in life.
In the Middle Ages a social estate is emancipated as soon as it is allowed
to carry the sword. Amongst nomadic peoples it is the horse
which makes me a free man and a participant in the life of the community.
We have said above that man is regressing to the cave dwelling, etc.--but
he is regressing to it in an estranged, malignant form. The savage in
his cave natural element which freely offers itself for his use and protection--feels
himself no more a stranger, or rather feels as much at home as a fish
in water. But the cellar dwelling of the poor man is a hostile element,
"a dwelling which remains an alien power and only gives itself up
to him insofar as he gives up to it his own blood and sweat"--a dwelling
which he cannot regard as his own hearth--where he might at last exclaim:
"Here I am at home"--but where instead he finds himself in someone
else's house, in the house of a stranger who always watches
him and throws him out if he does not pay his
rent. He is also aware of the contrast in quality between his dwelling
and a human dwelling that stands in the other world, in the heaven
of wealth. Estrangement is manifested not only in the fact that my means
of life belong to someone else, that which I desire is the
inaccessible possession of another, but also in the fact that everything
is itself something different from itself--that my activity is
something else and that, finally (and this applies also to the
capitalist), all is under [the sway] of inhuman power.
[XXI.1.]
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