APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V.

Economists have a strange way of proceeding. For them there are but two sorts of institutions, those of art and those of nature. Feudal institutions are artificial institutions, bourgeois institutions are natural institutions. They resemble in this respect the theologians who also establish two sorts of religion. Every religion but theirs is an invention of man, whilst their own particular religion is an emanation from God. In saying that the existing relations-the relations of bourgeois production—are natural the economists mean to say that these are the relations in which wealth is created and the productive forces are developed in conformity with the laws of nature. Hence these relations are themselves natural laws, independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history since there have been feudal institutions, and in these feudal institutions are found relations of production quite different from those of bourgeois society, which economists wish to pass off as natural, and consequently eternal.

Feudalism had its proletariat too-serfdom-which contained all the germs of the bourgeoisie. Feudal production also had its two antagonistic elements, which are equally labelled the noble side and the bad side of feudalism, without regard to the fact that it is always the bad side which ends by prevailing over the noble side. It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history by forcing on the class struggle. If at the epoch of the domination of feudalism economists full of enthusiasm for the virtues of chivalry, enamoured of the charming harmony between rights and duties, proud of the patriarchal life of the towns, anxious to maintain the prosperous domestic industry in the country, full of admiration for the development of organised industry by corporations, in short, if the economists in their regard for all that constitutes the noble side of feudalism had proposed to themselves to efface the whole of the shady side of this picture-serfdom, privilege, anarchy-what would have come of it? They would have destroyed all the elements which involved struggle, and would have nipped in the bud the development of the bourgeoisie. They would have proposed to themselves the absurd problem how to eliminate history. When the bourgeoisie had won the day there was no longer any question of the good or bad side of feudalism. The productive forces which had been developed by it under feudalism were acquired. All

the ancient economical forms, the civil relations which corresponded to them, the political state which was the official expression of the ancient civil society were broken up.

Thus to judge properly of feudal production it must be considered as a method of production founded on antagonism. It must be shown how wealth was produced within this antagonism, how the productive forces were developed at the same time as the antagonism of classes, how one of the classes, the bad side, the nuisance of society, was always increasing until the material conditions of its emancipation had arrived at maturity. Is it not enough to say that the method of production, the relations in which the productive forces are developed are anything rather than eternal laws, that they correspond to a definite development of men and of their productive forces, and that a change in the productive forces of men necessarily brings with it a change in the relations of production? As it is specially important not to be deprived of the fruits of civilisation, of the productive forces already gained, the traditional forms in which they have been produced must be broken. From that moment the revolutionary class becomes conservative.

The bourgeoisie begins with a proletariat which is itself the remains of the proletariat of feudal times. In the course of its historical development the bourgeoisie necessarily develops its own antagonistic character, which at the beginning was more or less disguised, which existed only in a latent shape. As the bourgeoisie is developed, there is developed in its bosom a new proletariat, a modern proletariat: a struggle develops between the proletariat class and the bourgeois class, a struggle which before being felt on the two sides, perceived, appreciated, comprehended, avowed, and proclaimed aloud only manifests itself in the first instance by partial and momentary conflicts, by subversive events. On the other hand, if all the members of the modern bourgeoisie have the same interests, so far as they form a class over against another class, they have opposite antagonistic interests so far as they find themselves face to face with one another. This opposition of interests flows from the economical conditions of their bourgeois life. Every day it becomes therefore clearer that the relations of production in which the bourgeoisie moves, have not a single character, a simple character, but a double-faced character; that in the same relations in which wealth is produced misery is produced also; that in the same relations in which there is development of productive forces there is a force which produces repression; that these relations only produce bourgeois wealth, that is to say wealth for the bourgeois class, by continually destroying the wealth of the individual members of this class, and by producing an ever-increasing proletariat.

The more the antagonistic character is revealed, the more the econo

mists, the scientific representatives of bourgeois production, fall out with their own theory and different schools are formed.

