What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and
the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the
State, to live without working. And since neither property nor capital
produces anything when not fertilized by labor - that means the power and
the right to live by exploiting the work of someone else, the right to
exploit the work of those who possess neither property nor capital and who
thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.
Note that I have left out of account altogether the following question: In
what way did property and capital ever fall into the hands of their
present owners? This is a question which, when envisaged from the points
of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot be answered in any other
way but one which would serve as an indictment against the present owners.
I shall therefore confine myself here to the statement that property
owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their own productive
labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon their capital,
or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by the commercial
and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat, all
live at the expense of the proletariat.
