pc1 [12]
to his individuality, as its mode of existence. We reduce this _property to the relationship to the conditions of production_. Why not to those of consumption, since originally the act of producing by the individual is confined to the reproduction of his own body through the appropriation of ready-made objects prepared by nature for consumption? But even where these have merely to be _found_ and _discovered_, effort, labor -- as in hunting, fishing, the care of flocks -- and the production (i.e., the development) of certain capacities by the subject, are soon required. Moreover, conditions in which man need merely reach for what is already available, without any tools (i.e., without products of labor already designed for production), et., are very transitory, and can nowhere be regarded as normal; not even as normal in the most primitive state. In addition, the original conditions of production automatically include matter directly consumable without labor, such as fruit, animals, etc.; consequently, the fund of consumption itself appears as a part of the _original fund of production_. The fundamental condition of property based on tribalism (which is originally formed out of the community) is to be a member of the tribe. Consequently, a tribe conquered and subjugated by another becomes _propertyless_ and part of the _inorganic conditions_ of the conquering tribe's reproduction, which that community regards as its own. Slavery and serfdom are therefore simply further developments of property based on tribalism. They necessarily modify all its forms. This they are least able to do in the Asiatic form. In the self-sustaining unity of and agriculture on which this form is based, conquest is not so essential a condition as where _landed property_, _agriculture_, predominate exclusively. On the other hand, since the individual in this form never becomes an owner but only a possessor, he is at bottom himself the property, the slave of that which embodies the unity of the community. Here slavery neither puts an end to the conditions of labor, nor does it modify the essential relationship. It is, therefore, now evident that: Insofar as property is merely a conscious attitude to the conditions of production as to _one's own_ -- an attitude established by the community for the individual, proclaimed and guaranteed as law; insofar as the existence of the producer therefore appears as an existence within the objective conditions _belonging to him_, it is realized only through production. Actual appropriation takes place not through the relationship to these conditions as expressed in thought, but through the active, real relationship to them; in the process of positing them as the conditions of man's subjective activity. But this also clearly means that _these conditions change_. What makes a region of the earth into a hunting ground, is being hunted over by tribes; what turns the soil into a prolongation of the body of the individual is agriculture. Once the _city of Rome_ had been built and its surrounding land cultivated by its citizens, the conditions of the community were different from what they had been before. The object of all these communities is preservation -- i.e., the production of the individuals which constitute them as proprietors, i.e., in the same objective mode of existence, which also forms the relationship of the members to each other, and therefore forms the community itself. But this reproduction is at the same time necessarily new production and the destruction of the old form. For instance, where each individual is supposed to possess so many acres of land, the mere increase in population constitutes an obstacle. If this is to be overcome, colonization will develop and this necessitates wars of conquest. This leads to slavery, etc., also, e.g., the enlargement of the ager publicus, and hence to the rise of the Patricians, who represent the community, etc. Thus the reservation of the ancient community implies the