(^95) KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
foregoing argument, which was presented almost in the words of
the economists, answers to two questions:
- What is the significance, in the development of mankind, of this
reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour? - What errors are committed by the advocates of piecemeal reform,
who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the conditions of
the working class, or (like Proudhon) regard equality of wages as the
aim of social revolution?^122
To answer these two questions Marx amassed a series of quotations from
three sources: firstly from the German writer Wilhelm Schulz on workers'
pauperisation, the dehumanising effect of machinery and the number of
women and children working;^123 secondly from Constantin Pecqueur on
the dependence and degradation forced on workers under capitalism;^124
thirdly from Eugene Buret on the wretchedness and exploitation of the
proletariat.^125
In his second section Marx noted a number of passages under the
heading 'Profit of Capital'. First, quoting Adam Smith, he defined capital
as the power of command over labour and its products. He then described
the means by which capitalists made a profit both from wages and from
raw materials advanced; the motives that inspired the capitalist; and the
accumulation of capital and competition among capitalists. Marx's third
section was on rent and he outlined the similarities between landlord and
capitalist: in the last analysis there was no distinction between them
and society was divided into two classes only - workers and capitalists.
The character of landed property had been utterly transformed since
feudal times and neither the preservation of large estates nor their division
into small properties could avoid precipitating a crisis. Later in the manu-
script Marx offered his own trenchant critique of the 'Protestant ethic'
enshrined in the classical economists:
Thus, despite its worldly and pleasure-seeking appearance, it is a truly
moral science and the most moral of all sciences. Its principal thesis is
the renunciation of life and of human needs. The less you eat, drink,
buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the public house, and
the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you
will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which
neither moth nor rust will corrupt - your capital. The less you are, the
less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your
alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.^126
At this point in his manuscript Marx broke off writing in three parallel
columns and began to write straight across the page. He also changed his
style, writing now without recourse to quotation from other writers. This
passage on alienated labour is the best-written part of the manuscripts.