![]() ![]() ![]() But as a result man is brought within the orbit of private property, just as with Luther he is brought within the orbit of religion. Just as Luther recognised religion – faith – as the substance of the external world and in consequence stood opposed to Catholic paganism – just as he superseded external religiosity by making religiosity the inner substance of man – just as he negated the priests outside the layman because he transplanted the priest into laymen's hearts, just so with wealth: wealth as something outside man and independent of him, and therefore as something to be maintained and asserted only in an external fashion, is done away with that is, this external, mindless objectivity of wealth is done away with, with private property being incorporated in man himself and with man himself being recognised as its essence. Engels was therefore right to call Adam Smith the Luther of Political Economy. To this enlightened political economy, which has discovered – within private property – the subjective essence of wealth, the adherents of the monetary and mercantile system, who look upon private property only as an objective substance confronting men, seem therefore to be fetishists, Catholics. It is therefore evident that only the political economy which acknowledged labour as its principle – Adam Smith – and which therefore no longer looked upon private property as a mere condition external to man – that it is this political economy which has to be regarded on the one hand as a product of the real energy and the real movement of private property (it is a movement of private property become independent for itself in consciousness – the modern industry as Self) – as a product of modern industry – and on the other hand, as a force which has quickened and glorified the energy and development of modern industry and made it a power in the realm of consciousness. The subjective essence of private property – private property as activity for itself, as subject, as person – is labour. Political Economy as a Product of the Movement of Private Property Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Private Property and Labour. ![]()
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