No wonder that the slaves themselves, who have always been enslaved, do
not understand their own position, and that this condition in which they
have always lived is considered by them to be natural to human life, and
that they hail as a relief any change in their form of slavery; no
wonder that their owners sometimes quite sincerely think they are, in a
measure, freeing the slaves by slacking one screw, though they are
compelled to do so by the over-tension of another.
Both become accustomed to their state; and the slaves, never having
known what freedom is, merely seek an alleviation, or only the change of
their condition; the other, the owners, wishing to mask their injustice,
try to assign a particular meaning to those new forms of slavery which
they enforce in place of the older ones. But it is wonderful how the
majority of the critics of the economic conditions of the life of the
people fail to see that which forms the basis of the entire economic
conditions of a people.
One would think the duty of a true science would be to try to ascertain
the connection of the phenomena and general cause of a series of
occurrences. But the majority of the representatives of modern Political
Economy are doing just the reverse of this: they carefully hide the
connection and meaning of the phenomena, and avoid answering the most
simple and essential questions.
Modern Political Economy, like an idle, lazy cart-horse, goes well only
down-hill, when it has no collar-work; but as soon as it has anything to
draw, it at once refuses, pretending it has to go somewhere aside after
its own business. When any grave, essential question is put to Political
Economy, scientific discussions are started about some other matter
having only in view to divert attention from this subject.
You ask, "How are we to account for a fact so unnatural, monstrous,
unreasonable, and not useless only, but harmful, that some men can eat
or work only according to the will of other men?"
You are gravely answered, "Because some men must arrange the labour and
feeding of others, such is the law of production."
You ask, "What is this property-right which allows some men to
appropriate to themselves the land, food, and instruments of labour
belonging to others?" You are again gravely answered, "This right is
based upon the protection of labour,"--that is, the protection of some
men's labour is effected by taking possession of the labour of other
men.
You ask, "What is that money which is everywhere coined and stamped by
the governments, by the authorities, and which is so exorbitantly
demanded from the working-people, and which in the shape of national
debts is levied upon the future generations of workingmen? Further, has
not this money, demanded from the people in the shape of taxes which are
raised to the utmost pitch, has not this money any influence on the
economic relationships of men,--between the payers and the receivers?"
And you are answered in all seriousness, "Money is an article of
merchandise like sugar, or chintz; and it differs from other articles
only in the fact that it is more convenient for exchange."
As for the influence of taxes on the economic conditions of a people, it
is a different question altogether: the laws of production, exchange,
and distribution of wealth, are one thing, but taxation is quite
another. You ask whether it has any influence on the economic conditions
of a people that the government can arbitrarily raise or lower prices,
and, having increased the taxes, can make slaves of all who have no
land? The pompous answer is, "The laws of production, exchange, and
distribution of wealth constitute one science,--Political Economy; and
taxes, and, generally speaking, State Economy, come under another
head,--the Law of Finance."
You ask finally, "Is no influence exercised on economic conditions by
the circumstance that all the people are in bondage to the government,
and that this government can arbitrarily ruin them all, can take away
all the products of their labour, and even carry the men themselves away
from their work into military slavery?" You are answered, "This is
altogether a different question, belonging to the State Law."
The majority of the representatives of science discuss quite seriously
the laws of the economic life of a people, while all the functions and
activities of this life are dependent on the will of the oppressor.
Whilst they recognize the influence of the oppressor as a natural
condition of a nation's life, they do just what a critic of the economic
conditions of the life of the personal slaves of different masters would
do, were he to omit to consider the influence exercised on the life of
these slaves by the will of that master who compels them to work on this
or that thing and drives them from one place to another according to his
pleasure, who feeds them or neglects to do so, who kills them or leaves
them alive.
A noxious superstition has been long in existence and still survives,--a
superstition which has done more harm to men than the most terrible
religious superstitions.
And so-called science supports this superstition with all its power, and
with the utmost zeal. This superstition exactly resembles religious
superstitions. It consists in affirming that, besides the duties of man
to man, there are still more important duties towards an imaginary
being,--which the theologians call God, and the political scientists the
State.
