ised, as in the border states, for
the cotton producing states, it perished of its own accord and without
any employment of force simply because it did not pay.

When Herr Duehring therefore calls the property of the present day
property resting on force and designates it as "that form of
domination which does not merely signify the exclusion of one's fellow
beings from the use of the natural means of sustenance, but implies in
addition that the subjection of man has lain at the foundation of
human slavery" he puts the matter upside down. The subjection of
humanity to slavery in all its forms means the control by the master
of the means of labor by virtue of which alone he can employ his
slaves upon them and the disposal of the means of livelihood by which
he can keep his slaves alive. In all cases therefore it implies a
certain power of possession which transcends the ordinary? How did
this arise? Occasionally it is clear that it was seized and can
therefore be said to rest upon force but this is by no means
essential. It can be got by labor, be robbed, be obtained by trade, or
taken by fraud. It must be worked for generally before it can be
stolen.

Private property does not historically come into existence by any
means as a rule as the product of robbery and violence. On the
contrary. It arises from the limitation of certain things in the
early tribal communes. It develops in the first place within the tribe
and afterwards in exchange with peoples outside of the tribe in the
form of wares. In proportion as the products of the tribe assume the
form of commodities, i.e., the less they are produced for the use of
the producer and the more for the purpose of exchange, the exchange
destroys the original form of distribution in the commune itself, and
the more unequal become the shares of the individual members of the
community with respect to material possessions. So the old communal
ownership of land becomes more and more invaded, the communal property
is rapidly converted into a village of farmers, each tilling his own
piece of ground. Oriental despotism and the changing government of
conquering nomads had no power to alter the old form of communal
ownership for a thousand years. But the continual destruction of the
primitive domestic industry through the competition of the products of
the great industry is bringing about its dissolution. The thing has
little to do with force as has lately appeared in the matter of th