THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 119
Second Observation.
The economic categories are only the theoretical ex- pressions, the abstractions, of the social relations of pro- duction. M. Proudhon, as a true philosopher, taking the things inside out, sees in the real relations only the in- carnations of these principles, of these categories, which sleep—M. Proudhon the philosopher tells us again—in the bosom of “the impersonal reason of humanity.” M. Proudhon the economist has clearly understood that men make cloth, linen, silk-stuffs, in certain determined re- lations of production. But what he has not understood is that these determined social relations are as much produced by men as are the cloth, the linen, &c. The social relations are intimately attached to the productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production, and in changing their mode of production, their manner of gaining a living, they change all their social relations. The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
The same men who establish social relations coa- formably with their material productivity, produce also the principles, the ideas, the categories, conformably with their social relations.
Thus these ideas, these categories, are not more eternal than the relations which they express. They are historical and transitory products.
There is a continual movement of growth in the pro- ductive forces, of destruction in the social relations, of formation ia ideas; there is nothing immutable but the abstraction of the movement—mors immortalis.