The religious superstition consists in affirming that sacrifices, even
of human lives, must be offered to this imaginary being, and that they
can and ought to be enforced by every means, even by violence. The
political superstition consists in the belief that, besides the duties
of man to man, there are still more important duties to an imaginary
being, the State; and the offerings,--often of human lives,--brought to
this imaginary being are also essential, and can and ought to be
enforced by every means, even by violence.
This superstition it is, formerly encouraged by the priests of different
religions, which is now sustained by so-called science.
Men are thrown into slavery, into the most terrible slavery, worse than
has ever before existed; but Political Science tries to persuade men
that it is necessary and unavoidable.
The state must exist for the welfare of the people, and it must do its
duty, to rule and protect them from their enemies. For this purpose the
state needs money and troops. Money must be subscribed by all the
citizens of the state. And hence all the relations of men must be
considered in the light of the existence of the state.
"I want to help my father by my labour," says a common unlearned man. "I
want also to marry; but instead, I am taken and sent to Kazan, to be a
soldier for six years. I leave the military service, I want to plough
the ground to earn food and drink for my family; but I am not allowed to
plough for a hundred versts around me unless I pay money, which I have
not got, and pay it to those men who do not know how to plough, and who
demand for the land so much money that I must give them all my labour to
procure it: however, I still manage to save something, and wish to give
this to my children; but a police official comes and takes from me all I
had saved, for taxes: I can earn a little more, and again I am deprived
of it. My entire economic activity is at the mercy of state demands; and
it seems to me that my position and that of my brethren, will certainly
improve if we are liberated from the demands of the state."
But he is told, "Such reasoning is the result of your ignorance. Study
the laws of production, exchange, and distribution of wealth, and do not
mix up economical questions with those of the state. The phenomena which
you point to are no restraints on your freedom; they are the necessary
sacrifices which you, along with others, must make for your own freedom
and welfare."
"But my son has been taken away from me," says again a common man; "and
they threaten to take away all my sons as soon as they are grown up:
they took him away by force, and drove him to face the enemy's guns in
some country which we have never heard of, and for an object which we
cannot understand.
"And as for the land which they will not allow us to plough, and for
want of which we are starving, it belongs to a man who got possession of
it by force, and whom we have never seen, and whose usefulness we cannot
even understand. And the taxes, to collect which the police official has
by force taken my cow from my children, will, so far as I know, go to
this same man who took my cow away, and to various members of the
committees and of departments which I do not know of, and in the utility
of which I do not believe. How is it, then, that all these acts of
violence secure my liberty, and all this evil procures good?"
You may compel a man to be a slave and to do that which he considers to
be evil for himself, but you cannot compel him to think, that, in
suffering violence, he is free, and that the obvious evil which he
endures constitutes his good. This appears impossible. Yet by the help
of science this very thing has been done in our time.
The state, that is, the armed oppressors, decide what they want from
those whom they oppress (as in the case of England and the
Fiji-Islanders): they decide how much labour they want from their
slaves,--they decide how many assistants they will need in collecting
the fruits of this labour; they organize their assistants in the shape
of soldiers, land-owners, and collectors of taxes. And the slaves give
their labour, and, at the same time, believe that they give it, not
because their masters demand it, but for the sake of their own freedom
and welfare; and that this service and these bloody sacrifices to the
divinity called the State are necessary, and that, except this service
to their Deity, they are free. They believe this because the same had
been formerly said in the name of religion by the priests, and is now
said in the name of so-called science, by learned men.
But one need only cease to believe what is said by these other men who
call themselves priests or learned men, for the absurdity of such an
assertion to become obvious.
The men who oppress others assure them that this oppression is necessary
for the state,--and the state is necessary for the freedom and welfare
of men; so that it appears that the oppressors oppress men for the sake
of their freedom, and do them evil for the sake of good.
But men are furnished with reason so that they may understand wherein
consists their own good, and do it willingly.
