|[ XIV[ (7) We have seen what significance, given socialism, the 
wealth of human needs acquires, and what significance, therefore, 
both a new mode of production and a new object of production obtain: a 
new manifestation of the forces of human nature and a new 
enrichment of human nature. Under private property their signifi- 
cance is reversed: every person speculates on creating a new need in 
another, so as to drive him to fresh sacrifice, to place him in a new 
dependence and to seduce him into a new mode of enjoyment and 
therefore economic ruin. Each tries to establish over the other an 
alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. 
The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by 
an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is 
subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of 
mutual swindling and mutual plundering. Man becomes ever poorer 
as man, his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to 
master the hostile power. The power of his money declines in inverse 
proportion to the increase in the volume of production: that is, his 
neediness grows as the power of money increases. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 307 

The need for money is therefore the true need produced by the 
economic system, and it is the only need which the latter produces. 
The quantity of money becomes to an ever greater degree its sole 
effective quality. Just as it reduces everything to its abstract form, so it 
reduces itself in the course of its own movement to quantitative being. 
Excess and intemperance come to be its true norm. 

Subjectively, this appears partly in the fact that the extension of 
products and needs becomes a contriving and ever-calculating 
subservience to inhuman, sophisticated, unnatural and imaginary 
appetites. Private property does not know how to change crude need 
into human need. Its idealism is fantasy, caprice and whim; and no 
eunuch flatters his despot more basely or uses more despicable | 
means to stimulate his dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak 
a favour for himself than does the industrial eunuch—the 
producer—in order to sneak for himself a few pieces of silver, in 
order to charm the golden birds out of the pockets of his dearly 
beloved neighbours in Christ. He puts himself at the service of the 
other’s most depraved fancies, plays the pimp between 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 with which to seduce away the other’s 
very being, his money; every real and possible need is a weakness 
which will lead the fly to the glue-pot. General exploitation of 
communal human nature, just as every imperfection in man, is a 
bond with heaven—an avenue giving the priest access to his heart; 
every need is an opportunity to approach one’s neighbour under the 
guise of the utmost amiability and to say to him: Dear friend, I give 
you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non; you know 
the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me; in providing 
for your pleasure, I fleece you.) 

This estrangement manifests itself in part in that the sophistication 
of needs and of the means [of their satisfaction] on the one side 
produces a bestial barbarisation, a complete, crude, abstract 
simplicity of need, on the other; or rather in that it merely 
reproduces itself in its opposite. Even the need for fresh air ceases to 
be a need for the worker. Man returns to a cave dwelling, which is 
now, however, contaminated with the pestilential breath of civilisa- 
tion, and which he continues to occupy only precariously, it being for 
him an alien habitation which can be withdrawn from him any 
day—a place from which, if he does [IXV| not pay, he can be thrown 
out any day. For this mortuary he has to pay. A dwelling in the light, 
which Prometheus in Aeschylus designated as one of the greatest 
boons, by means of which he made the savage into a human 

being,* ceases to exist for the worker. Light, air, etc—the simplest 
animal cleanliness—ceases to be a need for man. Filth, this stagnation 
and putrefaction of man—the sewage of civilisation (speaking quite 
literally)—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 [each has ceased to function] not only 
in its human fashion, but in an inhuman fashion, so that it does not 
exist even in an animal fashion. The crudest methods (and instruments) 
of human labour 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 is not only that man has no human 
needs—even his animal needs cease to exist. The Irishman no longer 
knows any need now but the need to eat, and indeed only the need to 
eat potatoes—and scabby potatoes at that, the worst kind of potatoes. 
But in each of their industrial towns England and 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 labour is used to make a worker 
out of the human being still in the making, the completely im- 
mature human being, the child—whilst the worker has become a 
neglected child. The machine accommodates itself to the weakness 
of the human being in order to make the weak human being into 
a machine. 

