liIiRe p.XXXVI* The subjective essence of private property — private property as activity for itself,? as subject, as person— is labour. It
is therefore evident that only the political economy which acknowledged labour as its principlke—Adam Smith—and which therefore
no longer looked upon private property as a mere condition
external to man— that it is this political economy which has to be
regarded on the one hand as a product of the real energy and the
real movement of private property (it is a movement of private
property become independent for itself in consciousness—the
modern industry as Self—as a product of modern industry—and
on the other hand, as a force which has quickened and glorified
the energy and development of modern industry and made it a
power in the realm of consciousness.

To this enlightened political economy, which has discovered— within private property—the subjective essence of wealth, the
adherents of the monetary and mercantile system, who look upon
private property only as an objective substance confronting men, seem
therefore to be fetishists, Catholics. Engels was therefore right to
call Adam Smith the Luther of Political Economy. Just as Luther
recognised religion —faith—as the substance of the external world
and in consequence stood opposed to Catholic paganism — just as
he superseded external religiosity by making religiosity the inner
substance of man— just as he negated the priests outside the layman
because he transplanted the priest into laymen’s hearts, just so with

* This refers to the missing part of the second manuscript.— Ed.
Cf. Frederick Engels, “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” (see this
volume, p. 422).— Ed.

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 991

wealth: wealth as something outside man and independent of him,
and therefore as something to be maintained and asserted only in an
external fashion, is done away with; that is, this external, mindless objectivity of wealth is done away with, with private property being
incorporated in man himself and with man himself being recognised
as its essence. But as a result man is brought within the orbit of
private property, just as with Luther he is brought within the orbit of
religion. Under the semblance of recognising man, the political
economy whose principle is labour rather carries to its logical conclusion the denial of man, since man himself no longer stands in an
external relation of tension to the external substance of private
property, but has himself become this tense essence of private property. What was previously being external to oneself—man’s actual
externalisation—has merely become the act of externalising—
the process of alienating. This political economy begins by seeming to acknowledge man (his independence, spontaneity, etc.);
then, locating private property in man’s own being, it can no
longer be conditioned by the local, national or other characteristics of private property as of something existing outside itself. This
political economy, consequently, displays a cosmopolitan, universal energy which overthrows every restriction and bond so as to
establish itself instead as the sole politics, the sole universality, the sole
limit and sole bond. Hence it must throw aside this hypocrisy in the
course of its further development and come out im its complete
cynicism. And this it does—untroubled by all the apparent
contradictions in which it becomes involved as a result of this
theory — by developing the idea of labour much more one-sidedly, and
therefore more sharply and more consistently, as the sole essence of wealth;
by proving the implications of this theory to be anti-human in
character, in contrast to the other, original approach. Finally, by
dealing the death-blow to rent— that last, individual, natural mode of
private property and source of wealth existing independently of the
movement of labour, that expression of feudal property, an
expression which has already become wholly economic in character
and therefore incapable of resisting political economy. (The Ricardo
school.) There is not merely a relative growth in the cynicism of
political economy from Smith through Say to Ricardo, Mill, etc.,
inasmuch as the implications of industry appear more developed and
more contradictory in the eyes of the last-named; these later
economists also advance in a positive sense constantly and consciously further than their predecessors in their estrangement from man.
They do so, however, only because their science develops more
consistently and truthfully. Because they make private property in its

active form the subject, thus simultaneously turning man into the
essence — and at the same time turning man as non-essentiality into
the essence — the contradiction of reality corresponds completely to
the contradictory being which they accept as their principle. Far
from refuting it, the ruptured | world of industry confirms their
self-ruptured principle. Their principle is, after all, the principle of
this rupture.

The physiocratic doctrine of Dr. Quesnay forms the transition from
the mercantile system to Adam Smith. Physiocracy represents directly
the decomposition of feudal property in economic terms, but it
therefore just as directly represents its economic metamorphosis and
restoration, save that now its language is no longer feudal but
economic. All wealth is resolved into land and cultivation (agriculture). Land is not yet capital: it is still a special mode of its existence,
the validity of which is supposed to lie in, and to derive from, its
natural peculiarity. Yet land is a general natural element, whilst the
mercantile system admits the existence of wealth only in the form of
precious metal. Thus the object of wealth—its matter—has straightway obtained the highest degree of universality within the bounds of
nature, insofar as even as nature, it is immediate objective wealth. And
land only exists for man through labour, through agriculture.

Thus the subjective essence of wealth has already been transferred to labour. But at the same time agriculture is the only
productive labour. Hence, labour is not yet grasped in its generality
and abstraction: it is still bound to a particular natural element as its
matter, and it is therefore only recognised in a particular mode of
existence determined by nature. It is therefore still only a specific,
particular alienation of man, just as its product is likewise conceived nearly (as] a specific form of wealth—due more to nature
than to labour itself. The land is here still recognised as a
phenomenon of nature independent of man—not yet as capital,
i.e., as an aspect of labour itself. Labour appears, rather, as an
aspect of the land. But since the fetishism of the old external
wealth, of wealth existing only as an object, has been reduced to a
very simple natural element, and since its essence—even if only
partially and in a particular form — has been recognised within its
subjective existence, the necessary step forward has been made in
revealing the general nature of wealth and hence in the raising up
of labour im its total absoluteness (i.e., its abstraction) as the
principle. It is argued against physiocracy that agriculture, from the
economic point of view—that is to say, from the only valid point
of view—does not differ from any other industry; and that the
essence of wealth, therefore, is not a specific form of labour bound

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 298

to a particular element—a particular expression of labour—but
labour in general.

Physiocracy denies particular, external, merely objective wealth
by declaring labour to be the essence of wealth. But for physiocracy
labour is at first only the subjective essence of landed property. (It
takes its departure from the type of property which historically
appears as the dominant and acknowledged type.) It turns only
landed property into alienated man. It annuls its feudal character
by declaring industry (agriculture) as its essence. But it disavows the
world of industry and acknowledges the feudal system by declaring agriculture to be the only industry.

It is clear that if the subjective essence of industry is now grasped
(of industry in opposition to landed property, ie., of industry
constituting itself as industry), this essence includes within itself its
opposite. For just as industry incorporates annulled landed property, the subjective essence of industry at the same time incorporates the subjective essence of landed property.

Just as landed property is the first form of private property,
with industry at first confronting it historically merely as a special
kind of property—or, rather, as landed property’s liberated
slave —so this process repeats itself in the scientific analysis of the
subjective essence of private property, labour. Labour appears at
first only as agricultural labour; but then asserts itself as labour in
general.

\{111| 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.