As for the acts, the goodness of which is not intelligible to men, and
to which they are compelled by force, these cannot be for their good,
because a reasoning being can consider as good only the thing which
appears so to his reason. If men are driven to evil through passion or
folly, all that those who are not so driven can do is to persuade the
others into what constitutes their real good. You may try to persuade
men that their welfare will be greater when they are all soldiers, are
deprived of land, and have given their entire labour away for taxes; but
until all men consider this condition to be welfare, and undertake it
willingly, one cannot call such a state of things the common welfare of
men.
The sole criterion of a good conception is its willing acceptance by
men. And the lives of men abound with such acts. Ten workmen buy tools
in common, in order to work together with them, and in so doing they are
undoubtedly benefitting themselves; but we cannot suppose that if these
ten workmen were to compel an eleventh, by force, to join in their
association, they would insist that their common welfare will be the
same for him.
So with gentlemen who agree to give a subscription dinner at a pound a
head to a mutual friend; no one can assert that such a dinner will
benefit a man who, against his will, has been obliged to pay a sovereign
for it. And so with peasants who decide, for their common convenience,
to dig a pond. To those who consider the existence of a pond more
valuable than the labour spent on it, digging it will be a common good.
But to the one who considers the pond of less value than a day's
harvesting in which he is behind-hand, digging it will appear evil. The
same holds good with roads, churches, and museums, and with all various
social and state affairs.
All such work may be good for those who consider it good, and who
therefore freely and willingly perform it,--the dinner which the
gentlemen give, the pond which the peasants dig. But work to which men
must be driven by force ceases to be a common good precisely by the fact
of such violence.
All this is so plain and simple, that, if men had not been so long
deceived, there would be no need to explain it.
Suppose we live in a village where all the inhabitants have agreed to
build a road over a swamp which is a danger to them. We agree together,
and each house promises to give so much money or wood or days of labour.
We agree to this because the making of the road is more advantageous to
us than what we exchange for it; but among us there are some for whom it
is more advantageous to do without a road than to spend money on it, or
who at all events think so. Can compelling these men to labour make it
of advantage to them? Obviously not; because those who considered that
their choosing to join in making the way would have been
disadvantageous, will consider it _a fortiori_ still more
disadvantageous when they are _compelled_ to do so. Suppose, even, that
we all, without exception, were agreed, and promised so much money or
labour from each house, but that it happened that some of those who had
promised did not give what they agreed, their circumstances having
meanwhile changed, so that it was more advantageous for such now to be
without the road than to spend money on it; or that they have simply
changed their mind about it; or even calculate that others will make the
road without them and that they will then use it. Can coercing these men
to join in the labour make them consider that the sacrifices are
enforced for their own good?
Obviously not; because, if these men have not fulfilled what they
promised, owing to a change in circumstances, so that now the sacrifices
for the sake of the road outbalance their gain by it, the compulsory
sacrifices of such would be only a worse evil. But if those who refuse
to join in building the road intend to utilize the labour of the others,
then in this case also coercing them into making a sacrifice would be
only a punishment on a supposition, and their object, which nobody can
prove, will be punished before it is made apparent; but in neither case
can coercing them to join in a work which they do not desire be good for
them.
If this is so with sacrifices for a work which every one can comprehend,
obvious, and undoubtedly useful to everyone, such as a road over a
swamp; how still more unjust and unreasonable is it to coerce millions
of men into making sacrifices for objects which are incomprehensible,
imperceptible, and often undoubtedly harmful, such as military service
and taxation.
But, according to science, what appears to every one to be an evil is a
common good: it appears that there are men, a small minority, who alone
know of what the common good consists, and, notwithstanding the fact
that all other men consider this good to be an evil, this minority can
compel the others to do whatever they may consider to be for the common
good. And it is this belief which constitutes the chief superstition and
the chief deceit and hinders the progress of mankind towards the True
and the Good.
To nurse this superstitious deceit has been the object of political
sciences in general, and of so-called "Political Economy" in particular.
Many are making use of its aims in order to hide from men the state of
oppression and slavery in which they now are.
