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Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of

chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation,

railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for

cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured

out of the ground-what earlier century had even a presentiment

that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social

labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose

foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in

feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these

means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which

feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of

agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal

relations of property became no longer compatible with the

already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.

They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.