Note 32 — Chapter I · COMMODITIES.

He declares, therefore, the patriarchal form of agriculture which is devoted to the direct production of use-values for the owner of the land, to be an “abuse,” not in Sparta, or Rome, or even in Athens, but in the industrial countries of the eighteenth century. This “abusive agriculture” is not “trade,” but a “direct means of subsisting.” Just as capitalistic agriculture clears the country of superfluous mouths, so does the capitalistic mode of manufacture clear the factory of superfluous hands.