Marx’s comments on James Mill's book

the part of the man who trusts and of the man who needs trust --

becomes an object of commerce, an object of mutual deception and

misuse. Here it is also glaringly evident that distrust is the basis of

economic trust; distrustful calculation whether credit ought to be

given or not; spying into the secrets of the private life, etc., of the one

seeking credit; the disclosure of temporary straits in order to

overthrow a rival by a sudden shattering of his credit, etc. The whole

system of bankruptcy, spurious enterprises, etc.... As regards

government loans, the state occupies exactly the same place as the

man does in the earlier example.... In the game with government

securities it is seen how the state has become the plaything of

businessmen, etc.

 4) The credit system finally has its completion in the banking system.

The creation of bankers, the political domination of the bank, the

concentration of wealth in these hands, this economic Areopagus of

the nation, is the worthy completion of the money system.

 Owing to the fact that in the credit system the moral recognition of a

man, as also trust in the state, etc., take the form of credit, the secret

contained in the lie of moral recognition, the immoral vileness of this

morality, as also the sanctimoniousness and egoism of that trust in the

state, become evident and show themselves for what they really are.

 Exchange, both of human activity within production itself and of

human product against one another, is equivalent to species-activity

and species-spirit, the real, conscious and true mode of existence of

which is social activity and social enjoyment. Since human nature is

the true community of men, by manifesting their nature men create,

produce, the human community, the social entity, which is no abstract

universal power opposed to the single individual, but is the essential

nature of each individual, his own activity, his own life, his own spirit,

his own wealth. Hence this true community does not come into being

through reflection, it appears owing to the need and egoism of

individuals, i.e., it is produced directly by their life activity itself. It

does not depend on man whether this community exists or not; but as

long as man does not recognise himself as man, and therefore has not

organised the world in a human way, this community appears in the

form of estrangement, because its subject, man, is a being estranged

from himself. Men, not as an abstraction, but as real, living, particular

individuals, are this entity. Hence, as they are, so is this entity itself.

To say that man is estranged from himself, therefore, is the same thing

as saying that the society of this estranged man is a caricature of his

real community, of his true species-life, that his activity therefore

appears to him as a torment, his own creation as an alien power, his

wealth as poverty, the essential bond linking him with other men as an

unessential bond, and separation from his fellow men, on the other

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hand, as his true mode of existence, his life as a sacrifice of his life,

the realisation of his nature as making his life unreal, his production

as the production of his nullity, his power over an object as the power

of the object over him, and he himself, the lord of his creation, as the

servant of this creation.

 The community of men, or the manifestation of the nature of men,

their mutual complementing the result of which is species-life, truly

human life -- this community is conceived by political economy in the

form of exchange and trade. Society, says Destutt de Tracy, is a series

of mutual exchanges. It is precisely this process of mutual integration.

Society, says Adam Smith, is a commercial society. Each of its

members is a merchant.

 It is seen that political economy defines the estranged form of social

intercourse as the essential and original form corresponding to man's

nature.

 Political economy -- like the real process -- starts out from the

relation of man to man as that of property owner to property owner. If

man is presupposed as property owner, i.e., therefore as an exclusive

owner, who proves his personality and both distinguishes himself

from, and enters into relations with, other men through this exclusive

ownership -- private property is his personal, distinctive, and therefore

essential mode of existence -- then the loss or surrender of private

property is an alienation of man, as it is of private property, itself.

Here we shall only be concerned with the latter definition. If I give up

my private property to someone else, it ceases to be mine; it becomes

something independent of me, lying outside my sphere, a thing

external to me. Hence I alienate my private property. With regard to

me, therefore, I turn it into alienated private property. But I only turn

it into an alienated thing in general, I abolish only my personal

relation to it, I give it back to the elementary powers of nature if I

alienate it only with regard to myself. It becomes alienated private

property only if, while ceasing to be my private property, it on that

account does not cease to be private property as such, that is to say, if

it enters into the same relation to another man, apart from me, as that

which it had to myself; in short, if it becomes the private property of

another man. The case of violence excepted -- what causes me to

alienate my private property to another man? Political economy

replies correctly: necessity, need. The other man is also a property

owner, but he is the owner of another thing, which I lack and cannot

and will not do without, which seems to me a necessity for the

completion of my existence and the realisation of my nature.

 The bond which connects the two property owners with each other is

the specific kind of object that constitutes the substance of their

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