pc1 [4]
etc. The member of the community reproduces himself not through co-operation in wealth-producing labor, but in co-operation in labor for the (real or imaginary) communal interests aimed at sustaining the union against external and internal stress [nach aussen und innen]. Property formally belongs to the Roman citizen, the private owner of land is such only by virtue of being Roman, but any Roman is also a private landowner. Another form of the property of working individuals, self-sustaining members of the community, in the natural conditions of their labor, is the _Germanic_. Here, the member of the community as such is not, as in the specifically oriental form, co-owner of the communal property. (Where property exists _only_ as communal property, the individual member as such is only the _possessor_ of a particular part of it, hereditary or not, for any fraction of property belongs to no member for himself, but only as the direct part of the community, consequently as someone in direct unity with the community and not as distinct from it. The individual is therefore only a possessor. What exists is only _communal_ property and _private possession_. Historic and local, etc., circumstances may modify the character of this possession in its relation to the communal property in very different ways, depending on whether labor is performed in isolation by the private possessor or is in turn determined by the community, or by the unity standing above the particular community.) Neither is the land [in the Germanic community] occupied by the community as in the Roman, Greek (in brief, the ancient classical) form as Roman land. Part of it [that is, in classical antiquity] remains with the community as such, as distinct from the members, ager publicus in its various forms; the remainder is distributed, each plot of land being Roman by virtue of the fact that it is the private property, the domain, of a Roman, the share of the laboratory which is his; conversely, he is Roman only in so far as he possesses this sovereign right over part of the Roman soil. [ Translator Note: The ensuing passages are noted down by Marx from Niebuhr's _Roman History_, I, 418, 436, 614, 615, 317-19, 328-31, 333, 335. ] In antiquity urban crafts and trade were held in low, but agriculture in high, esteem; in the Middle Ages their status was reversed. The right of use of common land by possession originally belonged to the Patricians, who later granted it to their clients; the assignment of property out of the ager publicus belonged exclusively to the Plebeians; all assignments in favor of Plebeians and compensation for a share in the common land. Landed property in the strict sense, if we except the area surrounding the city wall, was originally in the hands only of Plebeians (rural communities subsequently absorbed). Essence of the Roman Plebs as a totality of agriculturalists, as described in their quiritarian (citizen) property. The ancients unanimously commended farming as the activity proper to free men, the school for soldiers. The ancient stock [Stamm, which also means "tribe"] of the nation is preserved in it; it changes in the towns, where foreign merchants and artisans settle, as the natives migrate there, attracted by the hope of gain. Wherever there is slavery, the freedman seeks his subsistence in such activities, often accumulating wealth; hence in antiquity such occupations were generally in their hands and therefore unsuitable for citizens; hence the view that the admission of craftsmen to full citizenship was a hazardous procedure (the Greeks, as a rule, excluded them from it). "No Roman was permitted to lead the life of a petty trader or craftsman." The ancients had no conception of gild pride and dignity, as in medieval urban history; and even there the military spirit declined as the gilds vanquished the (aristocratic)