Ä'AÄL  MARX.

33
Of  his  land,  and  his  profits,  or  the  remuneration  for  his  risks  and
^  long  before  him.  maintained
ha  the  destitution  of  the  lower  classes  proceeds  from  the  fact
that  the  labourer  cannot  purchase  with  his  wages  what  he  produces. ­
  The  remark  is  true,  but  the  fact  cannot  be  otherwise
unless  the  labourer,  like  the  peasant  proprietor,  should  work
his  own  property,  being  at  the  same  time  owner  of  the  land
the  machines,  the  provisions  and  the  materials  necessary  for
production.  If  he  has  to  borrow  these  different  agents  he
must  deduct  from  what  he  produces  the  means  of  paying  for
them,  for  nobody  will  lend  them  to  him  for  nothing.  If  it  is
the  manufacturer  who  provides  them,  he  must  take  from  the
total  produce  of  the  workman’s  labour  what  will  pay  interest
on  Ijis  advances.  Who  would  accumulate  capital  or  employ  a
single  labourer,  if  he  did  not  reap  any  profit  thereby?
Like  Proudhon,  Marx  then  arrives,  but  without  admitting
It,  at  the  often  refuted  chimera  of  gratuitous  credit
The  history  of  the  social  organizations  of  different  periods
proves  that  the  deduction  of  a  portion  of  the  fruits  of  labour
by  those  who  have  the  indispensable  requisites  of  productions
at  their  disposal,  has  always  taken  place  under  one  form  or
another.  Under  the  system  of  slavery,  the  slave-owner  received
the  entire  produce  of  the  labour,  and,  giving  to  the  slave  what
was  necessary  for  his  support  and  to  enable  him  to  perpetuate
his  race,  kept  all  the  rest  for  himself.  It  was  as  though  the
slave  worked  part  of  the  time  for  himself  and  the  rest  for  his
master.  Under  the  régime  of  the  conjé,,  the  peasant  worked
two  or  three  days  on  the  land  of  his  lord  and  the  rest  of  the
Ume  on  his  own.  He  was  half  enfranchised,  but  a  part  of  what
he  produced  was  levied  on  behalf  of  the  signorial  demesne.
With  the  méíaycr  system,  it  was  no  longer  the  labour  that  was
divided  between  master  and  labourer,  but  the  products  ot
Ubour,  which  comes  in  the  end  to  the  same  thing.  Modern
farming,  in  its  turn,  is  only  a  transformation  of  the  mé/ayer
system,  with  this  difference,  that  the  farmer  pays  the  landowner’s ­
  share  in  money.  Still  he  works  part  of  his  time  for
ois  own  subsistence  and  the  remainder  for  that  of  his  landlord,
o  has  given  him  the  land.  In  the  wage-earning  classes  the