«How the multiplication of needs and of the means [of their 
satisfaction] breeds the absence of needs and of means is demon- 
strated by the political economist (and by the capitalist: in general it is 
always empirical businessmen we are talking about when we refer to 
political economists, [who represent] their scientific creed and form 
of existence) as follows: 

(1) By reducing the worker’s need to the barest and most 
miserable level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to 
the most abstract mechanical movement; thus he says: Man has no 
other need either of activity or of enjoyment. For he declares that 
this life, too, is human life and existence. 

(2) By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the 
standard, indeed, as the general standard—general because it is 
applicable to the mass of men. He turns the worker into an insensible 
being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure 
abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the 
worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond 
the most abstract need—be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, ora 

* Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound.— Ed. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 309 

manifestation of activity—seems to him a luxury. Political economy, 
this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of 
renunciation, of want, of saving—and it actually reaches the point 
where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. 
This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of 
asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the 
ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part 
of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a 
servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, 
bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy—de- 
spite its wordly and voluptuous appearance—is a true moral 
science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the 
renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. 
The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go tothe theatre, 
the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, 
sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your 
treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour— your: capital. 
The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you 
have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of 
your estranged being. Everything [|XVI] which the political 
economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for 
you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, 
your money can do. It can eat and drink, goto the dance hall and the 
theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of 
the past, political power—all this it can appropriate for you—it can 
buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do 
nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its 
servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not 
need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore 
be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for 
him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have 

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.) recom- 
mends thrift and execrates luxury. But the former admits that it 
wants luxury in order to produce labour (i. e., absolute thrift); and 
the latter admits that it recommends thrift in order to produce 
wealth (i. e., luxury). The Lauderdale-Malthus school has the 
romantic notion that avarice alone ought not to determine the 
consumption of the rich, and it contradicts its own laws in 
advancing extravagance as a direct means of enrichment. Against it, 
therefore, the other side very earnestly and circumstantially proves 

that I do not increase but reduce my possessions by being extrava- 
gant. The Say-Ricardo school is hypocritical in not admitting that 
it is precisely whim and caprice which determine production. It 
forgets the “refined needs”; it forgets that there would be no 
production without consumption; it forgets that as a result of 
competition production can only become more extensive and 
luxurious. It forgets that, according to its views, a thing’s value is 
determined 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 useless 
population. Both sides forget that extravagance and thrift, luxury 
and privation, wealth and poverty are equal. 

And you must not only stint the gratification of your immediate 
senses, as by stinting yourself of food, 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. 

« You must make everything that is yours saleable, i. e., useful. If 
I ask the political economist: Do I obey economic laws if I extract 
money by offering my body for sale, by surrendering it to 
another’s lust? (The factory workers in France call the prostitution 
of their wives and daughters the nth working hour, which is 
literally correct.}—Or am I not acting in keeping with political 
economy if I sell my friend to the Moroccans? (And the direct sale 
of men in the form of a trade in conscripts, etc., takes place in all 
civilised countries..—Then the political economist replies to me: 
You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and 
Cousin Religion have to say about it. My political economic ethics 
and religion have nothing to reproach you with, but— But whom 
am I now to believe, political economy or ethics?—The ethics of 
political economy is acquisition, work, thrift, sobriety—but political 
economy promises to satisfy my needs—The political economy of 
ethics is the opulence of a good conscience, of virtue, etc.; but how 
can I live virtuously if I do not live? And how can IJ have a good 
conscience if I do not know anything? It stems from the very 
nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to me a different 
and opposite yardstick—ethics one and political economy another; 
for each is a specific estrangement of man and? |l XVIII focuses 
attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity, and 
each stands in an estranged relation to the other. Thus M. Michel 
Chevalier reproaches Ricardo with having ignored ethics.* But 

* Cf. Michel Chevalier, Des intéréts matériels en France.—Ed. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 311 

Ricardo is allowing political economy to speak its own language, 
and if it does not speak ethically, this is not Ricardo’s fault. 
M. Chevalier takes no account of political economy insofar as he 
moralises, but he really and necessarily ignores ethics insofar 
as he practises political economy. The relationship of political 
economy to ethics, if it is other than an arbitrary, contin- 
gent and therefore unfounded and unscientific relationship, if it is 
not being posited for the sake of appearance but is meant to be 
essential, can only be the relationship of the laws of political 
economy to ethics. If there is no such connection, or if the contrary 
is rather the case, can Ricardo help it? Moreover, the opposition 
between political economy and ethics is only an apparent opposition 
and just as much no opposition as it is an opposition. All that 
happens is that political economy expresses moral laws in its own 
way. 

