ered and one showing our wealth to be radically different, and possessed of attributes and qualities entirely unknown, to wealth under former forms. Besides, these novel attributes and qualities of our wealth are apparently in contravention of the "natural" order of things. At no time prior to our capitalistic era was the subjective relation between a man and his wealth—that is the means of his subsistence and comfort—so entirely severed as it is now. At no time prior to this era did a man and his wealth stand in such absolutely objective, non-sympathetic, relations as they stand now. At no time prior to our era was a man's wealth so thoroughly non-individual, so absolutely dependent on social circumstances, so entirely a matter of social force, as it is under capitalism.
What is the distinctive feature, the distinguishing mark or characteristic of the capitalist system of production and distribution of the means of subsistence and comfort which wrought such changes in the attributes and qualities of wealth and how were those changes brought about?
The distinctive feature of capitalist production, that which gives it its character, is that under this system man does not produce goods but commodities, that is "wares and merchandise." In other words he does not produce things which he wants to use himself, and because he wants to use them to satisfy some want of his, but things which he does not want to use himself but which can be disposed of by him to others, caring nothing whether and in what manner the others will use them. Instead of producing goods for his own use, as people used to do in former days, under other systems of production, he produces commodities for the market. Marx, therefore, begins his great investigation of the capitalist mode of production with the following words: "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities,' its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of the commodity." It is the analysis of the com-
