Karl Marx
The German Ideology
Part I: Feuerbach.
Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook
D. Proletarians and Communism
Individuals, Class, and Community
In the Middle Ages the citizens in each town were compelled to unite
against the landed nobility to save their skins. The extension of trade,
the establishment of communications, led the separate towns to get to
know other towns, which had asserted the same interests in the struggle
with the same antagonist. Out of the many local corporations of burghers
there arose only gradually the burgher class. The conditions of life of the
individual burghers became, on account of their contradiction to the
existing relationships and of the mode of labour determined by these,
conditions which were common to them all and independent of each
individual. The burghers had created the conditions insofar as they had
torn themselves free from feudal ties, and were created by them insofar
as they were determined by their antagonism to the feudal system which
they found in existence. When the individual towns began to enter into
associations, these common conditions developed into class conditions.
The same conditions, the same contradiction, the same interests
necessarily called forth on the whole similar customs everywhere. The
bourgeoisie itself with its conditions, develops only gradually, splits
according to the division of labour into various fractions and finally
absorbs all propertied classes it finds in existence [1] (while it develops the
majority of the earlier propertyless and a part of the hitherto propertied
classes into a new class, the proletariat) in the measure to which all
property found in existence is transformed into industrial or commercial
capital. The separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have
to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on
hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the
class in its turn achieves an independent existence over against the
individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of existence
predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal
development assigned to them by their class, become subsumed under
it. This is the same phenomenon as the subjection of the separate
individuals to the division of labour and can only be removed by the
abolition of private property and of labour itself We have already
indicated several times how this subsuming of individuals under the
class brings with it their subjection to all kinds of ideas, etc.
If from a philosophical point of view one considers this evolution of
individuals in the common conditions of existence of estates and
classes, which followed on one another, and in the accompanying
general conceptions forced upon them, it is certainly very easy to
imagine that in these individuals the species, or "Man", has evolved, or
that they evolved "Man" — and in this way one can give history some
hard clouts on the ear. [2] One can conceive these various estates and
classes to be specific terms of the general expression, subordinate
varieties of the species, or evolutionary phases of "Man".
This subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot be
abolished until a class has taken shape, which has no longer any
particular class interest to assert against the ruling class.
The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal
powers (relationships) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by
dismissing the general idea of it from one's mind, but can only be
abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers to
themselves and abolishing the division of labour. This is not possible
without the community. Only in community [with others has each]
individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the
community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. In the previous
substitutes for the community, in the State, etc. personal freedom has
existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of
the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class.
The illusory community, in which individuals have up till now combined,
always took on an independent existence in relation to them, and was at
the same time, since it was the combination of one class over against
another, not only a completely illusory community, but a new fetter as
well. In a real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and
through their association.
Individuals have always built on themselves, but naturally on
themselves within their given historical conditions and relationships, not
on the "pure" individual in the sense of the ideologists. But in the course
of historical evolution, and precisely through the inevitable fact that
within the division of labour social relationships take on an independent
existence, there appears a division within the life of each individual,
insofar as it is personal and insofar as it is determined by some branch
of labour and the conditions pertaining to it. (We do not mean it to be
understood from this that, for example, the rentier, the capitalist, etc.
cease to be persons; but their personality is conditioned and determined
by quite definite class relationships, and the division appears only in
their opposition to another class and, for themselves, only when they go
bankrupt.) In the estate (and even more in the tribe) this is as yet
concealed: for instance, a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a
commoner always a commoner, apart from his other relationships, a
quality inseparable from his individuality. The division between the
personal and the class individual, the accidental nature of the conditions
of life for the individual, appears only with the emergence of the class,
which is itself a product of the bourgeoisie. This accidental character is
only engendered and developed by competition and the struggle of
individuals among themselves. Thus, in imagination, individuals seem
freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their
conditions of life seem accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free,
because they are more subjected to the violence of things. The
difference from the estate comes out particularly in the antagonism
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. When the estate of the
urban burghers, the corporations, etc. emerged in opposition to the
landed nobility, their condition of existence — movable property and craft
labour, which had already existed latently before their separation from
the feudal ties — appeared as something positive, which was asserted
against feudal landed property, and, therefore, in its own way at first
took on a feudal form. Certainly the refugee serfs treated their previous
servitude as something accidental to their personality. But here they only
were doing what every class that is freeing itself from a fetter does; and
they did not free themselves as a class but separately. Moreover, they
did not rise above the system of estates, but only formed a new estate,
retaining their previous mode of labour even in their new situation, and
developing it further by freeing it from its earlier fetters, which no longer
corresponded to the development already attained. [3]
For the proletarians, on the other hand, the condition of their
existence, labour, and with it all the conditions of existence governing
modern society, have become something accidental, something over
which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no
social organisation can give them control. The contradiction between the
individuality of each separate proletarian and labour, the condition of life
forced upon him, becomes evident to him himself, for he is sacrificed
from youth upwards and, within his own class, has no chance of arriving
at the conditions which would place him in the other class.
Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and
assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and
hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are
to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very
condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of
all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves
directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which
society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the
State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must
overthrow the State.
It follows from all we have been saying up till now that the
communal relationship into which the individuals of a class entered, and
which was determined by their common interests over against a third
party, was always a community to which these individuals belonged only
as average individuals, only insofar as they lived within the conditions of
existence of their class — a relationship in which they participated not as
individuals but as members of a class. With the community of
revolutionary proletarians, on the other hand, who take their conditions
of existence and those of all members of society under their control, it is
just the reverse; it is as individuals that the individuals participate in it.
It is just this combination of individuals (assuming the advanced stage of
modern productive forces, of course) which puts the conditions of the
free development and movement of individuals under their control —
conditions which were previously abandoned to chance and had won an
independent existence over against the separate individuals just because
of their separation as individuals, and because of the necessity of their
combination which had been determined by the division of labour, and
through their separation had become a bond alien to them. Combination
up till now (by no means an arbitrary one, such as is expounded for
example in the Contrat social, but a necessary one) was an agreement
upon these conditions, within which the individuals were free to enjoy
the freaks of fortune (compare, e.g., the formation of the North
American State and the South American republics). This right to the
undisturbed enjoyment, within certain conditions, of fortuity and chance
has up till now been called personal freedom. These conditions of
existence are, of course, only the productive forces and forms of
intercourse at any particular time.
Forms of Intercourse
Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the
basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the
first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of
hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and
subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation
is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the
conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of
unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true
basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently
of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding
intercourse of individuals themselves. Thus the communists in practice
treat the conditions created up to now by production and intercourse as
inorganic conditions, without, however, imagining that it was the plan or
the destiny of previous generations to give them material, and without
believing that these conditions were inorganic for the individuals creating
them.
Contradiction between individuals and their conditions of life as contradiction between productive forces and the form of intercourse
The difference between the individual as a person and what is
accidental to him, is not a conceptual difference but an historical fact.
This distinction has a different significance at different times — e.g. the
estate as something accidental to the individual in the eighteenth
century, the family more or less too. It is not a distinction that we have
to make for each age, but one which each age makes itself from among
the different elements which it finds in existence, and indeed not
according to any theory, but compelled by material collisions in life.
What appears accidental to the later age as opposed to the earlier — and
this applies also to the elements handed down by an earlier age — is a
form of intercourse which corresponded to a definite stage of
development of the productive forces. The relation of the productive
forces to the form of intercourse is the relation of the form of intercourse
to the occupation or activity of the individuals. (The fundamental form of
this activity is, of course, material, on which depend all other forms - mental,
political, religious, etc. The various shaping of material life is, of
course, in every case dependent on the needs which are already
developed, and the production, as well as the satisfaction, of these
needs is an historical process, which is not found in the case of a sheep
or a dog (Stirner's refractory principal argument adversus hominem),
although sheep and dogs in their present form certainly, but malgré eux,
are products of an historical process.) The conditions under which
individuals have intercourse with each other, so long as the above-mentioned
contradiction is absent, are conditions appertaining to their
individuality, in no way external to them; conditions under which these
definite individuals, living under definite relationships, can alone produce
their material life and what is connected with it, are thus the conditions
of their self-activity and are produced by this self-activity. The definite
condition under which they produce, thus corresponds, as long as the
contradiction has not yet appeared, to the reality of their conditioned
nature, their one-sided existence, the one-sidedness of which only
becomes evident when the contradiction enters on the scene and thus
exists for the later individuals. Then this condition appears as an
accidental fetter, and the consciousness that it is a fetter is imputed to
the earlier age as well.
These various conditions, which appear first as conditions of self-activity,
later as fetters upon it, form in the whole evolution of history a
coherent series of forms of intercourse, the coherence of which consists
in this: in the place of an earlier form of intercourse, which has become
a fetter, a new one is put, corresponding to the more developed
productive forces and, hence, to the advanced mode of the self-activity
of individuals - a form which in its turn becomes a fetter and is then
replaced by another. Since these conditions correspond at every stage to
the simultaneous development of the productive forces, their history is at
the same time the history of the evolving productive forces taken over by
each new generation, and is, therefore, the history of the development of
the forces of the individuals themselves.