« Frugality as the principle of political economy is most brilliantly 
shown in its theory of population. There are too many people. 
Even the existence of men is a pure luxury; and if the worker is 
“ethical”, he will be sparing in procreation. (Mill suggests public 
acclaim for those who prove themselves continent in their sexual 
relations, and public rebuke for those who sin against such 
barrenness of marriage... Is this not ethics, the teaching of 
asceticism?) The production of people appears as public destitu- 
tion.) 

The meaning which production has in relation to the rich is 
seen revealed in the meaning which it has for the poor. Looking 
upwards the manifestation is always refined, veiled, ambigu- 
ous— outward appearance; downwards, it is rough, straightfor- 
ward, frank—the real thing. The worker’s crude need is a far 
greater source of gain than the refined need of the rich. The cellar 
dwellings in London bring more to those who let them than do 
the palaces; that is to say, with reference to the landlord 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 their crudeness, but on their artificially 
produced crudeness, whose true enjoyment, therefore, is self- 
stupefaction—this illusory satisfaction of need—this civilisation 
contained within the crude barbarism of need. The English gin 

* James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, London, 1821, p. 44 (Marx quotes from 
the French edition, Elémens d’économie politique. Trad. par. J. T. Parisot, Paris, 1823. 
p. 59).—Ed. 

shops are therefore the symbolical representations of private 
property. Their luxury reveals the true relation of industrial luxury 
and wealth to man. They are therefore rightly the only Sunday 
pleasures of the people which the English police treats at least 
mildly. |XVII}| 

|| XVIII\8° We have already seen how the political economist 
establishes the unity of labour and capital in a variety of ways: (1) 
Capital is accumulated labour. (2) The purpose of capital within 
production—partly, reproduction of capital with profit, partly, 
capital as raw material (material of labour), and partly, as an 
automatically working instrument (the machine is capital directly 
equated with labour)—is productive labour. (3) The worker is a 
capital. (4) Wages belong to costs of capital. (5) In relation to the 
worker, labour is the reproduction of his life-capital. (6) In 
relation to the capitalist, labour is an aspect of his capital’s activity. 

Finally, (7) the political economist postulates the original unity 
of capital and labour as the unity of the capitalist and the worker; 
this is the original state of paradise. The way in which these two 
aspects, [|XIX| as two persons, confront each other is for the 
political economist an accidental event, and hence only to be 
explained by reference to external factors. (See Mill.*) 

The nations which are still dazzled by the sensuous glitter of 
precious metals, and are therefore still fetish-worshippers of metal 
money, are not yet fully developed money-nations. Contrast of 
France and England. 

The extent to which the solution of theoretical riddles is the 
task of practice and effected through practice, 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 from that of the Greek, because 
his sensuous existence is different. The abstract enmity between 
sense and spirit is necessary so long as the human feeling for 
nature, the human sense of nature, and therefore also the natural 
sense of man, are not yet produced by man’s own labour. 

Equality is nothing but a translation of the German 
“Ich=Ich”>* into the French, i.e., political, form. Equality as the 
basis of communism is its political justification, and it is the same as 
when the German justifies it by conceiving man as universal 
self-consciousness. Naturally, the transcendence of the estrangement 

|, James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, p. 45 sqq. (Parisot, p. 60 sqq.).— Ed. 
> The English equivalent of ich is “I” — Ed. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 313 

always proceeds from that form of the estrangement which is the 
dominant power: in Germany, self-consciousness, in France, equality, 
because it is politics; in England, real, material, practical need 
taking only itself as its standard. It is from this standpoint that 
Proudhon is to be criticised and appreciated. 

