n, in which the existence of classes has
not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter on
production. Hence these classes must fall as inevitably as they once
arose. The state must irrevocably fall with them. The society that is to
reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of
the producers, will transfer the machinery of state where it will then
belong: into the Museum of Antiquities by the side of the spinning
wheel and the bronze ax.

* * * * *

Civilization is, as we have seen, that stage of society, in which the
division of labor, the resulting exchange between individuals, and the
production of commodities combining them, reach their highest
development and revolutionize the whole society.

The production of all former stages of society was mainly collective,
and consumption was carried on by direct division of products within
more or less small communes. This collective production was confined
within the narrowest limits. But it implied the control of production
and of the products by the producers. They knew what became of their
product: it did not leave their hands until it was consumed by them. As
long as production moved on this basis, it could not grow beyond the
control of the producers, and it could not create any strange ghostly
forces against them. Under civilization, however, this is the inevitable
rule.

Into the simple process of production, the division of labor was
gradually interpolated. It undermined the communism of production and
consumption, it made the appropriation of products by single individuals
the prevailing rule, and thus introduced the exchange between
individuals, in the manner mentioned above. Gradually, the production of
commodities became the rule.

This mode of production for exchange, not for home consumption,
necessarily passes the products on from hand to hand. The producer gives
his product away in exchange. He does no longer know what becomes of it.
With the advent of money and of the trader who steps in as a middleman
between the producers, the process of exchange becomes still more
complicated. The fate of the products becomes still more uncertain. The
number of merchants is great and one does not know what the other is
doing. The products now pass not only from hand to hand, but also from
market to market. The producers have lost the control of the aggregate
production in their sphere of life,