[*4] This is already perfectly well known to the Prussian General Staff. "The basis of warfare is primarily the economic way of life of the peoples in general" said Herr Max Jahns, a captain of the General Staff, in a scientific lecture ( Kölnische Zeitung , April 20, 1876, p 3)[*5] The perfecting of the latest product of modern industry for use in naval warfare, the self-propelled torpedo, seems likely to bring this to pass; it would mean that the smallest torpedo boat would be superior to the most powerful armoured warship. (It should be borne in mind that the above was written in 1878 [81] .)[*6] And not even this. Rodbertus says ( Sociale Briefe Letter 2, p. 59): "Rent according to this" (his)"theory, is all income obtained without personal labour, solely on the ground of possession ."[*7] Cf. Philosophy I. [100]
[*8] 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 revolutionised 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-labour, which contains the whole capitalistic mode of production in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form it existed for centuries alongside slave-labour. But the embryo could duly develop into the capitalistic mode of production only when the necessary historical preconditions had been furnished.
[*9] The Condition of the Working-Class in England , p. 109.
[*10] I say "have to". For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the state has become economically inevitable, only then -- even if it is the state of today that effects this -- is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the state the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes -- this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, [116] the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions.
[*11] A few figures may serve to give an approximate idea of the enormous expansive force of the modern means of production, even under capitalist pressure. According to Mr. Giffen, [118] the total wealth of Great Britain and Ireland amounted, in round numbers, in 1814 to £2,200,000,000 = 44 mld marks 1865 to £6,100,000,000 = 122 mld marks 1875 to £8,500,000,000 = 170 mld marks As an instance of the squandering of means of production and of products during a crisis, the total loss in the German iron industry alone, in the recent crisis {of 1873-78} was given at the second German Industrial Congress (Berlin, February 21, 1878) as 455,000,000 marks.
[*12] The "under-consumption" explanation of crises originated with Sismondi, and in his exposition it still had a certain meaning. Rodbertus took it from Sismondi, and Herr Dühring has in turn copied it, in his usual vulgarising fashion, from Rodbertus.
[*13] The TRUCK SYSTEM in England, also well known in Germany, is that system under which the manufacturers themselves run shops and compel their workers to buy their goods there.
[*14] It may be noted in passing that the part played by labour-notes in Owen's communist society is completely unknown to Herr Dühring. He knows these notes -- from Sargant -- only in so far as they figure in the labour exchange bazaars [123] which of course were failures, inasmuch as they were attempts by means of the direct exchange of labour to pass from existing society into communist society.
[*15] As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. ( Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher , p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital .
[*16] This twofold character assumed later on by the divinities was one of the causes of the subsequently widespread confusion of mythologies -- a cause which comparative mythology has overlooked, as it pays attention exclusively to their character as reflections of the forces of nature. Thus in some Germanic tribes the war-god is called Tyr (Old Nordic) or Zio (Old High German) and so corresponds to the Greek Zeus, Latin Jupiter for Diespiter; in other Germanic tribes, Er, Eor, corresponds therefore to the Greek Ares, Latin Mars.