If we characterise communism itself because of its character as 
negation of the negation, as the appropriation 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 private property [...]* in old-Ger- 
man fashion—in the way of Hegel’s phenomenology—{...] finished 
as a conquered moment and [...] one might be satisfied by it, in his 
consciousness [...] of the human being only by real [...] transcen- 
dence of his thought now as before [...], since with him > therefore 
the real estrangement of the life of man remains, and remains all 
the more, the more one is conscious of it as such, hence it [the 
negation of this estrangement] can be accomplished solely by 
bringing about communism. 

In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of 
communism is quite sufficient. It takes actual communist action to 
abolish actual private property. History will lead to it; and this 
movement, which in theory we already know to be a self- 
transcending movement, will constitute in actual fact a very rough 
and protracted process. But we must regard it as a real advance to 
have at the outset gained a consciousness of the limited character 
as well as of the goal of this historical 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 results are 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. Association, society and 
conversation, which again has association 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 man shines upon us from 
their work-hardened bodies. 

* A part of this section of the manuscript is torn off —Ed. 
> Or maybe “it”—the German pronoun ihm can be either.—Ed. 
© In the manuscript: ouvriers.—Ed. 

|XX <When political economy claims 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—a 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. 

There is a form of inactive, extravagant wealth given over 
wholly to pleasure, the enjoyer of which on the one hand behaves 

* The manuscript is damaged here.—Ed. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 315 

as a mere ephemeral individual frantically spending himself to no 
purpose, and also regards the slave-labour of others (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 suste- 
nance to a hundred human lives, and partly as the infamous 
illusion that his own unbridled extravagance and ceaseless, unpro- 
ductive 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 experienced 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 [...]> EX XI] and the glittering illusion about the nature of 
wealth, blinded by sensuous appearances, is confronted by the 
working, sober, prosaic, economical industrialist who is quite enlight- 
ened about the nature of wealth, and who, while providing a 
wider sphere for the other’s self-indulgence and paying fulsome 
flatteries to him in his products (for his products are just so many 
base compliments to the appetites of the spendthrift), knows how 
to appropriate for himself in the only useful way the other’s 
waning power. If, therefore, industrial wealth appears at first to 
be the result of extravagant, fantastic wealth, yet its motion, the 
motion inherent in it, ousts the latter also in an active way. For the 
fall in the rate of interest is a necessary consequence and result of 
industrial development. The extravagant rentier’s means therefore 
dwindle day by day in inverse proportion to the increasing 
possibilities and pitfalls of pleasure. Consequently, he must either 
consume his capital, thus ruining himself, or must become an 
industrial capitalist... On the other hand, there is a direct, 
constant rise in the rent of land as a result of the course of 
industrial development; nevertheless, as we have already seen, 
there must come a time when landed property, like every other 

* The manuscript is damaged here.—Ed. 
ba part of this page of the manuscript is ripped off, about three lines are 

missing.—Ed. 

kind of property, is bound to fall within the category of profitably 
self-reproducing capital*—and this in fact results from the same 
industrial development. Thus the squandering landowner, too, 
must either consume his capital, and thus be ruined, or himself 
become the farmer of his own estate—an agricultural industrialist. 

The diminution in the interest on money, which Proudhon 
regards as the annulling of capital and as a tendency to socialise 
capital, is therefore in fact rather only a symptom of the total 
victory of working capital over squandering wealth—i. e., the 
transformation of all private property into industrial capital. It is a 
total victory of private property over all those of its qualities which 
are still in appearance human, and the complete subjection of the 
owner of private property to the essence of private proper- 
ty—labour. To be sure, the industrial capitalist also takes his 
pleasures. He does not by any means return to the unnatural 
simplicity of need; but his pleasure is only a_ side- 
issue — recreation— something subordinated to production; at the 
same time it is a calculated and, therefore, itself an economical 
pleasure. For he debits it to his capital’s expense account, and 
what is squandered on his pleasure must therefore amount to no 
more than will be replaced with profit through the reproduction 
of capita). Pleasure is therefore subsumed under capital, and the 
pleasure-taking individual under the capital-accumulating indi- 
vidual, whilst formerly the contrary was the case. The decrease in 
the interest rate is therefore a symptom of the annulment of 
capital only inasmuch as it is a symptom of the growing domination 
of capital—of the estrangement which is growing and therefore 
hastening to its annulment. This is indeed the only way in which 
that which exists affirms its opposite. ) 

