pc1 [10]
explanation is not the _unity_ of living and active human beings with the natural, in organic conditions of their metabolism with nature, and therefore their appropriation of nature; nor is this the result of a historic process. What we must explain is the _separation_ of these inorganic conditions of human existence from this active existence, a separation which is only fully completed in the relationship between wage-labor and capital. In the relationship of slavery and serfdom there is no such separation; what happens is that one part of society is treated by another as the mere _inorganic and natural_ condition of its own reproduction. The slave stands in no sort of relation to the objective conditions of his labor. It is rather _labor_ itself, both in the form of the slave as of the serf, which is placed among the other living things [Naturwesen] _as inorganic condition_ of production, alongside the cattle or as an appendage of the soil. In other words: the original conditions of production appear as natural prerequisites, _natural conditions of existence of the producer_, just as his living body, however reproduced and developed by him, is not originally established by himself, but appears as his _prerequisite_; his own (physical) being is a natural prerequisite, not established by himself. These _natural conditions of existence_, to which he is related as to an inorganic body, have a dual character: they are (1) subjective and (2) objective. The producer occurs as part of a family, tribe, a grouping of his people, etc. -- which acquires historically differing shapes as the result of mixture and conflict with others. It is as such a communal part that he has his relation to a determined (piece of) nature (let us still call it earth, land, soil), as his own inorganic being, the conditions of his production and reproduction. As the natural part of the community he participates in the communal property and takes a separate share in his own possession; just so, as a Roman citizen by birth, he has (at least) ideally a claim to the ager publicus and a real claim to so and so many juggera [units] of land, etc. His _property_ -- i.e., his relation to the natural prerequisites of his own production as _his own_ -- is mediated by his natural membership of a community. (The abstraction of a community whose members have nothing in common but language, etc., and barely even that, is plainly the product of much later historical circumstances.) It is, for instance, evident that the individual is related to his language as _his own_ only as the natural member of a human community. Language as the product of an individual is an absurdity. But so also is property. Language itself is just as much the product of a community, as in another respect it is the existence of the community: it is, as it were, the communal being speaking for itself. Communal production and communal ownership, as found, e.g., in Peru, is evidently a _secondary_ form introduced and transmitted by conquering tribes, who amongst themselves [bei sich selbst] had been familiar with common ownership and communal production in the older and simpler forms, such as occurs in India and among the Slavs. Similarly, the form found, e.g., among the Celts in Wales appears to have been introduced there by more advanced conquerors, and thus to be _secondary_. The completeness and systematic elaboration of these systems under [the direction of] a supreme authority demonstrate their later origins. Just so the feudalism introduced into England was formally more complete than the feudalism which had naturally grown up on France. Among nomadic pastoral tribes -- and all pastoral people are originally migratory -- the earth, like all other conditions of nature, appears in its elementary boundlessness, e.g., in the Asian steppes and the Asian high plateaux. It is grazed, etc., consumed by the herds, which provide the nomadic peoples with their subsistence. They regard it as their property, though