private property. The
desire for these two objects, i.e., the need for
them, shows each of the property owners, and makes him conscious of
it, that he has yet another essential relation to objects besides that of
private ownership, that he is not the particular being that he considers
himself to be, but a total being whose needs stand in the relationship
of inner ownership to all products, including those of another's labour.
For the need of a thing is the most evident, irrefutable proof that the
thing belongs to my essence, that its being is for me, that its property
is the property, the peculiarity, of my essence. Thus both property
owners are impelled to give up their private property, but to do so in
such a way that at the same time they confirm private ownership, or to
give up the private property within that relationship of private
ownership. Each therefore alienates a part of his private property to
the other.
The social connection or social relationship between the two property
owners is therefore that of reciprocity in alienation, positing the
relationship of alienation on both sides, or alienation as the
relationship of both property owners, whereas in simple private
property, alienation occurs only in relation to oneself, one-sidedly.
Exchange or barter is therefore the social act, the species-act, the
community, the social intercourse and integration of men within
private ownership, and therefore the external, alienated species-act. It
is just for this reason that it appears as barter. For this reason,
likewise, it is the opposite of the social relationship.
Through the reciprocal alienation or estrangement of private property,
private property, itself falls into the category of
alienated private
property.
[2]
For, in the first place, it has ceased to be the product of
the
labour of its owner, his exclusive, distinctive personality. For he
has alienated it, it has moved away from the owner whose product it
was and has acquired a personal significance for someone whose
product it is not. It has lost its personal significance for the owner.
Secondly, it has been brought into relation with another private
property, and placed on a par with the latter. Its place has been taken
by a private property of a different kind, just as it itself takes the place
of a private property of a different kind. On both sides, therefore,
private property appears as the representative of a different kind of
private property, as the equivalent of a different natural product, and
both sides are related to each other in such a way that each represents
the mode of existence of the other, and both relate to each other as
substitutes for themselves and the other. Hence the mode of existence
of private property as such has become that of a substitute, of an
equivalent. Instead of its immediate unity with itself, it exists now
only as a relation to something else. Its mode of existence as an
equivalent is no longer its specific mode of existence. It has thus
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become a
value, and immediately an
exchange-value. Its mode of
existence as value is an alienated designation of itself, different from
its immediate existence, external to its specific nature, a merely
relative mode of existence of this.
How this value is more precisely determined must be described
elsewhere, as also how it becomes price.
The relationship of exchange being presupposed, labour becomes
directly labour to earn a living. This relationship of alienated labour
reaches its highest point only when 1) on one side labour to earn a
living and the product of the worker have no
direct relation to his need
or his function as worker, but both aspects are determined by social
combinations alien to the worker; 2) he who bugs the product is not
himself a producer, but gives in exchange what someone else has
produced. In the crude form of alienated private property, barter, each
of the property owners has produced what his immediate need, his
talents and the available raw material have impelled him to make.
Each, therefore, exchanges with the other only the surplus of his
production. It is true that labour was his immediate source of
subsistence, but it was at the same time also the manifestation of his
individual existence. Through exchange his labour has become partly
a source of income. Its purpose differs now from its mode of
existence. The product is produced as value, as exchange-value, as an
equivalent, and no longer because of its direct, personal relation to the
producer. The more diverse production becomes, and therefore the
more diverse the needs become, on the one hand, and the more
one-sided the activities of the producer become, on the other hand, the
more does his labour fall into the category of labour to earn a living,
until finally it has only this significance and it becomes quite
accidental and
inessential whether the relation
of the producer to his
product is that of immediate enjoyment and personal need, and also
whether his activity, the act of labour itself, is for him the enjoyment
of his personality and the realisation of his natural abilities and
spiritual aims.
Labour to earn a living involves: 1) estrangement and fortuitous
connection between labour and the subject who labours; 2)
estrangement and fortuitous connection between labour and the object
of labour; 3) that the worker's role is determined by social needs
which, however, are alien to him and a compulsion to which he
submits out of egoistic need and necessity, and which have for him
only the significance of a means of satisfying his dire need, just as for
them he exists only as a slave of their needs; 4) that to the worker the
maintenance of his individual existence appears to be the purpose of
his activity and what he actually does is regarded by him only as a
means; that he carries on his life's activity in order to earn means of
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