“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so, that is just what we intend”
That is possibly one of my all time favourite parts of the Communist Manifesto. I can imagine Marx, with a wry, all knowing smile, the full force of the moral and ethical argument on his side, putting pen to paper, then sitting back, his work done - “Precisely so, that is just what we intend”.
For when we look at the world, as it is now, and throughout history, the rich are rich because they have property, the poor are poor because they do not. But more than that – the poor are poor precisely because the rich have property. The great cities of the UK were built on the wealth created by slavery in the colonies; the wealth of the modern businessman by the exploitation of wage-labour in his company; the landlord by capital investment in the homes of his tenants.
