e English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or
not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of life are measured by
money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic
bosh. Hence, Political Economy, the Science of Wealth, is the favourite
study of these bartering Jews. Every one of them is a Political
Economist. The relation of the manufacturer to his operatives has
nothing human in it; it is purely economic. The manufacturer is Capital,
the operative Labour. And if the operative will not be forced into this
abstraction, if he insists that he is not Labour, but a man, who
possesses, among other things, the attribute of labour force, if he takes
it into his head that he need not allow himself to be sold and bought in
the market, as the commodity "Labour," the bourgeois reason comes to a
standstill. He cannot comprehend that he holds any other relation to the
operatives than that of purchase and sale; he sees in them not human
beings, but hands, as he constantly calls them to their faces; he
insists, as Carlyle says, that "Cash Payment is the only nexus between
man and man." Even the relation between himself and his wife is, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere "Cash Payment." Money
determines the worth of the man; he is "worth ten thousand pounds." He
who has money is of "the better sort of people," is "influential," and
what _he_ does counts for something in his social circle. The
huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, all relations are
expressed in business terms, in economic categories. Supply and demand
are the formulas according to which the logic of the English bourgeois
judges all human life. Hence free competition in every respect, hence
the _regime_ of _laissez-faire, laissez-aller_ in government, in
medicine, in education, and soon to be in religion, too, as the State
Church collapses more and more. Free competition will suffer no
limitation, no State supervision; the whole State is but a burden to it.
It would reach its highest perfection in a _wholly_ ungoverned anarchic
society, where each might exploit the other to his heart's content.
Since, however, the bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must
have it to hold the equally indispensable proletariat in check, it turns
the power of government against the proletariat and keeps out of its way
as far as possible.

Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly
brags wi