pc1 [15]
of the progressive human horde. Insofar as the landed property of classical antiquity reappears in modern allotment property, it belongs to political economy and we shall deal with it in the section on landed property. (All this is to be analyzed again more deeply and in greater detail later.) What we are concerned with here is this: the relationship of labor to capital or to the objective conditions of labor as capital, presupposes a historical process which dissolves the different forms, in which the laborer is an owner and the owner labors. This means first and foremost: (1) a _dissolution_ of the relation to the earth -- to land or soil -- as a natural condition of production which man treats as his own inorganic being, the laboratory of his forces and the domain of his will. All forms in which this property is found, assume a _communal entity_ whose members, whatever the formal distinctions between them, are _proprietors_ by virtue of being its members. Hence, the original form of this property is _direct communal property_ (the _oriental form_, modified among the Slavs; developed to the point of contradictions in classical antiquity and Germanic property, though still the hidden, if antagonistic, foundation). (2) _Dissolution of the relations_ in which man appears as the _proprietor of the instrument_. As the above form of landed property assumes a _real community_, so this ownership of the tool by the laborer assumes a particular form of development of manufacture -- namely, in the form of _handicraft labor_. Gild and corporative institutions are bound up with this. (The manufacturing activities of the ancient orient may be included under our heading (1) above.) here, labor itself is still half the expression of artistic creation, half its own reward, etc. [Hier die Arbeit selbst noch halb kunstlerisch, halb Selbstzweck.] The institution of the "master craftsman". The capitalist himself still a master craftsman. Special craft skill itself ensures the ownership of the instrument, etc., etc. In a sense, the mode of labor becomes hereditary together with the organization of labor and its instrument. Medieval town life. Labor still belongs to a man; a certain self-sufficient development of specialized [einseitige] capacities, etc. (3) Included in both is the fact that man possesses means of consumption prior to production, necessary in order to enable him to keep alive as producer -- i.e., in the course of production, _before_ its completion. As a landowner, he appears to be directly provided with the necessary fund for consumption. As a master artisan, he had inherited, earned or saved this fund, and as a youngster, he is still an _apprentice_, he does not yet appear as an independent worker in the strict sense, but shared the master's food in the patriarchal manner. As a (genuine) journeyman, there is a certain common utilization of the fund of consumption which is in the master's possession. Though this is not the journeyman's _property_, the laws and customs, etc., of the gild at least make him into a co-possessor. (This point to be elaborated.) (4) On the other hand, _dissolution_ both of the relations under which the _laborers themselves_, the _living units of labor power_ are still a _direct part of the objective conditions of production_ and are appropriated as such -- and are therefore slaves or serfs. For capital, the worker does not constitute a condition of production, but only labor. If this can be performed by machinery, or even by water or air, so much the better. And what capital appropriates is not the laborer, but his labor -- and not directly, but by means of exchange. These, then, on the one hand, are historic prerequisites without which the laborer cannot occur as free laborer, as objectiveless, purely subjective capacity