What is called historical evolution depends,in general,on the fact that the latest form regards earlier ones as stages in the development of itself,and conceives them always in a one-sided manner --since only rarely,and under quite special conditions,is a society able to adopt a critical attitude towards itself.In this context,we are not,of course,discussing historical periods which themselves believe that they are periods of decline.The Christian religion was able to contribute to an objective understanding of earlier mythologies only when its self-criticism was,to a certain extent,prepared,as it were potentially.Similarly,only when the self-criticism of bourgeois society had begun,was bourgeois political economy able to understand the feudal,ancient,and oriental economies.In so far as bourgeois political economy did not simply identify itself with the past in a mythological manner,its criticism of earlier economies --especially of the feudal system against which it still had to wage a direct struggle --resembled the criticism that Christianity directed against heathenism,or which Protestantism directed against Catholicism.
Just as,in general,when examining any historical period or social science,so also in the case of the development of economic categories is it always necessary to remember that the subject (in this context,contemporary bourgeois society)is presupposed both in reality and in the mind,and that therefore categories express forms of existence and conditions of existence (and sometimes merely separate aspects)of this particular society,the subject;thus the category,even from the scientific standpoint,by no means begins at the moment when it is discussed as such.This has to be remembered,because it provides important criteria for the arrangement of the material.For example,nothing seems more natural than to begin with rent --i.e.landed property,since it is associated with the earth,the source of all production and all life --and agriculture,the first form of production in all societies that have attained a measure of stability.But nothing would be more erroneous.There is,in every social formation,a branch of production which determines the position and importance of all others;and the relations obtaining in this branch accordingly determine the relations of all other branches,as well.It is as though light of a particular hue were cast upon everything,tinging all other colors and modifying their special features;or as if a special ether determined the specific gravity of everything found in it.Let us take,as an example,pastoral tribes.(Tribes living exclusively on hunting or fishing are beyond the boundary line from which real development begins.)A certain types of agricultural activity occurs among them,and this determines land ownership.It is communal ownership and retains this form in a larger or smaller measure,according to the degree to which these people maintain their traditions --e.g.communal ownership among the Slavs.Among settled agricultural people --settled already to a large extent --where agriculture predominated,as in societies of antiquity and the feudal period,even manufacture (its structure and the forms of property corresponding thereto)have,in some measure,specifically agrarian features.Manufacture is either completely dependent on agriculture,as in the earlier Roman period,or as in the Middle Ages,it copies in the town and in its conditions the organization of the countryside.Even in the Middle Ages,capital --unless it was solely money capital --consisted of the traditional tools,etc.and retained a specifically agrarian character.The reverse takes place in bourgeois society.Agriculture,to an increasing extent,becomes just a branch of industry and is completely dominated by capital.The same applies to rent.In all forms in which landed property is the decisive factor,natural relations still predominate;in the forms in which the decisive factor is capital,social,historically-evolved elements predominate.Rent cannot be understood with capital,but capital can be understood without rent.Capital is the economic power that dominates everything in bourgeois society.It must form both the point of departure and the conclusion and it has to be expounded before landed property.After analyzing capital and landed property separately,their interconnection must be examined.
It would be inexpedient and wrong therefore to present the economic categories successively in the order in which they have played the dominant role in history.On the contrary,their order of succession is determined by their mutual relation in modern bourgeois society and this is quite the reverse of what appears to be natural to them,or in accordance with the sequence of historical development.The point at issue is not the role that various economic relations have played in the succession of various social formations appearing in the course of history;even less is it their sequence "as concepts"(Proudhon)(a nebulous notion of the historical process),but their position within modern bourgeois society.
It is precisely the predominance of agricultural people in the ancient world which caused the merchant nations --Phoenicians,Carthaginians --to develop in such purity (abstract precision)in the ancient world.
For capital in the shape of merchant or money capital appears in the abstract form where capital has not yet become the dominant factor in society.Lombards and Jews occupied the same position with regard to mediaeval agrarian societies.
