capitalists shrewdly threw dust in people's eyes; while debunking feudal forms of personified power, they quietly installed their own. When the dust settled it slowly became apparent that the new form extended further than the old: to the innermost depths of the individual, to the most distant regions of the world. The power represented by an individual's Capital reflects an individual's self-powers as little as a nobleman's title reflects his personal abilities, but the capitalist, little though he might be, represents not only the power of community, but also the productive power, the living creative energy, of every individual within his fief.
Capitalists were great critics of personified power when that power was based on family titles and divine rights. They were arch-enemies of the State when it was feudal. They were muckrakers of the plunder and social waste which consolidated the personified power of feudal lords. Early capitalists had a vantage point from which they could expose forever the feudal gap between the development of productive forces and the form of the social relations. As opposed to the high born whose power depended on social plunder and ceremonial waste, the power of early capitalists depended on the productive forces, and the growth of their power depended, not on plunder and waste, but on the further development of society's productive forces. Capitalism contemptuously kicked the corpse of its predecessor into a historical hole, designating it as a dark age, a pre-history of humanity. Athena, goddess of reason, had triumphed at last; enlightenment and clarity were re born after a long sleep, an unexplained amnesia. Never again would plunder and war be means to social power; never again would greatness coincide with the destruction of society's productive forces. The new social relation, Capital, could not possibly lead to a rift between the productive forces and the social relations, since Capital is itself the productive forces. Yet for all that, capitalism was not exempted from the fate of its predecessors. From its very origin, Capital was also a form of personified power, the power of money—a fact which made it possible for early capitalists to lend their support to dying feudal powers during the brief historical moment before their final demise. As a form of personified power—as a personification of the productive power estranged by the creators of the productive forces—Capital enjoyed years of progress, in fact several centuries of glorious unfettered development, while it traveled inflexibly back to the very spot on which its predecessor had died unmourned. Despite all its youthful inventiveness, exploits and ambitions, in its decrepitude it cannot even avoid looking like its predecessor. Capital did not bury its predecessor. Capitalism found it necessary to revive the ghost of its arch-enemy, to reconstitute the personified power of community, the State, and finally to magnify this power beyond all feudal dreams by enriching it with the productive power personified by Capital.
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