Karl Marx's 
 
                 ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 
                             written between  
                          April and August 1844 
 
 
                            THIRD MANUSCRIPT 
 
 
                       Private Property and Labor 
 
ad page XXXVI. 
 
[ Marx numbered the pages of these manuscripts in roman numerals.  The 
page referred to is one of those missing between the First and Second 
Manuscripts.  ] 
 
The subjective essence of private property, private property as activity 
for itself, as subject, as person, is labor.  It, therefore, goes 
without saying that only that political economy which recognized labor 
as its principle (Adam Smith), and which therefore no longer regarded 
private property as nothing more than a condition external to man, can 
be regarded as both a product of the real energy and movement of private 
property (it is the independent movement of private property become 
conscious of itself, it is modern industry as self), a product of modern 
industry, and a factor which has accelerated and glorified the energy 
and development of this industry and transformed it into a power 
belonging to consciousness.  Therefore, the supporters of the monetary 
and mercantile system, who look upon private property as a purely 
objective being for man, appear as fetish-worshippers, as Catholics, to 
this enlightened political economy, which has revealed -- within the 
system of private property -- the subjective essence of wealth.  Engels 
was, therefore, right to call Adam Smith the Luther of political economy 
[in Engels 1843 _Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy_].  Just as 
Luther recognized religion and faith as the essence of the external 
world and, in consequence, confronted Catholic paganism; just as he 
transcended religion external religiosity by making religiosity the 
inner essence of man; just as he negated the idea of priests as 
something separate and apart from the layman by transferring the priest 
into the heart of the layman; so wealth as something outside man, and 
independent of him -- and, therefore, only to be acquired acquired and 
maintained externally -- is abolished [aufgehoben].  I.e., its external 
and mindless objectivity is abolished inasmuch as private property is 
embodied in man himself and man himself is recognized as its essence -- 
but this brings man himself into the province of religion.  So, although 
political economy, whose principle is labor, appears to recognize man, 
it is, in fact, nothing more than the denial of man carried through to 
its logical conclusion: for man himself no longer stands in a relation 
of external tension to the external essence of private property -- he 
himself has become the tense essence of private property.  What was 
formerly being-external-to-oneself, man's material externalization, has 
now become the act of alienation -- i.e., alienation through selling 
[Verausserung].  This political economy, therefore, starts out by 
seeming to recognize man, his independence, his spontaneous activity, 
etc.  Since it transfers private property into the very being of man, it 
can no longer be conditioned by local or national features of private 
property as something existing outside it.  It (political economy) 
develops a cosmopolitan, universal energy which breaks through every 
limitation and bond and sets itself up as the _only_ policy, the _only_ 
universality, the _only_ limitation, and the _only_ bond.  But then, as 
it continues to develop, it is forced to cast off its hypocrisy and step 
forth in all its cynicism.  This it does, without troubling its head for 
one moment about all the apparent contradiction to which this doctrine 
leads, by developing in a more one-sided way, and, thus, more sharply 
and more logically, the idea of labor as the sole essence of wealth, by 
showing that the conclusions of this doctrine, unlike the original 
conception, are anti-human, and finally be delivering the death-blow to 
ground rent -- that last individual and natural form of private property 
and source of wealth independent of the movement of labor, that 
expression of feudal property which has already become entirely economic 
and is therefore incapable of putting up any resistance to political 
economy.  (The Ricardo School.) Not only does political economy become 
increasingly cynical from Smith through Say to Ricardo, Mill etc., 
inasmuch as the consequences of industry appeared more developed and 
more contradictory to the latter; the latter also became more estranged 
-- consciously estranged -- from man than their predecessors.  But this 
is only because their science develops more logically and more truly.  
Since they make private property in its active form the subject, thereby 
making man as a non-being [Unwesen] the essence [Wesen], the 
contradiction in reality corresponds entirely to the contradictory 
essence which they have accepted as their principle.  The discordant 
reality of industry, far from refusing their internally discordant 
principle, actually confirms it.  Their principle is in fact the 
principle of this discordance.  
 
The physiocratic doctrine of Dr Quesnay forms the transition from the 
mercantile system to Adam Smith.  Physiocracy is, in a direct sense, the 
economic dissolution of feudal property, but it is therefore just as 
directly the economic transformation and restoration of that property.  
The only real difference is that its language is no longer feudal but 
economic.  All wealth is resolved into land and agriculture.  The land 
is not yet capital; it is still a particular mode of existence of 
capital whose value is supposed to lie in its natural particularity.  
But land is a universal natural element, whereas the mercantile system 
considered that wealth existed only in precious metals.  The object of 
wealth, its matter, has therefore attained the greatest degree of 
universality possible within the limits of nature -- insofar as it is 
directly objective wealth even as nature.  And it is only through labor, 
through agriculture, that land exists for man.  Consequently, the 
subjective essence of wealth is already transferred to labor.  But, at 
the same time, agriculture is the only productive labor.  Labor is, 
therefore, not yet grasped in its universal and abstract form, but is 
still tied to a particular element of nature as its matter and if for 
that reason recognized only in a particular mode of existence determined 
by nature.  It is, therefore, still only a determinate, particular 
externalization of man -- just as its product is conceived as a 
determinate form of wealth, due more to nature than to itself.  Here, 
the land is still regarded as part of nature which is independent of 
man, and not yet as capital -- i.e., as a moment of labor itself.  
Rather, labor appears as a moment of nature.  But, since the fetishism 
of the old external wealth, which exists only as an object, has been 
reduced to a very simple element of nature, and since its essence has 
been recognized -- even if only partially and in a particular way -- in 
its subjective essence, the necessary advance has taken place in the 
sense that the universal nature of wealth has been recognized and labor 
has, therefore, been elevated in its absolute -- i.e., abstract -- form 
to that principle.  It is possible to argue against the Physiocrats that 
agriculture is no different from an economic point of view -- that is, 
from the only valid point of view -- from any other industry, and that 
the essence of wealth is therefore not a particular form of labor tied 
to a particular element, a particular manifestation of labor, but labor 
in general.  
 
Physiocracy denies particular, external, purely objective wealth by 
declaring labor to be its essence.  But, for physiocracy, labor is in 
the first place merely the subjective essence of landed property -- it 
starts out from the type of property which appears historically as the 
dominant and recognized type.  It simple turns landed property into 
alienated man.  It abolishes the feudal character of landed property by 
declaring industry (agriculture) to be its essence; but it sets its face 
against the world of industry and acknowledges the feudal system by 
declaring agriculture to be the only industry.  
 
Clearly, once the subjective essence is grasped of industry constituting 
itself in opposition to landed property -- i.e., as industry -- this 
essence includes within it that opposition.  For, just as industry 
absorbs annulled landed property, so the subjective essence of industry 
at the same time absorbs the subjective essence of landed property.  
 
Just as landed property is the first form of private property, and 
industry at first confronts it historically as nothing more than a 
particular sort of private property -- or, rather, as the liberated 
slave of landed property -- so this process is repeated in the 
scientific comprehension of the subjective essence of private property, 
of labor; labor appears at first only as agricultural labor, but later 
assumes the form of labor in general.  
 
All wealth has become industrial wealth, wealth of labor, and industry 
is fully developed labor, just as the factory system is the perfected 
essence of industry -- i.e., of labor -- and industrial capital the 
fully developed objective form of private property.  
 
Thus, we see that it is only at this point that private property can 
perfect its rule over men and become, in its most universal form, a 
world-historical power.  
 
 
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