The way they set about doing so is by starting the theory that the
violence connected with the economy of social slavery is a natural and
unavoidable evil; and men thereby are deceived and turn their eyes from
the real causes of their misfortunes.
Slavery has long been abolished. It has been abolished in Rome as well
as in America, and in Russia; but only the word has been abolished,--not
the evil.
Slavery is the violent freeing of some men from the labour necessary for
satisfying their wants, which transfers this labour to others; and
wherever there is a man who does not work, not because others willingly
and lovingly work for him, but because he has the possibility, while not
working himself, to make others work for him, there slavery exists.
Wherever there are, as in all European societies, men who utilize the
labour of thousands of others by coercion, and consider such to be their
right, and others who submit to this coercion considering it to be their
duty,--there you have slavery in its most dreadful proportions.
Slavery exists. In what, then, does it consist? Slavery consists of that
of which it has always consisted, and without which it cannot exist at
all,--in the coercion of a weak and unarmed man by a strong and armed
man.
Slavery in its three fundamental modes of operation,--personal violence,
the military, land-taxes,--maintained by the military, and direct and
indirect taxes put upon all the inhabitants, is still in operation now
as it has been before.
We do not see it because each of these three forms of slavery has
received a new justification, which hides its meaning from us.
The personal violence of armed over unarmed men has been justified as
the defence of one's country from imaginary enemies,--while in its
essence it has the one old meaning, the submission of the conquered to
the oppressors.
The violent seizure of the labourers' land has been justified as the
recompense for services rendered to an imaginary common welfare, and
confirmed by the right of heritage; but in reality it is the same
dispossession of men from their land and enslaving them which was
performed by the troops.
And the last, the monetary violence by means of taxes, the strongest and
most effective in our days, has received a most wonderful justification.
Dispossessing men of their liberty and their goods is said to be done
for the sake of the common liberty and of the common welfare. But in
fact it is the same slavery, only an impersonal one.
Wherever violence becomes law, there is slavery.
Whether violence finds its expression in the circumstance that princes
with their courtiers come, kill, and burn down villages; whether
slave-owners take labour or money for the land from their slaves, and
enforce payment by means of armed men, or by putting taxes on others,
and riding armed to and fro in the villages; or whether a Home
Department collects money through governors or police sergeants,--in one
word, as long as violence is maintained by the bayonet,--there will be
no distribution of wealth, but it will be accumulated among the
oppressors.
As a striking illustration of the truth of this assertion the project of
Henry George to nationalize the land may serve us. Henry George proposes
to declare all land the property of the state, and to substitute a
land-rent for all taxes, direct and indirect. That is, everyone who
utilizes the land would have to pay to the state the value of its rent.
What would be the result? The land would belong to the state,--English
land to England, American land to America, and so on; that is, there
would be slavery, determined by the quantity of cultivated land. It
might be that the condition of some labourers would improve; but while a
forcible demand for rent remained, the slavery would remain too. The
cultivator, after a bad harvest, being unable to pay the rent exacted of
him by force, would be obliged to enslave himself to any one who
happened to have the money in order not to lose everything and to retain
the land.
If a pail leaks, there must be a hole. Looking at the pail, we might
imagine the water runs from many holes; but no matter how we might try
to stop the imaginary holes from without, the water would not cease
running. In order to put a stop to the leakage we must find the place
from which water runs, and stop it from the inside.
The same holds good with the proposed means of stopping the irregular
distribution of wealth,--the holes through which the wealth runs away
from the people.
It is said, _Organize workmen's corporations, make capital social
property, make land social property_. All this is only mere stopping
from the outside those holes from which we fancy the water runs. In
order to stop the wealth going from the hands of the workers to those of
the non-workers, it is necessary to try to find from the inside the hole
through which this leakage takes place. And this hole is the violence of
armed men towards unarmed men, the violence of troops, by means of which
men are carried away from their labour, and the land, and the products
of labour, taken from them.
So long as there is one armed man, whoever he may be, with the
acknowledged right to kill another man, so long will there also exist an
unjust distribution of wealth,--in other words, slavery.