Since this evolution takes place naturally, i.e. is not subordinated to a
general plan of freely combined individuals, it proceeds from various
localities, tribes, nations, branches of labour, etc. each of which to start
with develops independently of the others and only gradually enters into
relation with the others. Furthermore, it takes place only very slowly; the
various stages and interests are never completely overcome, but only
subordinated to the prevailing interest and trail along beside the latter
for centuries afterwards. It follows from this that within a nation itself
the individuals, even apart from their pecuniary circumstances, have
quite different developments, and that an earlier interest, the peculiar
form of intercourse of which has already been ousted by that belonging
to a later interest, remains for a long time afterwards in possession of a
traditional power in the illusory community (State, law), which has won
an existence independent of the individuals; a power which in the last
resort can only be broken by a revolution. This explains why, with
reference to individual points which allow of a more general summing-up,
consciousness can sometimes appear further advanced than the
contemporary empirical relationships, so that in the struggles of a later
epoch one can refer to earlier theoreticians as authorities.
On the other hand, in countries which, like North America, begin in
an already advanced historical epoch, the development proceeds very
rapidly. Such countries have no other natural premises than the
individuals, who settled there and were led to do so because the forms
of intercourse of the old countries did not correspond to their wants.
Thus they begin with the most advanced individuals of the old countries,
and, therefore, with the correspondingly most advanced form of
intercourse, before this form of intercourse has been able to establish
itself in the old countries. This is the case with all colonies, insofar as
they are not mere military or trading stations. Carthage, the Greek
colonies, and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, provide
examples of this. A similar relationship issues from conquest, when a
form of intercourse which has evolved on another soil is brought over
complete to the conquered country: whereas in its home it was still
encumbered with interests and relationships left over from earlier
periods, here it can and must be established completely and without
hindrance, if only to assure the conquerors' lasting power. (England and
Naples after the Norman conquest. when they received the most perfect
form of feudal organisation.)
[5. The Contradiction Bteween the Productive Forces and the Form of Intercourse as the Basis for Social Revolution]
This contradiction between the productive forces and the form of
intercourse, which, as we saw, has occurred several times in past
history, without, however, endangering the basis, necessarily on each
occasion burst out in a revolution, taking on at the same time various
subsidiary forms, such as all-embracing collisions, collisions of various
classes, contradiction of consciousness, battle of ideas, etc., political
conflict, etc. From a narrow point of view one may isolate one of these
subsidiary forms and consider it as the basis of these revolutions; and
this is all the more easy as the individuals who started the revolutions
had illusions about their own activity according to their degree of culture
and the stage of historical development.
Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view,
in the contradiction between the productive forces and the form of
intercourse. Incidentally, to lead to collisions in a country, this
contradiction need not necessarily have reached its extreme limit in this
particular country. The competition with industrially more advanced
countries, brought about by the expansion of international intercourse, is
sufficient to produce a similar contradiction in countries with a backward
industry (e.g. the latent proletariat in Germany brought into view by view
by the competition of English industry).
Conquest
This whole interpretation of history appears to be contradicted by the
fact of conquest. Up till now violence, war, pillage, murder and robbery,
etc. have been accepted as the driving force of history. Here we must
limit ourselves to the chief points and take, therefore, only the most
striking example — the destruction of an old civilisation by a barbarous
people and the resulting formation of an entirely new organisation of
society. (Rome and the barbarians; feudalism and Gaul; the Byzantine
Empire and the Turks.)
With the conquering barbarian people war itself is still, as indicated
above, a regular form of intercourse, which is the more eagerly exploited
as the increase in population together with the traditional and, for it, the
only possible, crude mode of production gives rise to the need for new
means of production. In Italy, on the other hand, the concentration of
landed property (caused not only by buying-up and indebtedness but
also by inheritance, since loose living being rife and marriage rare, the
old families gradually died out and their possessions fell into the hands
of a few) and its conversion into grazing land (caused not only by the
usual economic forces still operative today but by the importation of
plundered and tribute-corn and the resultant lack of demand for Italian
corn) brought about the almost total disappearance of the free
population. The very slaves died out again and again, and had
constantly to be replaced by new ones. Slavery remained the basis of the
whole productive system. The plebeians, midway between freemen and
slaves, never succeeded in becoming more than a proletarian rabble.
Rome indeed never became more than a city; its connection with the
provinces was almost exclusively political and could, therefore, easily be
broken again by political events.
