7
It is hardly necessary in this connection to point out, that, even if the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appropriation is just as much revolutionized as production is by the changes described above. It is, of course, a very different matter whether I appropriate to myself my own product or that of another. Note in passing that wage-labor, which contains the whole capitalistic mode of production in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form it existed for centuries alongside of slave-labor. But the embryo could duly develop into the capitalistic mode of production only when the necessary historical preconditions had been furnished.