as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalistic 267 production begets with the inexorability of a law of Nature its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him property based on the acquisitions of the capitalistic era; i.e. on co-operation, and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalistic private property, is naturally a process incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.”
A chapter on certain middle-class economist notions respecting colonisation ends the first volume of Marx's epoch-making work, a volume expounding the salient principles of the new economy.197
- We must remind the reader that we do not profess