Discussing money, Tolstoy cannot separate the economic question from
the political. To him it appears inevitable that money performes a
social service equivalent to the instrument of extortion. He does not
take into consideration those inumerable utilities which circulating
medium renders to the community and particularly to the commercial
world, facilitating the transfer as well as aggregation of capital.
“Chremmatistics” teaches us that money is the most general form of
capital, capital in the fluid state, so that it can be immediately
turned to new enterprises and transfered for investment to distant
places. On the other hand, capital in the form of money is the most
convenient vehicle of production and distribution of wealth. Tolstoy,
as a medieval canonist, regards capital and wealth to be shameful
and criminal things. He absolutely repudiates the theory that in all
production only three factors take part: land, capital and labor.
His disconcerting controversy in these matters contains nothing
fundamentally new in political economy, but it is an odd manner in
which he couches the notion of money in relation to production.
It seems strange, Tolstoy’s theory runs, that economists do not
recognize the natural objects in production of wealth. The power of
the sun, water, food, air, and social security, are the requisites of
production as much as the land or capital. Education, knowledge, and
ability to speak are certain agents of production. I could fill a
whole volume, says Tolstoy, with such omitted factors, and put them at
the basis of science[38]. The division into three factors of production
is not proper to men. It is improper, arbitrary, and senseless. It does
not lie in the essence of things themselves.
By its division of the factors of production, proceeds our author,
science affirms that the natural condition of the laborer is that
unnatural condition in which he is; just as in the ancient world
they affirmed, in dividing people into citizens and slaves, that
the unnatural condition of the slaves is a natural property of man.
This division, which is accepted by science only in order to justify
the existing evil, which is placed by it at the basis of all its
investigations, has had this effect, that science tries in vain to
give explanations of existing phenomena, and denying the clearest and
simplest answers to questions that present them, it gives answers which
are devoid of content. The question of economic science is as follows:
What is the cause of this, that some men, who have land and capital,
are able to enslave those who have not land, and no capital? The answer
which presents itself to common sense is this, that it is due to the
money, which has the power of enslaving people. This is not due to the
property of money, but because some have land and capital, and others
have not. We ask, why people who have land and capital enslave those
who have none, and we are told: because they have land and capital.
But that is precisely what we want to know. The privation of the land
and of the tools of labor is that very enslavement. The answer is like
this: _Facit dormire quia habet virtutem dormitiva_. To simple people
it is indubitable that the nearest cause of the enslavement of one
class of men by another is money[39]. They know that it is possible to
cause more trouble with a rouble than with a club; it is only political
economy that does not want to know it[40].
These theories on money respecting production do not appear of such
nature that they could be applied in the other countries besides
Russia. The Russian enlightened feudalism of the nineteenth century
gave Tolstoy excellent material and a good reason to attack it with
all his strength, and he was right. But his assault on political
economy for its “omission” to treat the natural objects in production
of wealth, are not justifiable, and could not be admitted. In the first
place, any better political economy does not consider these objects at
length, because nobody lays claims on them, as Tolstoy himself avowed
this fact[41]. The gifts of nature cannot be appropriated by any one.
They are inexhaustible and unlimited as compared with the wants of men.
Therefore they never have a direct value to be taken as factors of
productions[42].
In modern industrial society the essential factors of production, among
the others, are money and wealth. Wealth is usually regarded as the
object of consumption, and as an agent of production[43]. The idea
of wealth, however, is often confounded with the idea of money. John
S. Mill has justly remarked that most people regard money as wealth,
because by that means they provide almost all their necessities. In
the same sense is the assertion of the French economist Charles Gide,
when he noted that in all times and in all places except among savages,
money has occupied an exceptional place in the thoughts and desires of
men. People regard it, if not as the only wealth, at any rate, as by
far the most important form of wealth. They appear to measure the value
of all other wealth by the quantity of money that can be obtained in
exchange for it. _Etre riche, c’est avoir soit de l’argent, soit les
moyens de s’en procurer[44]._
Tolstoy of course has no clear distinction either of wealth, or of
money. He also confuses these notions, as many authors before and
after him. To define wealth exactly is verily a difficult task; and to
dwell upon it impartially is perhaps still more difficult. There are
two theories in “Plutology” regarding the definition of wealth: first,
that wealth is all exchangeable and valuable commodities and second,
that it is power. Representatives of the first theory are Henry Fawcet
and John S. Mill, of the second, Hobbes and Carey. Tolstoy is nearer
to those theorizers who teach that wealth is power, than to those
who define it as commodity. Yet, we should err gravely if we assumed
that between Tolstoy’s interpretation of wealth and that of other
economists exists any conformity. For instance Carey defines wealth
as the power to command nature. Tolstoy defines it as the power to
command other people who have neither wealth nor “the signs” of wealth.
“Only in the Pentateuch, wealth is the highest good and reward”[45]. In
everyday life wealth is evil, deception and cause of enslavement. To
be honest and at the same time to work for Mammon, is something quite
impossible[46]. This ethical principle may be true. But our theorist
forgets that questions of what people ought to do, and questions
of what it will profit men and nations to do, belong to different
categories of sciences. He forgets that ethical ideas should not be
read into the conceptions of wealth and money when they are employed in
their everyday sense. Prof. S. Chapman[47] justly says “If our aim is
to indicate what people ought to want instead of what they do want, we
had better speak of ethical wealth and ethical value”.
Tolstoy was very near to those reform writers who taught that political
economy must be regarded as a part of moral philosophy. But he was
not the first social reformer who has introduced the moral elements
into the study of economic phenomena. As it is known Aristotle’s
interpretations of money are written in the _Nichomachean Ethics_.
The political economy of Plato and Xenophon rests on moral bases[48].
Medieval scholastics and theologians raised many problems which were in
connection with the searching inquire as to what constitutes a _just
price_, and this inquiry belonged to the ethics of political economy.
Adam Smith and John S. Mill adopted the double role to be economists
and at the same time ethical teachers[49]. French economists Rossi, De
Laveley, and Le Play, introduced ethical principle in the science of
wealth as well.
There are several such examples of “ethical interpretation” of
economics among the most illustrious thinkers. They may be exculpated
for their disagreements only on the ground that they lived in times
when social science was in incumbent stage, when scientific ideas
were intermingled from one sphere of science into another. Good,
gentle Tolstoy, may also be pardoned for his “blunders of expression”
because he made them in his fanatic love of truth, and truth although
it is truth, does not always seem true, says a French proverb. To
treat the delicate and intricate complexity of money and wealth, and
never mislead, one should be a higher-man, a superman. But supermen
are not yet born in this sordid earth as fitly objected a well-known
philosopher.