want to do away with, is the miserable character of this
appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase
capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of
the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase
accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour
is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence
of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present;
in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In
bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality,
while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly
so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois
independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of
production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying
disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and
all the other "brave words" of our bourgeoisie about freedom in
general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted
selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages,
but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of
buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production,