The quarrel between the political economists about luxury and 
thrift is, therefore, only the quarrel between that political economy 
which has achieved clarity about the nature of wealth, and that 
political 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 neither 
therefore can make short work of the other. [XXIII 

I|/XXXIVI(%! Moreover, rent of land qua rent of land has been 

overthrown, since, contrary to the argument of the Physiocrats 
which maintains that the landowner is the only true producer, 

* See this volume, pp. 265-70.—Ed. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 317 

modern political economy has proved that the landowner as such 
is rather the only completely unproductive rentier. According to 
this theory, agriculture is the business of the capitalist, who invests 
his capital in it provided he can expect the usual profit. The claim 
of the Physiocrats—that landed property, as the sole productive 
property, should alone pay state taxes and therefore should alone 
approve them and participate in the affairs of state—is trans- 
formed into the opposite position that the tax on the rent of land 
is the only tax on unproductive income, and is therefore the only 
tax not detrimental to national production. It goes without saying 
that from this point of view also the political privilege of 
landowners no longer follows from their position as principal 
tax-payers. : 

Everything which Proudhon conceives as a movement of labour 
against capital is only the movement of labour in the determina- 
tion of capital, of industrial capital, against capital not consumed as 
capital, i. e., not consumed industrially. And this movement is 
proceeding along its triumphant road—the road to the victory of 
industrial capital. It is clear, therefore, that only when labour is 
grasped as the essence of private property, can the economic 
process as such be analysed in its real concreteness. 

Society, as it appears to the political economist, is civil society” in 
which every individual is a totality of needs and only I|XXXVI 
exists for the other person, as the other exists for him, insofar as 
each becomes a means for the other. The political economist 
reduces everything (just as does politics in its Rights of Man) to 
man, i. e., to the individual whom he strips of all determinateness 
so as to class him as capitalist or worker. 

The division of labour is the economic expression of the social 
character of labour within the estrangement. Or, since labour is only 
an expression of human activity within alienation, of the manifes- 
tation of life as the alienation of life, the division of labour, too, is 
therefore nothing else but the estranged, alienated positing of 
human activity as a real activity of the species or as activity of man as a 
spectes-being. 

As for the essence of the division of labour—and of course the 
division of labour had to be conceived as a major driving force in 
the production of wealth as soon as labour was recognised as the 
essence of private property—i.e., as for the estranged and alienated form 
of human activity as an activity of the species—the political economists 
are very vague and self-contradictory about it. 

Adam Smith: “This division of labour [...] is not originally the effect of any human 
wisdom [...]. It is the necessary, [...] slow and gradual consequence of [...] the 

propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. [...] This 
propensity” to trade is probably a “necessary consequence of the use of reason and 
of speech [...]. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of 
animals.” The animal, when it is grown up, is entirely independent. “Man has 
almost constant occasion for the help of others, and it is in vain for him to expect it 
from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can appeal to 
their personal interest, and show them that iteis for their own advantage to do for 
him what he requires of them. [...] We address ourselves, not to their humanity but 
to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. 
[...] 

“As it is by treaty, by barter, and by purchase that we obtain from one another 
the greater part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need of, so it is 
this same trucking disposition which originally gives occasion to the division of labour. 
In a tribe of hunters or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for 
example, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. He frequently 
exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at last 
that he can in this manner get more cattle and venison than if he himself went to 
the field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of 
bows, etc., grows to be his chief business [....] 

“The difference of natural talents in different men [...] is not [...] so much the 
cause as the effect of the division of labour.... Without the disposition to truck [...] 
and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and 
conveniency of life {....] All must have had [...] the same work to do, and there 
could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any 
great difference of talents. 

