and the merchants have not yet
acquired this control. Products and production become the victims of
chance. But chance is only one pole of an interrelation, the other pole
of which is called necessity. In nature, where chance seems to reign
also, we have long ago demonstrated the innate necessity and law that
determines the course of chance on every line. But what is true of
nature, holds also good of society. Whenever a social function or a
series of social processes become too powerful for the control of man,
whenever they grow beyond the grasp of man and seem to be left to mere
chance, then the peculiar and innate laws of such processes shape the
course of chance with increased elementary necessity. Such laws also
control the vicissitudes of the production and exchange of commodities.
For the individual producer and exchanger, these laws are strange, and
often unknown, forces, the nature of which must be laboriously
investigated and ascertained. These economic laws of production are
modified by the different stages of this form of production. But
generally speaking, the entire period of civilization is dominated by
these laws. To this day, the product controls the producer. To this day,
the aggregate production of society is managed, not on a uniform plan,
but by blind laws, that rule with elementary force and find their final
expression in the storms of periodical commercial crises.

We have seen that human labor power is enabled at a very early stage of
production to produce considerably more than is needed to maintain the
producer. We have found that this stage coincided in general with the
first appearance of the division of labor and of exchange between
individuals. Now, it was not long before the great truth was discovered
that man may himself be a commodity, and that human labor power may be
exchanged and exploited by transforming a man into a slave. Hardly had
exchange between men been established, when men themselves were also
exchanged. The active asset became a passive liability, whether man
wanted it or not.

Slavery, which reaches its highest development in civilization,
introduced the first great division of an exploited and an exploiting
class into society. This division continued during the whole period of
civilization. Slavery is the first form of exploitation, characteristic
of the antique world. Then followed feudalism in the middle ages, and
wage labor in recent times. These are the three great f