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 is one of the influences of violence on price. Another, resulting from the former, will consist in the relation between the values of the different products. Let us suppose that one estate-owner is fond of horses and pays well for them, while another likes towels and pays well for them. Evidently in the domain of both these owners the price for horses and towels will be high, and the price of these commodities will be out of proportion to that of cows and grain. Next day the man fond of towels dies, and his successor is fond of poultry: evidently the price of linen will fall and the price of poultry will rise. Where the violent coercion of one man by another exists m a society, the significance of money as a standard of values at once succumbs to the arbitrary will of the oppressor and its significance as a medium for the exchange of the products of toil gives way to its significance as the most convenient means of exploiting the labour of others.
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
