III. The commercial subjugation and exploitation of the bourgeois classes of the various European nations by the despot of the world market — England.[1]
We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even the most elementary notions of political economy. We wish to be understood by the workers. And, moreover, there prevails in Germany the most remarkable ignorance and confusion of ideas in regard to the simplest economic relations, from the patented defenders of existing conditions, down to the socialistic wonder-workers and the unrecognized political geniuses, in which divided Germany is even richer than in duodecimo princelings. We therefore proceed first to the consideration of the first problem.
- ↑ As stated by Engels in the Introduction, the series of articles on Wage-Labor and Capital remained incomplete; the pamphlet is confined almost exclusively to a consideration of the first “great division’: the relation of wage-labor to capital. — Translator.
