Otherwise, by most complex cunning and cruel devices, which have been elaborated through the ages, I have arranged for myself the condition of any owner of a magic purse, that is, a condition which enables me without ever doing any work, to compel hundreds and thousands of people to work for me-as I am doing; and I imagine that I pity people and wish to help them. I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means-except by getting off his back.
It is really so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor. But as it is at my own choice I give away to the poor who have strayed from the path of life, rubles, or tens or hundreds of rubles; but of exactly such rubles I take thousands from people who have not yet strayed from the path, and thus make them poor and also pervert them.
It is very plain; yet it was terribly difficult for me to understand it fully without any compromises or excuses which would justify my position; but as soon as I acknowledged my guilt all that had before seemed strange, complicated, obscure, and insoluble, became quite intelligible and simple. Above all, my own path of life resulting, from this explanation became simple, clear and agreeable, instead of being tangled insoluble and tormenting, as it had been before.
Who am I who wish to help people? I wish to help people and-having got up at noon after playing bridge with four candles on the table-enfeebled, pampered, needing the aid and service of hundreds of people, I came to help whom? People who rise at five o’clock, sleep on boards, feed on bread and cabbage, are able to plough, to mow, to fix an axe-handle, to plane, to harness a horse, and to sew-people who in strength, endurance, skill, and abstemiousness are a hundred times superior to me who come to help them! What else but shame could I experience on coming into contact with these people? The weakest among them-a drunkard living in Rzhanov House, whom they call a loafer-is a hundred times more industrious than I; his balance (so to say), that is, the proportion between what he takes from people and what he gives to them, is a thousand times superior to my balance if I reckon what I take from people as against what I give to them.
And those are the people I go to help. I go to help the poor. But who is poor? Not one of them than I am. I am a quite enfeebled, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist under most exceptional conditions found only when thousands of people labour to support a life that is of no value to anyone. And it is I, an insect devouring the leaf of the tree, who wish to aid this growth and health of that tree and wish to heal it.
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
