given time and react one upon the other that
they might be designated the abscisses and ordinates of the economic
curve.

The conditions under which men produce and exchange develop from land
to land, and in the same land from generation to generation. Political
economy cannot be the same for all lands and for all historical
epochs. From the bow and arrow, from the stone knife and the
exceptional and occasional trading intercourse of the barbarian to the
steam engine with its thousands of horse-power, to the mechanical
weaving machine, to the railway and the Bank of England is a
tremendous leap. The Patagonians do not have production on a large
scale and world-commerce any more than they have swindling or
bankruptcy. Anyone who should attempt to apply the same laws of
political economy to Patagonia as to present-day England would only
succeed in producing stupid commonplaces. Political economy is thus
really a historical science. It is engaged with historical material,
that is, material which is always in course of development. At the
close of this investigation it can, for the first time, show the few
(especially as regards production and exchange) general laws which
apply universally. In this way it is made evident that the laws which
are common to certain methods of production or forms of exchange are
common to all historical periods in which these methods of production
and forms of exchange are the same. Thus for example with the
introduction of specie, there came into being a series of laws which
holds good for all lands and historical epochs in which specie is a
means of exchange.

The method of distributing the product is in accordance with the
method of production and exchange of a given society at a given time.
In the tribal or village community with communal ownership of land, of
which there are obvious survivals in the history of all civilized
peoples, there is practically an equal distribution; where a greater
inequality of distribution of the product has been introduced among
the members of a society, it is a sign of the coming dissolution of
the community--large and small farming have very different modes of
distribution according to the historical circumstances from which they
have developed. But it is apparent that large farming requires a
different mode of distribution than small farming; that the large
farming shows the existence of class antagonism--slave-holders and
slaves, landlords and tenants,