“As it is this disposition which forms that difference of talents [...] among men 
[...] so it is this same disposition which renders that difference useful. Many tribes 
of animals [...] of the same species derive from nature a much more remarkable 
distinction of genius, than what, antecedent to custom and education, appears to 
take place among men. By nature a philosopher is not in talent and in intelligence 
half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a 
greyhound from a spaniel, or this last from a shepherd’s dog. Those different 
tribes of animals, however, though all of the same species, are of scarce any use to 
one another. The mastiff cannot add to the advantages of his strength |{XXXVII 
by making use of the swiftness of the greyhound, etc. The effects of these different 
talents or grades of intelligence, for want of the power or disposition to barter and 
exchange, cannot be brought into a common stock, and do not in the least 
contribute to the better accommodation and conveniency of the species. Each animal 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 has 
distinguished its fellows. Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses 
are of use to one another; the different produces of their respective talents, by the 
general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, as it were, into a 
common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of the produce of 
other men’s industry he has occasion for. [...] 

“As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of la- 
bour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, 
or, in other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no 

person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employ- 
ment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his 
own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the 
produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for....” 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 319 

In an advanced state of society “every man thus lives by exchanging and 
becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is 
properly a commercial society”. (See Destutt de Tracy [,Elémens d’idéologie, Paris, 
1826, pp. 68 and 78): “Society is a series of reciprocal exchanges; commerce contains 
the whole essence of society.”) ... The accumulation of capitals mounts with the 
division of labour, and vice versa.” 

So much for Adam Smith.* 

“If every family produced all that it consumed, society could keep going 
although no exchange of any sort took place; without being fundamental, exchange is 
indispensable in our advanced state of society. The division of labour is a skilful 
deployment of man’s powers; it increases society's production—its power and its 
pleasures—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 for 
work. Those which arise from the condition of society consist of the capacity to 
divide up labour and to distribute different jobs amongst different people ... and the 
power 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—he 
requires a reward for the services rendered. The right of exclusive private property 
is indispensable to the establishment of exchange amongst men.” “Exchange and 
division of labour reciprocally condition each other.” 

Thus Skarbek. 
Mill presents developed exchange— trade—as a consequence of the 
division of labour. 

“The agency of man can be traced to very simple elements. He can, in fact, do 
nothing more than produce motion. He can move things towards one another, and 
he can separate them from one another: |{XXXVII]| the properties of matter 
perform all the rest.” “In the employment of labour and machinery, it is often 
found that the effects can be increased by skilful distribution, by separating all 
those operations which have any tendency to impede one another, and by bringing 
together all those operations which can be made in any way to aid one another. As 
men in general cannot perform many different operations with the same quickness 
and dexterity with which they can by practice learn to perform a few, it is always 
an advantage to limit as much as possible the number of operations imposed upon 
each. For dividing labour, and distributing the powers of men and machinery, to 
the greatest advantage, it is in most cases necessary to operate upon a large scale, 
in other words, to produce the commodities in greater masses. It is this advantage 
which gives existence to the great manufactories; a few of which, placed in the 
most convenient situations, frequently supply not one country, but many countries, 
with as much as they desire of the commodity produced.” 

2 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chs. II-IV, pp. 12-25. (Garnier, t. 1, 
1. I, Chs. H-IV, pp. 29-46), quoted with omissions and alterations.— Ed. 

b Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d’économie politique, Paris, 1817, t. I, pp. 300, 76-77; t. 
ll, p. 6.—Ed. 

Prédéric Skarbek, Théorie des richesses sociales, Paris, 1829, t. I, pp. 25-27, 75 and 
121-32.— Ed. 

