PRE-CAPITALIST ECONOMIC FORMATIONS
1857-58
this etext based on
Jack Cohen's 1964 English translation
As these were not intended for publication, but rather
Marx's self-clarification, no care was given to the
construction of paragraphs. Rather than leave such
interminable paragraphs intact -- and which are even
harder to read on a computer screen -- they have been
broken up. They can be reassembled as follows --
consider a one-space indent a Marx paragraph, all
others soft paragraphs.
I
One of the prerequisites of wage labor, and one of the historic
conditions for capital, is free labor and the exchange of free labor
against money, in order to reproduce money and to convert it into
values, in order to be consumed by money, not as use value for
enjoyment, but as use value for money. Another prerequisite is the
separation of free labor from the objective conditions of its
realization -- from the means and material of labor. This means above
all that the workers must be separated from the land, which functions as
his natural laboratory. This means the dissolution both of free petty
landownership and of communal landed property, based on the oriental
commune.
In both these forms, the relationship of the worker to the objective
conditions of his labor is one of ownership: this is the natural unity
of labor with its material prerequisites. Hence, the worker has an
objective existence independent of his labor. The individual is related
to himself as a proprietor, as master of the conditions of his reality.
The same relation holds between one individual and the rest. Where this
_prerequisite_ derives from the community, the others are his co-owners,
who are so many incarnations of the common property. Where it derives
from the individual families which jointly constitute the community,
they are independent owners co-existing with him, independent private
proprietors. The common property which formerly absorbed everything and
embraced them all, then subsists as a special _ager publicus_ [common
land] separate from the numerous private owners.
In both cases, individuals behave not as laborers but as owners -- and
as members of a community who also labor. The purpose of this labor is
not the _creation of value_, although they may perform surplus labor in
order to exchange it for foreign labor -- i.e., for surplus products.
Its purpose is the maintenance of the owner and his family as well as of
the communal body as a whole. The establishment of the individual as a
_worker_, stripped of all qualities except this one, is itself a product
of _history_.
The first prerequisite of this earliest form of landed property appears
as a human community, such as emerges from spontaneous evolution
[naturwuchsig]: the family, the family expanded into a tribe, or the
tribe created by the inter-marriage of families or combination of
tribes. We may take it for granted that pastoralism, or more generally
a migratory life, is the first form of maintaining existence, the tribe
not settling in a fixed place but using up what it finds locally and
then passing on. Men are not settled by nature (unless perhaps in such
fertile environments that they could subsist on a single tree like the
monkeys; otherwise they would roam, like the wild animals). Hence the
tribal community, the natural common body, appears not as the
consequence, but as the precondition of the joint (temporary)
appropriation and use of the soil.
Once men finally settle down, the way in which to a smaller degree this
original community is modified, will depend on various external,
climatic, geographical, physical, etc., conditions as well as on their
special natural make-up -- their tribal character. The spontaneously
evolved tribal community, or, if you will, the herd -- the common ties
of blood, language, custom, etc. -- is the first precondition of the
appropriation of the objective of life, and of the activity which
reproduces and gives material expression to, or objectifies
[vergegenstandlichenden] it (activity as herdsmen, hunters,
agriculturalists, etc.). The earth is the great laboratory, the arsenal
which provides both the means and the materials of labor, and also the
location, the _basis_ of the community. Men's relations to it is naive;
they regard themselves as its _communal proprietors_, and as those of
the community which produces and reproduces itself by living labor.
Only in so far as the individual is a member -- in the literal and
figurative sense -- of such a community, does he regard himself as an
owner or possessor. In reality, appropriation by means of the process
of labor takes place under these preconditions, which are not the
_product_ of labor but appears as its natural or _divine_ preconditions.
Where the fundamental relationship is the same, this form can realize
itself in a variety of ways. For instance, as is the case in most
Asiatic fundamental forms, it is quite compatible with the fact that the
_all-embracing unity_ which stands above all these small common bodies
may appear as the higher or _sole proprietor_, the real communities only
as _hereditary_ possessors. Since the _unity_ is the real owner, and
the real precondition of common ownership, it is perfectly possible for
it to appear as something separate and superior to the numerous real,
particular communities. The individual is then in fact propertyless, or
property -- i.e., the relationship of the individual to the natural
conditions of labor and reproduction, the inorganic nature which he
finds and makes his own, the objective body of his subjectivity --
appears to be mediated by means of a grant [Ablassen] from the total
unity to the individual through the intermediary of the particular
community. The despot here appears as the father of all the numerous
lesser communities, thus realizing the common unity of all. It
therefore follows that the surplus product (which, incidentally, is
legally determined in terms of [infolge] the real appropriation through
labor) belongs to this highest unity. Oriental despotism therefore
appears to lead to a legal absence of property, in most cases created
through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small
community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining and contains
within itself all conditions of production and surplus production.
Part of its surplus labor belongs to the higher community, which
ultimately appears as a _person_. This surplus labor is rendered both
as tribute and as common labor for the glory of the unity, in part that
of the despot, in part that of the imagined tribal entity of the god.
In so far as this type of common property is actually realized in labor,
it can appear in two ways. The small communities may vegetate
independently side by side, and within each the individual labors
independently with his family on the land allotted to him.
(There will also be a certain amount of labor for the common store --
for insurance as it were -- on the one hand; and on the other for
defraying the costs of the community as such, i.e., for war, religious
worship, etc. The dominion of lords, in its most primitive sense,
arises only at this point, e.g., in the Slavonic and Rumanian
communities. Here lies the transition to serfdom, etc.)
Secondly, the unity can involve a common organization of labor itself,
which in turn can constitute a veritable system, as in Mexico, and
especially Peru, among the ancient Celts, and some tribes of India.
Furthermore, the communality within the tribal body may tend to appear
either as a representation of its unity through the head of the tribal
kinship group, or as a relationship between the heads of families.
Hence, either a more despotic or a more democratic form of the
community. The communal conditions for real appropriation through
labor, such as irrigation systems (very important among the Asian
peoples), means of communication, etc., will then appear as the work of
the higher unity -- the despotic government which is poised above the
lesser communities. Cities in the proper sense arise by the side of
these villages only where the location is particularly favorable to
external trade, or where the head of the state and his satraps exchange
their revenue (the surplus product) against labor, which they expend as
labor-funds.
The second form (of property) has, like the first, given rise to
substantial variations, local, historical, etc. It is the product of a
more dynamic [bewegten] historical life, of the fate and modification of
the original tribes. The _community_ is here also the first
precondition, but unlike our first case, it is not here the substance of
which the individuals are mere accidents [Akzidenzen] or of which they
form mere spontaneously natural parts. The basis here is not the land,
but the city as already created seat (centre) of the rural population
(landowners). The cultivated area appears as the territory of the city;
not, as in the other case, the village as a mere appendage to the land.
However great the obstacles the land may put in the way of those who
till it and really appropriate it, it is ...
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