We have the fatalist economists, who in their theory are as indifferent to what they call the drawbacks of bourgeois production, as the bourgeois themselves are in practice indifferent to the sufferings of the proletariat who help them to gain wealth. In this fatalist school there are classics and romancists. The classics, like Adam Smith and Ricardo, represent a bourgeoisie which, still struggling with the remnants of the feudal society, only works to clear the economical relations from feudal blots, to increase the productive forces, and to give a new outlet to industry and commerce. The proletariat taking part in this struggle, absorbed in this feverish work, has only passing, accidental sufferings, and so regards them itself. Economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, who are the historians of this epoch, have no other mission than to show how wealth is acquired in the relations of bourgeois production, to formulate these relations into categories, into laws, to demonstrate how these laws, these categories, are superior to the laws and categories of feudal society for the production of wealth. Misery in their eyes is only the suffering which accompanies all birth in nature as in industry.

The romancists belong to our epoch, where the bourgeoisie is in direct opposition to the proletariat; where misery is produced in as great abundance as wealth. The economists then figure as fatalists, who from their high position cast a proud glance of contempt on the men machines who make wealth. They copy all the developments given by their predecessors, and the indifference which to the others was simplicity becomes for them mere coquetry.

Then comes the humanitarian school which takes to heart the bad side of the actual relations of production. This school seeks to clear its conscience by palliating, however little, the real contrasts; it sincerely regrets the distress of the proletariat, the unbridled competition of the bourgeois with one another; it advises the workmen to be sober, to work hard and to have few children: it recommends the bourgeois to devote a regulated vigour to production. The entire theory of this school is founded on interminable distinctions between theory and practice, between principles and results, between idea and application, between substance and form, between essence and reality, between right and fact, between the good and the bad side.

The philanthropic school is the humanitarian school perfected. It denies the necessity of the antagonism; it wants to make all men bourgeois; it wishes to realise theory in so far as it is distinguishable from practice and contains no antagonism. Needless to say, that in theory, it is easy to make abstraction of contradictions which one meets

every moment in reality. This theory becomes then idealised reality. The philanthropists wish therefore to keep the categories which express bourgeois relations without having the antagonism which constitutes and is inseparable from them. They fancy that they seriously fight against bourgeois practices, and they are more bourgeois than the others.

Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so are the socialists and communists the theorists of the proletariat class. So long as the proletariat is not sufficiently developed to constitute itself a class, and consequently even the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has not a political character, and the productive forces have not sufficiently developed in the womb of the bourgeoisie itself, to allow the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society to be developed, these theorists are only utopians who, to provide for the needs of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and seek for a regenerating science. But as history proceeds, and with it the conflict of the proletariat is shown more plainly, they need no more look for science in their mind, they have only to take account of what is passing under their eyes, and make themselves the expression of it. So long as they search for science and only erect systems, so long as they are at the opening of the struggle, they see in misery only misery without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overturn the ancient society. From this moment science, produced by the historical movement and associating itself with it in full knowledge of its basis, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.-Karl Marx, "Misère de la Philosophie," pp. 113-119. 1847.

CHAPTER VI.

MOVEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

THE history of the external affairs of England from the accession of George III. in 1760 until the revolt of the American Colonies in 1775, was little more than the continuance of the long career of victory which had gained her the first place as a commercial and colonial power. Clive's great victory at Plassey was followed by a succession of almost equally noteworthy achievements, which put India at the mercy of this country, whilst in the West Wolfe's triumph over Montcalm practically decided that the English, not the French, should be masters of North America; though the magnificent colony of Louisiana still remained to recall to the minds of Frenchmen Law's splendid but visionary scheme of colonial Empire. That the Dutch and afterwards Hanoverian connection, led us into wasting resources on the continent of Europe, which could have been far more profitably expended at home, cannot be doubted; but the Seven Years' War was an engagement which not even Lord Chatham's genius could clear us from, and the growth of Prussian power was regarded as a counterpoise to that of our "natural enemy."

With the revolt of the American Colonies a new era began, which threatened England with a complete overthrow. It is remarkable that separation should have been forced upon the colonists at a time when they were proudest.

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