Money

Leo Tolstoy

[An essay included in the booklet, Church and State,
published in 1891 by Benjamin R. Tucker]

Government, -- that is, armed and aggressive men, determine how much they want from those whom they invade (as the English in their relation to the Fijians) ; they determine how much labor they want of the slaves; determine how many assistants they need to collect the products; organize these assistants as soldiers, as landed proprietors, and as tax-collectors. And the slaves surrender their labor and at the same time think that they surrender it; not because their masters want it so, but because for their own liberty and welfare are needed services and sacrifices to the deity called Government; and that, aside from their services to the deity, they are free.

This they believe because they have been told so, formerly by religion, priests, and latterly by science, learned people.

But one needs only to cease to believe blindly what other people' who call themselves priests or scientists say, to have the senselessness of these assertions made evident.

Men, oppressing others, assure them that the compulsion is necessary in the interest of the government, while the government is indispensable to the liberty and welfare of men: - according to this, the oppressors force men for their own freedom and do them wrong for their own good.

But men are rational beings and hence ought to understand wherein is their good, and to have liberty to do that.

Things, therefore, the beneficence of which is not clear to men and to the performance of which they have to be driven by force, cannot be for their good:

That can alone be a good to a rational being which his intelligence perceives as such.

If men, in consequence of passion or unwisdom, show preference for evil, then all that men who are wiser than their fellows may do is to try to persuade these to do that which is for their good.

It is possible to persuade men that their welfare will be greater if they will serve as soldiers, if they will be deprived of bind, if they will give away their labor in the shape of taxes; but until all men consider this their good and do, it voluntarily, it cannot be called men's welfare. The sole indication of the beneficence of a thing is that men freely perform it.

And of such things the life of men is full.

Ten laborers organize an association to work together, and in doing this they undoubtedly do something that is for their common benefit; but it is impossible to imagine that these laborers, compelling another laborer to join them and work with them against his will, should assert that the eleventh member's interests is identical with their own.

The same applies to gentlemen giving a dinner to some friend of theirs; it cannot be affirmed that the dinner will be a good to the man forced to pay ten roubles for it.

The same with peasants who might think the existence of a pond a greater good than the labor expended on it; for them the digging would be a common benefit. But for him who should think the existence of a pond a lesser good than the getting in of his crops, in which he was tardy, the digging of the pond could not be a benefit.

The same with roads built by men, with a church, with a museum, and with all the different; social and governmental affairs. . All these affairs can be beneficial for those 'only who think them so and freely and voluntarily perform them, as the purchase of tools for the cooperative workshop, the dinner given by the masters, the pond dug by the peasants.

But things to which men must be driven by force, cease to be, thanks to the force, for the common good.

All this is so clear and simple that, if men had not been deceived so long, it would not be necessary to make them plain.

Suppose we are living in a village, and we inhabitants have all decided to construct a bridge over the swamp in which we get sunk. We have agreed or promised to give so much each in money, or labor, or material. We agreed to do it because it is more advantageous for us to construct the bridge than sink in the 'swamp. But in our midst there are men for whom it is more advantageous to do without a bridge than to spend money on one, or who, at least, think that that is more advantageous for them. Can the forcing of these men into the enterprise make the bridge advantageous to them? Evidently not; since these men, having considered voluntary cooperation in the construction of the bridge disadvantageous for them, will all the more regard it as disadvantageous for them to be forcibly compelled to cooperate. Suppose even that we had all, without exception, agreed to build the bridge and promised so much labor and money for each holding, but that some of the parties subsequently failed to make their contribution, their circumstances having so altered in the meantime that it became more advantageous for them to do without the bridge than to spend money on it, or because they had changed their mind, or even because they had figured out that the others, without their contribution, would build the bridge anyway, and that they would use it gratuitously. Can the forcing of these men into cooperation make the sacrifices beneficial to thorn? Evidently not, since if they failed to carry out their pledge because altered circumstances had made the sacrifices heavier for them than the inconvenience of not having the bridge, then the compulsory sacrifices will make the evil still greater for them. If, however, the parties intended to profit by the labor of others, then the compulsory sacrifices will be punishment for their intention, and the intention, which is utterly unproved, will be punished before it has been carried out. But neither in the first nor in the second case will the forcing of the men into cooperation" be as advantageous for them.

And so it will be when the' sacrifices are forced for a thing understood by everybody, a thing obviously and undoubtedly useful, such as the building of a bridge over a swamp.

