The doctrine therefore amounts to this; that labour shall be exchanged with labour, but not with the produce of labour,--or that there shall be no exchange whatever;--for if the present labourers are to have the sole benefit of the capital, the principle of exchange, in which both exchangers benefit, is destroyed. There must be an end of all exchanges when the things to be exchanged are not equally desired by both parties. If the capitalist is to lend or give the capital to the labourer without a profit, or without a perfect freedom which would entitle him to withhold it if no profit could be obtained, the balance is destroyed between capital and labour. Accumulation is then at an end; because the security of the thing accumulated to the accumulator is at an end. The security is at an end, because if the new labour is to have the advantage of the old labour without compensation or exchange, the new labour must take the old labour by force or fraud; for the new cannot proceed without the old;--labour cannot stir without capital. Accumulation, therefore, being at an end, labour for an object beyond the wants of an hour is at an end. Society resolves itself into its first elements. Strabo, the ancient geographer, has described a tribe amongst whom the title of the priest to the priesthood was acquired by having murdered his predecessor; and consequently the business of the priest in possession was not to discharge the duties of the priesthood, but to watch sword in hand, to defend himself against the new claimant to the office. If the principle were to be recognized, that the accumulation of _former_ labour belongs to the _present_ labourers; and that the best title to the accumulation is to have added nothing towards it, but only to be willing to add,--the title of the labourers in possession would require to be maintained by a constant encounter with new claimants; as the priest of Strabo, who had dispossessed the previous priest, had to dread a similar expulsion from his office, by a new violence. The course of national misery resulting from national disorders always begins with financial embarrassment; by the destruction of capital, or its withdrawal from all useful works. Capital was circulated only because it could be circulated with security. If the present capitalists were driven away, as some reasoners would imply might easily be done, and the labourers were left to work the tools and steam-engines--to labour in the manufactories, and to inhabit the houses of the present capitalists,--production could not go on an hour, unless the appropriation of the plunder were secured to the individual plunderers.