I spend my whole life in this way; eat, talk, and listen; I eat, write, or read, that is again talk and listen; I eat and play; I eat and again talk and listen; I eat and go to bed; and so it is every day, and I am unable, and do not know how, to do anything else.
And that I may do this it is necessary that from morning to evening the porter, the peasant, the man and woman cook, the footman, the coachman and laundress, should work; to say nothing of those working people who are needed that these coachmen, cooks, footmen and the rest should have utensils and the things with which and on which they work for me: axes, barrels, brushes, crockery, furniture, glasses, blacking, paraffin, hay, wood-fuel, meat. And all these people work hard every day and all day, that I may be able to talk, eat and sleep. And it was I, this wretched man, who imagined that I could help others-help the very people who were supporting me.
It is not surprising that I did not help anyone and that I felt ashamed, but it is surprising that such an absurd idea could have occurred to me. The woman who tended the sick old man helped him, the peasant woman who cut a bit of bread from the loaf she had obtained from the soil, helped a beggar; Semen, who gave three kopeks he had earned, helped the beggar, because those three kopeks really represented work he had done; but I had served no one, had worked for no one, and knew well that my money did not represent work I had done.
And I came to feel that in money itself, in the very possession of it, there is something evil and immoral; and that money itself, and the fact that I possess it, is one of the chief causes of the evils I saw around me-and I asked myself: What is money?
CHAPTER XVII
MONEY! What is money?
Money represents work. I have even met educated people who declare that money represents the work of him who possesses it. I confess that m an obscure way I formerly shared that opinion but I felt it necessary to know what money really is, and to find this out I turned to science.
Science says that there is nothing unjust or harmful in money, but that it is a natural condition of social life, necessary: (1) for convenience of exchange, (2) for fixing a measure of value, (3) for savings, and (4) for payments. The obvious fact that if I have three surplus rubles in my pocket which I can spare, I can at a whistle call together in any civilized town a hundred people who for those three rubles will perform most laborious, repulsive, and degrading tasks, is not due to the nature of money but to the very complex conditions of our economic life. The power some people have over others does not arise from money, but from the fact that the labourer does not receive the full value of his labour. That he does not receive the full value of his labour results from the nature of capital, rent, and wages, and from complex relations between these and the items of production, distribution, and consumption, of wealth.
In plain Russian it results that those who have money can twist those who have none into ropes. But science says that the truth of the matter does not lie in that. Science says that three factors enter into every kind of production: land, stored up labour (capital), and labour. From different interactions of these factors on one another, and because the first two factors-land and capital-are not in the hands of the workers but in those of other people-and from very intricate combinations arising from this, the enslavement of some people by others results. From what does the dominion of money, which amazes us by its injustice and cruelty, arise? Why do some people rule over others by means of money?
Science says that this is due to the division of the factors of production, and from combinations that result there from and oppress the labourers. This reply always seemed to me strange, not merely because it leaves out one part of the question-namely, the significance of money in the matter-but also by its division of the factors of production, which at first sight always strikes one as artificial and not in accord with the facts. It is asserted that in all production three factors are always engaged: land, capital, and labour, and thereupon it is always assumed that wealth (or what represents it-money) is naturally subdivided among those who own these factors: the rent-the value of the land-belongs to the landlord; the interest to the capitalist; and wages-the payment for work-to the working man. Is that so? First of all, is it true that in all production these three factors are engaged?
Around me while I write this, hay is being produced. Of what is this production made up? I am told: of the land on which the grass has grown; of capital-the scythes, rakes, pitchforks, and carts necessary for gathering the hay; and of labour. But I see that this is not true. Besides the land the sun, water, and the social organization (which preserves these fields from trespass), the workers’ knowledge, and their ability to speak and to understand words, and many other factors which for some reason political economy does not take into account-all take part in the production of this hay.
The power of the sun is just such a factor of all production as the land, and is yet more necessary. I can imagine a condition (say in a town) in which people assume a right to shut. off the sun from others by walls or trees; why is it not included among the factors of production? Water is another factor as essential as land. So is the air also. And I can again imagine people deprived of water and of pure air because other people claim an exclusive right to the water and the air that is needed. Social security is another such essential factor, and food and clothing for the workers are also such factors of production, as some economists admit education and the ability to speak, which make it possible to apply various kinds of work, are other such factors.
I could fill a whole volume with such omitted factors of production. Why then have just these three factors of production been selected and put at the basis of the science? Sunlight and water can be reckoned as separate factors of production just as land is the labourers’ food and clothing, knowledge, and its transmission, can be reckoned as separate factors of production, just like the labourers’ implements.
Why are sunbeams, water, food, and knowledge not reckoned as separate factors of production, but only land, implements, and labour? Is it merely because only in rare instances do people claim rights in sunbeams, water, air, or the right to speak and to listen, while in our society such rights are constantly claimed in the use of land and the implements of labour? There is no other basis for it, and so I see, first, that the division of the factors of production into three only is quite arbitrary and does not rest on the nature of things. But perhaps this division is so natural to people that wherever economic relations are formed these three, and only these three, factors of production come to the front.
Let us see whether that is so. I look first of all around myself at the Russian settlers, of whom there are and have been millions. These settlers come to some new land, settle down on it, and begin to work; and it does not enter any of their heads that a man who does not work the land can have any right to it, and the land does not advance any separate claims of its own, on the contrary the settlers regard the land as a common possession and consider that every man has a right to mow and plough where he pleases and as much as he can manage.
The settlers bring implements for the cultivation of the land, for growing vegetables, and for building their houses, and again it does not occur to anyone that the tools of labour can of themselves produce an income nor does that capital make any claim, but on the contrary the settlers consciously recognize that any profit charged for the loan of implements or for a loan of grain-that is, for capital-is unjust.
The settlers work on free land with their own tools or with tools lent to them without interest, each on his own account, or all together at a common task, and in such a commune it is impossible to find rent, interest on capital, or wages. In speaking of such communes I am not inventing, but am describing what has taken place everywhere and happens now, not only among Russian settlers but everywhere, as long as nothing infringes man’s natural habits. I describe what appears to everyone natural and reasonable. People settle on the land and each one sets to work at what is natural to him; and each, having prepared what he needs for it, does his own work.
If it is more convenient for them to work together they form an association, an artel; but neither in their separate farming