I was led into the error that I can help others by the fact that I
imagined my money was as good as Semion's. But it was not so.
The general opinion is that money represents wealth; that wealth is the
result of work and therefore that money represents work. This opinion is
as just as the opinion asserting that every form of state is the result
of a contract (contrat social).
All men like to believe that money is only a means of exchange of
labour. I have made boots, you have made bread, he has fed sheep; now,
in order to exchange our wares the more conveniently, we introduce
money, which represents the corresponding share of labour, and through
it we exchange leather soles for a mutton brisket and ten pounds of
flour.
By means of money we exchange our products and this money, belonging to
each of us, represents our labour. This is perfectly true, but true only
while in the community, where this exchange takes place, violence of one
man towards another did not appear, violence not only over another man's
labour, as happens in war and in slavery, but not even violence applied
to defend the products of labour of one man against another. This could
be only in a community whose members entirely fulfil the Christian
law,--in a community where one gets what he demands and where one is not
requested to return what he gets. But as soon as violence in any form is
applied in the community, the meaning of money for its owner at once
loses its significance as a representative of labour, and acquires the
significance of a right, based not on labour, but on violence.
As soon as there is war and one man has taken away something from
another, then money cannot always represent labour; the money received
by the soldier for the booty he has sold, as well as the money got by
his superior, is by no means the produce of their work and has quite a
different meaning from the money received for the labour resulting in
boots. When there are slave-owners and slaves, as have been always in
the world, then one cannot assert that money represents labour. The
women have woven a quantity of linen, have sold it and received money;
the serfs have woven some linen for their master, and the master has
sold it and received money. The one and the other money are the same;
but one is the product of labour and the other is the product of
violence. Likewise, if somebody,--say my father,--made me a present of
money and he, when giving it to me, knew, and I knew and everybody knew,
that no one can take this money away from me, that if anybody tried to
take it, or even merely failed to return it at the date promised, then
the authorities would defend me and by force compel the man to return me
this money,--then again it is evident that by no means can this money be
called a representative of labour, like the money which Semion got for
cutting wood.
Thus in a community, where by some kind of violence somebody's money is
taken possession of, or the ownership of somebody's money defended
against others--there money cannot always represent labour. It
represents in such a community sometimes labour, sometimes violence.
So it would be if only one fact of violence of one man over another
appeared in the midst of perfectly free relations; but now, when the
accumulated money has passed through centuries of most various forms of
violence, when these acts of violence continue under other forms; when
money itself by its accumulation creates violence,--which is recognized
by everybody,--when the direct products of labour constitute only a
small part of money made up of all sorts of violence,--to assert now
that money represents the work of its owner is an obvious error, or an
open lie. One may say it ought to be so, one may say it is desirable
that it should be so, but by no means can any one say that it is so.
Money represents labour. Yes; money represents labour, but whose labour?
In our society it is only in the rarest cases that money represents the
work of its owner. Almost always it represents the labour of other
men,--the past or future labours of men. It is the representative of a
claim on the labour of other men by force of violence.
Money, in its most exact and at the same time its simplest definition,
represents conventional signs, which bestow the right,--or rather the
possibility,--to use the work of other men. In its ideal meaning, money
ought to give this right or possibility only when it serves itself as a
representative of labour, and as such, money could exist in a society
devoid of any kind of violence. But as soon as violence takes place in a
society, i.e., the possibility of the utilizing of the labour of others
by the idler,--then this possibility of using the labour of others,
without defining persons over which this violence is committed, is also
exercised in money.
The landowner taxed his serfs by a contribution in kind, making them
bring a certain quantity of linen, corn, cattle, or a corresponding
amount of money. One household delivered the cattle, but the linens were
replaced by money. The landowner accepts the money in a certain
quantity, only because he knows that for this money he can get the same
pieces of linen (generally he takes a little more money to be sure that
he will receive for it the same quantity of linen), and this money
evidently offers for the landowner lien on other men's labour.
The peasant gives money as a security against persons unknown but
numerous, who would undertake to work out so much linen for this money.