Nothing is more common than the notion that in history up till now it
has only been a question of taking. The barbarians take the Roman
Empire, and this fact of taking is made to explain the transition from the
old world to the feudal system. In this taking by barbarians, however,
the question is, whether the nation which is conquered has evolved
industrial productive forces, as is the case with modern peoples, or
whether their productive forces are based for the most part merely on
their association and on the community. Taking is further determined by
the object taken. A banker's fortune, consisting of paper, cannot be
taken at all, without the taker's submitting to the conditions of
production and intercourse of the country taken. Similarly the total
industrial capital of a modern industrial country. And finally, everywhere
there is very soon an end to taking, and when there is nothing more to
take, you have to set about producing. From this necessity of producing,
which very soon asserts itself, it follows that the form of community
adopted by the settling conquerors must correspond to the stage of
development of the productive forces they find in existence; or, if this is
not the case from the start, it must change according to the productive
forces. By this, too, is explained the fact, which people profess to have
noticed everywhere in the period following the migration of the peoples,
namely, that the servant was master, and that the conquerors very soon
took over language, culture and manners from the conquered. The
feudal system was by no means brought complete from Germany, but
had its origin, as far as the conquerors were concerned, in the martial
organisation of the army during the actual conquest, and this only
evolved after the conquest into the feudal system proper through the
action of the productive forces found in the conquered countries. To
what an extent this form was determined by the productive forces is
shown by the abortive attempts to realise other forms derived from
reminiscences of ancient Rome (Charlemagne, etc.).
Contradictions of Big Industry: Revolution
Our investigation hitherto started from the instruments of production,
and it has already shown that private property was a necessity for
certain industrial stages. In industrie extractive private property still
coincides with labour; in small industry and all agriculture up till now
property is the necessary consequence of the existing instruments of
production; in big industry the contradiction between the instrument of
production and private property appears from the first time and is the
product of big industry; moreover, big industry must be highly developed
to produce this contradiction. And thus only with big industry does the
abolition of private property become possible.
[9. Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of Intercourse]
In big industry and competition the whole mass of conditions of
existence, limitations, biases of individuals, are fused together into the
two simplest forms: private property and labour. With money every form
of intercourse, and intercourse itself, is considered fortuitous for the
individuals. Thus money implies that all previous intercourse was only
intercourse of individuals under particular conditions, not of individuals
as individuals. These conditions are reduced to two: accumulated labour
or private property, and actual labour. If both or one of these ceases,
then intercourse comes to a standstill. The modern economists
themselves, e.g. Sismondi, Cherbuliez, etc., oppose "association of
individuals" to "association of capital". On the other hand, the
individuals themselves are entirely subordinated to the division of labour
and hence are brought into the most complete dependence on one
another. Private property, insofar as within labour itself it is opposed to
labour, evolves out of the necessity of accumulation, and has still, to
begin with, rather the form of the communality; but in its further
development it approaches more and more the modern form of private
property. The division of labour implies from the outset the division of
the conditions of labour, of tools and materials, and thus the splitting-up
of accumulated capital among different owners, and thus, also, the
division between capital and labour, and the different forms of property
itself. The more the division of labour develops and accumulation grows,
the sharper are the forms that this process of differentiation assumes.
Labour itself can only exist on the premise of this fragmentation.
Thus two facts are here revealed. First the productive forces appear
as a world for themselves, quite independent of and divorced from the
individuals, alongside the individuals: the reason for this is that the
individuals, whose forces they are, exist split up and in opposition to one
another, whilst, on the other hand, these forces are only real forces in
the intercourse and association of these individuals. Thus, on the one
hand, we have a totality of productive forces, which have, as it were,
taken on a material form and are for the individuals no longer the forces
of the individuals but of private property, and hence of the individuals
only insofar as they are owners of private property themselves. Never, in
any earlier period, have the productive forces taken on a form so
indifferent to the intercourse of individuals as individuals, because their
intercourse itself was formerly a restricted one. On the other hand,
standing over against these productive forces, we have the majority of
the individuals from whom these forces have been wrested away, and
who, robbed thus of all real life-content, have become abstract
individuals, but who are, however, only by this fact put into a position to
enter into relation with one another as individuals.
The only connection which still links them with the productive forces
and with their own existence — labour — has lost all semblance of self-activity
and only sustains their life by stunting it. While in the earlier
periods self-activity and the production of material life were separated,
in that they devolved on different persons, and while, on account of the
narrowness of the individuals themselves, the production of material life
was considered as a subordinate mode of self-activity, they now diverge
to such an extent that altogether material life appears as the end, and
what produces this material life, labour (which is now the only possible
but, as we see, negative form of self-activity), as the means.
