Why should one not have said half a century ago, that despite the fact that the serf-law could enslave a man, the law was not a means of enslavement but a harmless medium of mutual service? Some people gave rough labour, others attended to the physical and mental welfare of the slaves and organized their work. I even think that that used to be said.
CHAPTER XIX
IF this pseudo-science, political economy, were not occupied, like all the juridical sciences, with devising excuses for violence, it could not avoid taking note of the strange fact that the distribution of wealth-the circumstance that some people are deprived of land and capital and that some men enslave others-is all dependent on money, and only by means of money does one set of men now exploit the labour of others, that is, enslave others.
I repeat: a man who has money can buy up all the corn and starve another and make a complete slave of him through his need of bread. And this is done before our eyes on an enormous scale. It would seem necessary to seek the connexion between the phenomena of slavery and money; but science asserts with full confidence that money has nothing to do with the enslavement of men.
Science says: money is a commodity like any other the value of which is fixed by its cost of production, the only difference being that this commodity has been chosen as most convenient to serve as a standard of values, for savings, as a means of exchange, and to effect payments: one man makes boots and another grows grain, while a third raises sheep; and more conveniently to exchange their produce they introduce money which represents a proportionate amount of work, and by its means they can exchange leather soles for sheep’s ribs and ten pounds of flour.
The exponents of this pseudo-science are very fond of imagining such a state of affairs to themselves, but it never existed in the world.
Such a conception of society is like the conception of a primitive uncorrupted perfect human society that philosophers used to be fond of devising. But there never was such a state. In all human societies where money has existed as such, violence has always been exerted by the strong and well armed against the weak and unarmed; and where there was violence the standard of values, money-whatever it may have been: cattle, hides, furs, or metals-inevitably lost that significance and became merely a means of ransom from violence.
Money certainly has the innocuous qualities science enumerates, but they would be its essential qualities only in a society where there was no violence of man to man-in an ideal society; and in such a society money as money-a common measure of values-would not exist at all, just as it has not existed and could not exist in any society not subjected to general governmental violence. But in all societies known to us where money exists it has obtained importance as a medium of exchange only because it has served as an instrument of violence.
And Its chief significance is not as a medium of exchange but as an instrument of violence. Where there is violence money cannot be a regular medium of exchange because it cannot be a standard of values.
It cannot be a standard of values because as soon as one man in a society can deprive another of the products of his labour, this standard is at once infringed. If horses and cows are brought to market some of which have been reared by their owners while others have been forcibly taken from those who reared them, it is plain that the price of horses and cows in that market will not correspond to the cost of rearing the stock, and that the prices of all articles will be altered as a consequence of this alteration, and money will not have fixed the price of those articles. Moreover if one can acquire a cow, a horse, or a house, by force, it is also possible to take money itself by force and with that money to obtain all kinds of produce. But if money itself is obtained by violence and used to purchase commodities, it quite loses every semblance of a medium of exchange. The oppressor, when he seizes the money and gives it for things produced by labour, does not exchange, but by means of money takes whatever he wants.
But even if such an imaginary and impossible society had existed in which, without any general governmental violence exercised over men, money-silver or gold-had the significance of a standard of values and a medium of exchange, even then as soon as violence was introduced money would at once lose that significance. An oppressor makes his appearance in such a society as a conqueror.
This man, let us suppose, seizes cows, horses, clothing, and the houses of the inhabitants, but finds it inconvenient to deal with all these, and so it naturally occurs to him to take from these people whatever among them represents all kinds of values and can be exchanged for all kinds of articles, namely, money. Money at once ceases to have significance as a standard of values in that society, because the value of all articles will depend on the caprice of the oppressor.
The article the oppressor needs most and for which he will give most money, will become the most valuable, and vice versa. So that in a society subjected to violence money at once acquires the predominant significance of a means whereby the oppressor exercises his violence, and it will retain significance as a medium of exchange among the oppressed only in so far and to such an extent as is convenient to the oppressor.
Let us imagine matters in such a society. Serfs furnish their owner with linen, poultry, sheep, and day-labour. The owner substitutes money dues for these payments in kind and fixes prices for the various articles brought him. Anyone who can supply no linen, corn, cattle, or day labour, may pay a fixed sum of money. Evidently among this owner’s serfs the price of articles will always depend on the arbitrary will of the serf owner.
He uses the articles he receives; and some he needs more and others less, and accordingly fixes higher or lower prices for them. Evidently his whims or needs will decide the prices of these articles among those who have to pay him. If he needs grain he will fix a higher payment for not furnishing the allotted quantity of gram and a cheaper rate for not furnishing linen, cattle, and day-labour; and so those who have no grain will sell their produce, labour, linen, or cattle, to others in order to be able to buy grain to satisfy the proprietor.
If the serf-owner decides to put all these obligations on a money basis, again the price of the commodities will not depend on their labour value but, first, on the amount of money the estate owner demands, and, secondly, on the question which of the articles produced by the peasants he most needs and for which therefore he will pay more, and for which less, money. The exaction by the estate-owner of money from the peasants would only fall to influence the price of articles among those peasants themselves-first, if the serfs of this owner lived in isolation from others and had no intercourse except among themselves and with their owner; and, secondly, if he used the money not to purchase commodities in his own village, but outside it.
Only under such conditions would the prices of the commodities though nominally altered, remain relatively true, and money would have the significance of a standard of values and of exchange; but if the peasants had economic relations with the surrounding population, the estate-owner’s greater or lesser demand for money would heighten or lower the price of the articles they produced, in relation to their neighbours. (If less money were demanded of their neighbours than of them, their produce would be sold more cheaply than that of their neighbours and vice versa.) And, secondly only if the money he collected were not used to purchase the productions of his own peasants would the estate-owner’s exaction of money from the peasants fail to influence the value of their produce.
But if he uses the money to buy things his peasants produce, it is evident that among them the relation of prices between various commodities will constantly change according to the estate-owner’s purchases of this or that commodity. Let us suppose that one estate-owner charged very highly for permission to allow his serfs to work or trade on their own account while a neighbouring proprietor made a small charge for the same privilege, it is plain that within the domain of the former all commodities will be cheaper than in the domain of the second, and that prices in the one .domain and the other will depend directly on the increase or decrease of the dues the serfs have to pay.
Such