320°- Karl Marx 

Thus Mill 

The whole of modern political economy agrees, however, that 
division of labour and wealth of production, division of labour and 
accumulation of capital, mutually determine each other; just as it 
agrees that only private property which is at liberty to follow its 
own course can produce the most useful and comprehensive 
division of labour. - 

Adam Smith’s argument can be summarised as follows: Division of 
labour bestows on labour infinite productive capacity. It stems 
from the propensity to exchange and barter, a specifically human 
propensity which is probably not accidental, but is conditioned by 
the use of reason and speech. The motive of those who engage in 
exchange is not humanity but egoism. The diversity of human 
talents is more the effect than the cause of the division of labour, 
ie., Of exchange. Besides, it is only the latter which makes such 
diversity useful. The particular attributes of the different breeds 
within a species of animal are by nature much more marked than 
the degrees of difference in human aptitude and activity. But 
because animals are unable to engage in exchange, no individual 
animal benefits from the difference in the attributes of animals of 
the same species but of different breeds. Animals are unable to 
combine the different attributes of their species, and are unable to 
contribute anything to the common advantage and comfort of the 
species. It is otherwise with men, amongst whom the most 
dissimilar talents and forms of activity are of use to one another, 
because they can bring their different products together into a 
commor stock, from which each can purchase. As the division of 
labour springs from the propensity to exchange, so it grows and is 
limited by the extent of exchange—by the extent of the market. In 
advanced conditions, every man is a merchant, and society is a 
commercial society. 

Say regards exchange as accidental and not fundamental. Society 
could exist without it. It becomes indispensable in the advanced 
state of society. Yet production cannot take place without it. Division 
of labour is a convenient, bad means—a skilful deployment of 
human powers for social wealth; but it reduces the ability of each 
person taken individually. The last remark is a step forward on the 
part of Say. 

Skarbek distinguishes the individual powers inherent in man— 
intelligence and the physical capacity for work—from the 

* James Mill, Elements of Political Economy, pp. 5-6 and 8-9 (Parisot, pp. 7, 
11-12).— Ed. 

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 32} 

powers derived from society— exchange and division of labour, 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 they designate egoism 
and self-interest as the basis of exchange, and buying and selling as the 
essential and adequate form of exchange. 

Mill presents trade as the consequence of the division of labour. 
With him human activity is reduced to mechanical motion. Division 
of labour and use of machinery promote wealth of production. 
Each person must be entrusted with as small a sphere of 
operations as possible. Division of labour and use of machinery, in 
their turn, imply large-scale production of wealth, and hence of 
products. This is the reason for large manufactories. 

I XXXVIIIl The examination of division of labour and exchange is 
of extreme interest, because these are perceptibly alienated expres- 
sions of human activity and essential power as a species activity 
and species power. 

' To assert that division of labour and exchange rest on private property 
is nothing but asserting that labour is the essence of private 
property—an assertion which the political economist cannot prove 
and which we wish to prove for him. Precisely in the fact that division 
of labour and exchange are aspects of private property lies the twofold 
proof, on the one hand that human life required private property for its 
realisation, and on the other hand that it now requires the 
supersession of private property. 

Division of labour and exchange are the two phenomena which lead 
the political economist to boast of the social character of his 
science, while in the same breath he gives unconscious expression 
to the contradiction in his science—the motivation of society by 
unsocial, particular interests. 

The factors we have to consider are: Firstly, the propensity to 
exchange—the basis of which is found in egoism—is regarded as the 
cause or reciprocal effect of the division of labour. Say regards 
exchange as not fundamental to the nature of society. 
Wealth—production—is explained by division of labour and 
exchange. The impoverishment of individual activity, and its loss 
of character as a result of the division of labour, are admitted. 
Exchange and division of labour are acknowledged as the sources 
of the great diversity of human talents—a diversity which in its turn 
becomes 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—his 
intelligence and his special disposition, or capacity, for work; and 

322 Kar] Marx 

(2) those derived from society and not from the actual individu- 
al—division of labour and exchange. 

Furthermore, the division of labour is limited by the market. 
Human labour is simple mechanical motion: the main work is done 
by the material properties of the objects. The fewest possible 
operations must be apportioned to any one individual. Splitting up 
of labour and concentration of capital; the insignificance of 
individual production and the production of wealth in large 
quantities. Meaning of.free private property within the division of 
labour. |XXXVIIIII*.