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No. 473
"Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which nobourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, whatis capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property ownerthey mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live withoutworking. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when notfertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploitingthe work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possessneither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productivepower to the lucky owners of both. Note that I have left out of accountaltogether the following question: In what way did property and capital everfall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question which, whenenvisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot beanswered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment againstthe present owners. I shall therefore confine myself here to the statementthat property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their ownproductive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon theircapital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by thecommercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat,all live at the expense of the proletariat. (Speculation and exploitation nodoubt also constitute a sort of labor, but altogether non-productive labor.)"
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