ist without
slavery because the great landlord with his own family without the
help of slaves can only cultivate a small piece of his property.

Therefore, in order to show that man cannot subdue nature without the
subjugation of his fellowman, Herr Duehring transforms "nature"
forthwith into "private ownership of large tracts of land" and this
indefinite private ownership into the ownership exercised by a great
landlord, who naturally cannot cultivate his land without slaves.

In the first place the domination of nature and the cultivation of
private landed property do not imply the same thing. The domination of
nature in industrial affairs is displayed in a manner altogether
different from that in agricultural affairs, for these latter are
always at the mercy of the climate instead of being supreme over the
climate.

In the second place if we limit ourselves to the exploitation of
private property in land in large amounts we come to the question as
to whom the land belongs. We find that in the beginnings of civilised
peoples the land was not owned by great landlords but was held in
common by tribal and village communities. From India to Ireland the
exploitation of land property in large tracts has proceeded from the
tribal and village communal ownership which was the original form.
Sometimes the land was cultivated in common for the benefit of the
common members, sometimes in separate pieces, parcelled by the
community to separate families from time to time with wood and willow
land retained for communal use.

It is pure imagination on the part of Herr Duehring to declare that
the exploitation of landed property is responsible for the existence
of master and servant. Who is the owner of private landed property in
the entire Orient where the land is possessed by the community or the
State and the word landlord is not to be found in the language? The
Turks first introduced a species of feudalism into the lands which
they conquered. The Greeks in heroic times had a classified system of
rank which itself bore witness to a long unknown preceding history,
but the land was then cultivated by an independent peasantry. The
large possessions of the nobles and leaders of the tribes were the
exception and had no permanence. Italy was originally cultivated by
small peasant farmers; when in the latter days of the Roman Republic
the great holdings, the _latifundia_ destroyed the small
farmer-holdings, cattle raising was substit