[10. The Necessity, Preconditions and Consequences of the Abolition of Private Property]
Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must
appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve
self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence. This
appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the
productive forces, which have been developed to a totality and which
only exist within a universal intercourse. From this aspect alone,
therefore, this appropriation must have a universal character
corresponding to the productive forces and the intercourse.
The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more than the
development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material
instruments of production. The appropriation of a totality of instruments
of production is, for this very reason, the development of a totality of
capacities in the individuals themselves.
This appropriation is further determined by the persons appropriating.
Only the proletarians of the present day, who are completely shut off
from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a complete and no
longer restricted self-activity, which consists in the appropriation of a
totality of productive forces and in the thus postulated development of a
totality of capacities. All earlier revolutionary appropriations were
restricted; individuals, whose self-activity was restricted by a crude
instrument of production and a limited intercourse, appropriated this
crude instrument of production, and hence merely achieved a new state
of limitation. Their instrument of production became their property, but
they themselves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their
own instrument of production. In all expropriations up to now, a mass of
individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in
the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of
production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all.
Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore,
only when controlled by all.
This appropriation is further determined by the manner in which it
must be effected. It can only be effected through a union, which by the
character of the proletariat itself can again only be a universal one, and
through a revolution, in which, on the one hand, the power of the earlier
mode of production and intercourse and social organisation is
overthrown, and, on the other hand, there develops the universal
character and the energy of the proletariat, without which the revolution
cannot be accomplished; and in which, further, the proletariat rids itself
of everything that still clings to it from its previous position in society.
Only at this stage does self-activity coincide with material life, which
corresponds to the development of individuals into complete individuals
and the casting-off of all natural limitations. The transformation of labour
into self-activity corresponds to the transformation of the earlier limited
intercourse into the intercourse of individuals as such. With the
appropriation of the total productive forces through united individuals,
private property comes to an end. Whilst previously in history a
particular condition always appeared as accidental, now the isolation of
individuals and the particular private gain of each man have themselves
become accidental.
The individuals, who are no longer subject to the division of labour,
have been conceived by the philosophers as an ideal, under the name
"Man". They have conceived the whole process which we have outlined
as the evolutionary process of "Man", so that at every historical stage
"Man" was substituted for the individuals and shown as the motive force
of history. The whole process was thus conceived as a process of the
self-estrangement of "Man", and this was essentially due to the fact that
the average individual of the later stage was always foisted on to the
earlier stage, and the consciousness of a later age on to the individuals
of an earlier. Through this inversion, which from the first is an abstract
image of the actual conditions, it was possible to transform the whole of
history into an evolutionary process of consciousness.
The Necessity of the Communist Revolution
Finally, from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain
these further conclusions:
(1) In the development of productive forces
there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse
are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only
cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces
(machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth,
which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its
advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided
antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all
members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the
necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness,
which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the
contemplation of the situation of this class.
(2) The conditions under
which definite productive forces can be applied are the conditions of the
rule of a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its
property, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the form
of the State; and, therefore, every revolutionary struggle is directed
against a class, which till then has been in power.
[4]
(3) In all revolutions
up till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was
only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new
distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution
is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with
labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves,
because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a
class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the
expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within
present society; and
(4) Both for the production on a mass scale of this
communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the
alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can
only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is
necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be
overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it
can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages
and become fitted to found society anew.
Footnotes
1. [Marginal note by Marx:] To begin with it absorbs the branches of labour directly belonging to the State and then all ±[more or less] ideological estates.
2. The Statement which frequently occurs with Saint Max that each is all that he is through the State is fundamentally the same as the statement that bourgeois is only a specimen of the bourgeois species; a statement which presupposes that the class of bourgeois existed before the individuals constituting it. [Marginal note by Marx to this sentence:] With the philosophers pre-existence of the class.
3. N.B. — It must not he forgotten that the serf's very need of existing and the impossibility of a large-scale economy, which involved the distribution of the allotments among the serfs, very soon reduced the services of the serfs to their lord to an average of payments in kind and statute-labour. This made it possible for the serf to accumulate movable property and hence facilitated his escape out of the possession of his lord and gave him the prospect of making his way as an urban citizen; it also created gradations among the serfs, so that the runaway serfs were already half burghers. It is likewise obvious that the serfs who were masters of a craft had the best chance of acquiring movable property.
4. [Marginal note by Marx:] The people are interested in maintaining the present state of production.