How much more unjust and senseless, then, will be the compelling of millions of men to sacrifices the purpose of which is unknown to them and undoubtedly injurious, as is the case with military service and taxation.

But according to science, all that everybody regards as evil is in reality a common advantage; it turns out that there is an insignificant minority of men who alone know what the common good consists of, and despite the fact that all the rest of mankind consider the common good as evil, the minority, in forcing to evil all the rest, can consider this evil as common good.

Herein is the chief superstition and the chief delusion which hinders the progress of humanity toward truth and welfare.

The maintenance of this superstition and this delusion constitutes the end of political sciences generally and of so-called political economy in particular.

Its purpose is to conceal from the people that condition of oppression and slavery in which they live.

The method employed is this: in considering the force which conditions the whole economic life of the enslaved, it is pretended that this force is natural and inevitable, and thereby the people are deceived and their attention diverted from the real cause of their misery.

The abolition of slavery has gone on for a long time.

Rome abolished slavery, America abolished it, and we did, but only the words were abolished, not the thing.

Slavery means the freeing themselves, by some, of the necessity of labor for the satisfaction of their needs and the throwing of this labor upon others by means of physical force and where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is. And where, as in all European societies, men by force exploit the labor of thousands of men and regard it as their prerogative, while the latter submit to force and regard it as their duty, there we have slavery in terrible proportions.

Slavery exists.

Where, then, do we find it ?

Where it has always been and without which it cannot be: in the compulsion exercised by the strong and armed upon the weak an unarmed.

Slavery has three fundamental methods: 188 direct personal violence, militarism, land-taxes, upheld by the military power, and direct and indirect taxes upon citizens, also upheld by the military power.

The three methods exist to-day as much as formerly. Only, we do not see it, because each of these three forms of slavery has received a new excuse which veils its real significance.

The personal violence of the armed upon the unarmed is justified on the ground of defence of fatherland against imaginary enemies; in reality, it has the same old function - the subjection of the conquered to the invaders.

The indirect force of the appropriation of the lands of those who work on them is justified as compensation for services to the alleged common welfare arid sanctioned by the right of inheritance ; in reality, it is the same land-robbery and enslavement which was once carried out by the military power.

The last, the money-taxation species of force, the most powerful and popular at the present tame, has received the most wonderful justification, - namely, that the denial of liberty, property, and every good to men is in the interest of the common liberty and welfare.

In reality it is nothing else than slavery, only impersonal..

Where force is set up as law, there will slavery be.

Whether it is princes and their warlike bands who invade, kill wives and children, and burn down the village; whether slaveholders demand money or labor from the slaves for the land, and in case of non-compliance call the armed bands to their aid; or whether the Ministry of Internal Affairs is collecting money through the governors and police officials, and, in case of non-success, sending armed regiments, - as long as there shall be tyranny supported by the bayonet there will be no distribution of wealth among men, but all the wealth will go to the tyrants.

A striking illustration of the truth of this position is afforded by George's project of nationalizing land.

George proposes to declare all land government property, and to substitute a rent-tax for all the direct and indirect taxes. That is, every one using land should pay the government its rental value.

What would the outcome be?

Land would belong to the government: to the English, the land of England, to the Americans the land of that country, and so forth; that is, there would be slavery, determined by the quantity of land in use. Perhaps the condition of some laborers (such as agricultural) would be improved; but since there would remain the forcible collection of the tax of the rental values, there would also remain slavery. The land-cultivator, in a bad year, not being able to pay the rent exacted from him by force, would have to enslave himself to the man with money in order to keep his land and not lose everything.

If a pail leaks, there is surely a hole in it.

Looking at the pail, it may seism to us that the water comes from many holes, but no matter how much we might try to stop up the imaginary holes, from the outside, the pail would still leak.

To stop the leaking it is necessary to find the hole through which the water comes out and stop it up from within.

It is equally the case with the means proposed to stop the inequitable distribution of wealth, - to stop up those holes through which the wealth of the nations goes out.

It is said: organize cooperations of laborers make capital common property; make land common property.

All this is simply the stopping up from the outside of those holes, through which it seems to us the water goes out.

To stop the leaking it is necessary to find, inside, that hole through which the wealth leaves the hands of the laborers and goes into the hands of the non-laborers.

That hole is the compulsion of the unarms by the armed.

The force of the military power, by which men are taken from their labor, and land from men, and the products of men's labor.

As long as there shall be one armed man wit a recognized right to kill any other man, so Ion will there be inequitable distribution of wealth, -- that is, SLAVERY.