The oppressor needs the money not as a means of exchange, nor to fix the standard of values-he fixes that himself-but only for convenience in his oppression, since money can be stored up and money affords the easiest method of keeping the greatest number of people in slavery. To seize all the animals, in order always to have as many horses and cows and sheep as may be wanted, is inconvenient, for they have to be fed; and it is the same with grain, which may spoil; and it is the same with labour and the corvee: at one time a thousand labourers are wanted, at another time not even one.
Money demanded from those who have none makes it possible to avoid all these inconveniences and always to have everything that is wanted, and just for this purpose does the oppressor need it. Besides that, money is required by the oppressor in order that his power to exploit the labour of others may not be limited to certain people but may extend to all who need money. If there was no money each estate-owner could exploit only the labour of his own serfs; but when two of them agree to take from their serfs money which those serfs do not possess, they can both equally exploit all the forces on the two estates.
And so an oppressor finds it more convenient to make his demands on other people’s work by means of money, and he needs money simply for this purpose. And for a man subjected to violence-a man from whom his work is taken money is not necessary either for exchange (he exchanges without money as all nations without governments have done) or to fix a standard of values, for that fixing is done apart from him; or for savings, for a man from whom the produce of his labour is taken cannot save; or for payments, because a man who is oppressed will have to pay out more than he receives or, if he does receive, the payments made him are not in money but in goods (in cases where he receives payment for his work directly from his employer’s stores) and the same is practically the case if all he earns is spent on articles of primary necessity in outside shops. Money is demanded of him and he is told that if he does not pay it he will get no land or grain, or his cow or his house will be taken from him and he will be hired out to labour or will be put in prison. From this he can escape only by selling the produce of his labour and his labour itself at prices fixed not by fair exchange but by the power which demands the money of him.
And under such conditions-the influence on values of tribute or of taxes, which is seen always and everywhere: with land-owners on a small scale and in kingdoms on a large scale-under these conditions, when the cause of the change in prices is as plain as the reason why marionettes move their limbs is plain to him who looks behind the wings-under these conditions to speak of money as representing a medium of exchange and a standard of values is, to say the least, amazing.
CHAPTER XX
EVERY enslavement of one man by another is based entirely on the fact that one man can deprive another of life, and while maintaining that menacing position can compel the other to obey his will.
One may say with confidence that if there is any enslavement of man, if, that is, one man at the will of another and contrary to his own desire performs actions undesirable to the doer, the cause of this is simply violence and is based on a threat to the man’s life. If a man gives his whole work to others, gets insufficient nourishment, hands his little children over to hard labour, leaves the land and devotes his whole life to hateful labour on things he does not himself want-as occurs before our eyes in our world (which we call cultured, because we live in it), it is safe to say that he does this only because he is threatened with death if he does not do it. And so in our cultured world, where the majority of people do work that is hateful and unnecessary to them under terrible privations, the majority of people are in a state of slavery based on threats to their lives. In what does this enslavement consist? And wherein lies the threat to their lives?
In ancient times the method of enslavement and the threat to life were obvious: a primitive method of enslaving people was employed. It consisted in a direct threat to kill them by the sword. The armed man said to him who was unarmed: I can kill you, as you see I have just killed your brother, but I do not wish to-I spare you because, first of all, it will be more advantageous both for you and for me if you work for me than if you are killed. So do everything I order, for if you refuse I shall kill you. And the unarmed man submitted to him that was armed and did all he commanded. The unarmed man worked, the armed man threatened.
That was the personal slavery that first appeared among all peoples and is still to be met with among primitive tribes. That form of enslavement comes first, but as life becomes more complex it changes its form. As life becomes more complicated that method presents great inconvenience to the oppressor. To exploit the labour of the weak it is necessary to clothe and feed them that is, to keep them so that they are fit for work-and this of itself limits the number of the slaves; besides, this method obliges the oppressor to stand always over the slaves threatening them with death. And so another method of enslaving them is devised.
Five thousand years ago, as is written in the Bible, Joseph in Egypt invented this new, more convenient, and broader method of enslaving people. It is the same that in modern times is employed for taming unruly horses and wild beasts in menageries. It is-hunger.
This is how this invention is described in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible:
‘Ch. xli, v. 48. And he gathered up all the food of the seven [fruitful] years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same.
‘49. And Joseph laid up corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.
‘53. And the seven years of plenty, that was in the land of Egypt, came to an end.
‘54. And the seven years of famine began to come, according as Joseph had said: and there was famine in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.
‘55. And when all the land of Egypt was famished the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do.
‘56. And the famine was over all the face of the earth: and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine was sore in the land of Egypt.
‘57. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because the famine was sore in all the earth.’
Joseph, employing the primitive method of the enslavement of people by threat of the sword, collected the grain in the fruitful years, in anticipation of bad years which usually follow good ones, as everyone knows even without Pharaoh’s dream, and by that means-hunger-he enslaved both the Egyptians and the inhabitants of the surrounding countries by methods more powerful and more convenient to Pharaoh. When the people began to hunger, he arranged matters so as to keep them permanently in his power-by hunger. This is described in Chapter xlvii:
‘13. And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine.
‘14. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought: and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.
‘15. And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt, and in the
