pc1 [8]
exercises its ownership of the land -- i.e., appropriates its fruits by means of labor. And this in turn will depend on the climate, the physical properties of the soil, the physically conditioned mode of its utilization, the relationships to hostile or neighboring tribes, and such modification as are introduced by migrations, historical events, etc. If the community as such is to continue in the old way, the reproduction of its members under the objective conditions already assumed as given, is necessary. Production itself, the advance of population (which also falls under the head of production), in time necessarily eliminates these conditions, destroying instead of reproducing them, etc., and as this occurs the community decays and dies, together with the property relations on which it was based. The Asiatic form necessarily survives the longest and most stubbornly. This is due to the fundamental principle on which it is based -- that is, that the individual does not become independent of the community; that the circle of production is self-sustaining, unity of agriculture and craft manufacture, etc. If the individual changes his relation to the community, he modifies and undermines both the community and its economic premise; conversely, the modification of this economic premise -- produced by its own dialectic, pauperization, etc. Note especially the influence of warfare and conquest. While, e.g., in Rome this is an essential part of the economic condition of the community itself, it breaks the real bond on which the community rests. In all these forms, the basis of evolution is the _reproduction_ of relations between individuals and community _assumed as given_ -- they may be more or less primitive, more or less the result of history, but fixed into tradition -- and a _definite, predetermined objective_ existence, both as regards the relation to the conditions of labor and the relation between one man and his co-workers, fellow-tribesmen, etc. Such evolution is therefore from the outset _limited_, but once the limits are transcended, decay and disintegration ensue. Evolution of slavery, concentration of landed property, exchange, a monetary economy, conquest, etc., as among the Romans. All these appeared nevertheless up to a point to be compatible with the base, and merely innocent extensions of it, or else mere abuses arising from it. Considerable developments are thus possible within a given sphere. Individuals may appear to be great. But free and full development of individual or society is inconceivable here, for such evolution stands in contradiction to the original relationship. Among the ancients, we discover no single enquiry as to which form of landed property, etc., is the most productive, which creates maximum wealth. Wealth does not appear as the aim of production, although Cato may well investigate the most profitable cultivation of fields, or Brutus may even lend money at the most favorable rate of interest. The enquiry is always about what kind of property creates the best citizens. Wealth as an end in itself appears only among a few trading peoples -- monopolists of the carrying trade -- who live in the pores of the ancient world like the Jews in medieval society. Wealth is, on the one hand, a thing, realized in things, in material products as against man as a subject. On the other hand, in its capacity as value, it is the mere right to command other people's labor, not for the purpose of dominion, but of private enjoyment, etc. In all its forms, it appears in the form of objects, whether of things or of relationships by means of things, which lie outside of, and as it were accidentally beside, the individual. Thus the ancient conception, in which man always appears (in however narrowly national, religious, or political a definition) as the aim of production, seems very much more exalted than the modern world, in which production is the aim of man and wealth the aim of production. In fact, however, when the