Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality - Page 2

does not say.

Moreover, if the bourgeoisie politically, that is, through the agency of its State power, maintains "the injustice in the property relations," it does not create the latter. The "injustice in the property relations," conditioned by the modern division of labour, the modern form of exchange, competition, concentration, etc., does not in any way proceed from the political rule of the bourgeoisie, but, contrariwise, the political rule of the bourgeoisie proceeds from these modern relations of production, which are proclaimed by the bourgeois economists to be necessary and eternal laws.

If, therefore, the proletariat should overthrow the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory would be only temporary, only an episode in the service of the bourgeois revolution, so long as the material conditions which would render necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production, and consequently the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie, had not yet been created in the course of historical development. From this point of view, the Reign of Terror in France did no more than to clear away the feudal ruins from French soil by its hammer blows.

The anxious and cautious bourgeoisie would have taken decades to perform this work. The bloody action of the people, therefore, prepared the way. Similarly, the overthrow of the absolute monarchy would have been merely a momentary incident, if the economic conditions for the rule of the bourgeois class had not been developed to the point of ripeness.

Men built for themselves a new world, not out of earthly goods, as the bluff Heinzen superstition would have us believe, but out of the historical achievements of their shipwrecked world. In the course of development, they have first to create the material conditions for a new society themselves, and no effort of the mind or the will can save them from this destiny.

It is typical of bluff common sense that where it manages to see difference, it does not see unity, and where it sees unity, it does not see difference. If perchance it sets up distinguishing qualities, it immediately petrifies them, and sees nothing but sophistry in the notion of rubbing these slabs of ideas against each other until they catch fire.

In stating that money and force, property and rule, money-making and power-acquiring are not the same, it is merely uttering a tautology.

How "money-making" is turned into "winning power," and "property" into "political rule," and how, instead of the hard and fast distinctions drawn by Mr Heinzen, the two forces are interrelated to the point of unity, of all this he may quickly convince himself by observing how the communes purchased their municipal rights; how the citizens enticed money out of the pockets of the feudal lords by trade and industry, on the one hand, and disintegrated