| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: some so exquisitely fine as I think I never saw better in Flanders,
France, or Italy, and which they said they rated at above 30 pounds
sterling a yard; but I suppose there was not much of this to be
had. But it is most certain that they make exceeding rich lace in
that county, such as no part of England can equal.
From thence I went west to Stourbridge, vulgarly called Strabridge.
The town and the country around is employed in the manufacture of
stockings, and which was once famous for making the finest, best,
and highest-prize knit stocking in England; but that trade now is
much decayed by the increase of the knitting-stocking engine or
frame, which has destroyed the hand-knitting trade for fine
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent
already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not
a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which
exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon
condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh
exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the
antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides
of this antagonism.
 The Communist Manifesto |