Marx’s comments on James Mill's book

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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