Those who will undertake to work the linen will do it because they did
not succeed in feeding the sheep, and for these they must pay in money;
and the peasant who will get the money for the sheep will take it, only
because he must pay for the corn, which was a failure that year. The
same goes on in the State and all over the world.
A man sells the produce of his past, present or future labour, sometimes
his food-stuff, not mostly because money is a convenient exchange for
him,--he would exchange without money,--but because he is required by
means of violence to give money, as a security on his work.
When Pharaoh has demanded the labour of his slaves, then the slaves have
given him all their labour, but they could give only the past and
present labour, and could not give that of the future. But with the
spread of money tokens and their result of "credit" it becomes possible
to give also one's future work for money.
Money, with the existence of violence in society, offers the means for a
new form of impersonal slavery, which replaces the personal one. A
slave-owner claims a right to the work of Peter, Iván, Sidor. But
wherever money is required from everybody, the owner of money acquires a
claim on the labour of all those unknown people who are in need of
money. Money removes the painful side of slavery, by which the owner
knows about his right on Iván, at the same time it removes all those
human relations between the owner and the slave, which softened down the
burden of personal slavery.
I will not dwell on the theory that perhaps such a state is necessary
for the development of mankind, for its progress and so forth--I will
not dispute it. I only strive to make clear to myself the conception of
money and to discover the general misconception I have made in accepting
money, as a representative of labour. I became convinced by experience
that money is not a representative of labour, but in the great majority
of cases is a representative of violence, or of specially complex
artifices founded on violence.
Money in our time has already altogether lost the desirable significance
of being the representative of labour; such significance it may have in
exceptional cases, but as a rule it has become the right or the
possibility of using the labour of others.
This spreading of money, of credit and different conventional signs,
more and more confirm this meaning of money. Money is the possibility or
the right to use the labours of others.
Money is a new form of slavery differing from the old form of slavery
only by its impersonality, by the freedom it gives from all human
relations to the slave.
Money is money, a value always equal to itself, and which is always
considered quite correct and lawful, and the use of which is not
considered immoral, as slavery was.
In my young days a game of lotto was introduced in the clubs. All
eagerly played the game and, as was said, many lost their fortunes,
ruined their families, lost money entrusted to them, and government
funds, and finally shot themselves, so that the game was forbidden and
is still forbidden.
I remember I have met old, hardened card players who told me that this
game was especially fascinating, because one did not know whom one was
to beat, as is the case in other games; the attendant does not even
serve one with money, but with counters, everybody loses a small stake
and does not betray grief. It is the same in roulette, which is rightly
forbidden everywhere.
So it is with money. I have a magical, everlasting ruble; I cut off
coupons and live apart from all the affairs of the world. Whom do I
harm? I am the most quiet and kind-hearted man. But this is only a game
of lotto or roulette where I do not see the man, who shoots himself
after having lost, and who provides for me these small coupons, which I
carefully cut off under the right angle from the tickets.
I have done nothing, I am doing nothing, and never will do anything,
save cut off the coupons, and firmly believe that money represents
labour. This is really astounding! And people talk of lunatics! But what
mania could be more horrible than this? An intelligent, learned, and in
all other respects sensible man lives madly, and soothes himself by not
acknowledging that one thing which he should acknowledge to make his
argument reasonable, and he considers himself in the right! The coupons
are representatives of labour! Of labour! Yes, but of whose labour? Not
of his, who owns them, evidently, but of the one who works.
Money is the same as slavery; its aim is the same and its consequences
are the same. Its aim is the freeing of some men from the original law,
truly called so by a thoughtful writer of the working-classes, from the
natural law of life, as we call it, from the law of personal labour for
the satisfaction of one's needs. The consequences of the slavery for the
owner: the begetting, the invention of infinitely more and more needs
never to be satisfied, of effeminate wretchedness and of depravity, and
for the slaves,--oppression of the man, and his lowering to the level of
a beast.
Money is a new and terrible form of slavery and, like the old form of
personal slavery, it equally demoralises the slave and the slave-owner,
but it is so much worse, because it frees the slave and the slave-owner
from personal human relations.