The production and distribution of the capitalist system can be best studied by an examination of a typical capitalistic commodity: a Factory Product. While the capitalist system has impressed itself upon every phase of life of every society in which it prevails, so that nothing can escape it, whether properly belonging within its domain or not, its characteristic features, its vital elements, are contained in their purity and simplicity only in its historic embodiment,—the factory product. The factory product is not only the historic form of capitalist production, accompanying its appearance on the historical arena as its technical embodiment, but it represents the vast majority of all the commodities of capitalist society. The factory product bears the imprint of capitalism so deeply emblazoned upon it, and is so free from entangling alliances with any forms of production other than capitalistic, that there can be absolutely no mistaking its origin and virtues. Not so with other products. Take, for instance, a farm product. You can not, by the mere fact of its production as a farm product tell whether it was produced under the capitalistic regime or not. This is due to the fact that our form of ownership and cultivation of land have to a great extent remained far behind the general progress of our economy. We cannot, therefore, by examining a farm product tell the characteristics of capitalist production, for we cannot tell which of the properties of the farm product are the result of capitalism and which are the survival of some prior mode of production. After we shall have learned to know the characteristics of capitalist production, we shall see that these characteristics are to be found also in the capitalistically produced farm product. The examination of the farm product may, therefore, serve to find the limits of the laws of capitalistic production, but not these laws themselves. For that purpose we must study the factory product.
It is well to remember in this connection that historically the capitalist system has built its foundation on the ruins of farming, and that their progress is usually in the inverse ra-
