What Shall We Do? Part 12

Whole districts, formerly flourishing, lost half of their population, and were greatly impoverished. All the male population, except the old and infirm, worked far away from their homes for European planters, to get money necessary for the taxes, or in consequence of the law court.

The women on the Fiji Islands had scarcely ever worked in the fields, so that in the absence of the men, all the local farming was neglected and went to ruin. And in the course of a few years, half the population of Fiji had become the slaves of the colonists.

To relieve their position the Fiji-Islanders again appealed to England.

A new pet.i.tion was got up, subscribed by many eminent persons and chiefs, praying to be annexed to England; and this was handed to the British consul. Meanwhile, England, thanks to her scientific expeditions, had time not only to investigate the affairs of the islands, but even to survey them, and duly to appreciate the natural riches of this fine corner of the globe.

Owing to all these circ.u.mstances, the negotiations this time were crowned with full success; and in 1874, to the great dissatisfaction of the American planters, England officially took possession of the Fiji Islands, and added them to its colonies. Kakabo died, his heirs had a small pension a.s.signed to them, and the administration of the islands was intrusted to Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor of New South Wales.

In the first year of its annexation the Fiji-Islanders had no self-government, but were under the direction of Sir Hercules Robinson, who appointed an administrator.

Taking the islands into their hands, the English Government had to undertake the difficult task of gratifying various expectations raised by them. The natives, of course, first of all expected the abolition of the hated poll-tax; one part of the white colonists (the Americans) looked with suspicion upon the British rule; and another part (those of English origin) expected all kinds of confirmations of their power over the natives,--permission to enclose the land, and so on. The English Government, however, proved itself equal to the task; and its first act was to abolish for ever the poll-tax, which had created the slavery of the natives in the interest of a few colonists.

But here Sir Hercules Robinson had at once to face a difficult dilemma.

It was necessary to abolish the poll-tax, which had made the Fijis seek the help of the English Government; but, at the same time, according to English colonial policy, the colonies had to support themselves; they had to find their own means for covering the expenses of the government.

With the abolition of the poll-tax, all the incomes of the Fijis (from custom duties) did not amount to more than six thousand pounds, while the government expenses required at least seventy thousand a year.

Having abolished the money tax, Sir Hercules Robinson now thought of a labour tax; but this did not yield the sum necessary to feed him and his a.s.sistants. Matters did not mend until a new governor had been appointed,--Gordon,--who, to get out of the inhabitants the money necessary to keep him and his officials, resolved not to demand money until it had come sufficiently into general circulation on the islands, but to take from the natives their products, and to sell them himself.

This tragical episode in the lives of the Fijis is the clearest and best proof of the nature and true meaning of money in our time.

In this ill.u.s.tration every essential is represented. The first fundamental condition of slavery,--the guns, threats, murders, and plunder,--and lastly, money, the means of subjugation which has supplanted all the others. That which in an historical sketch of economical development, has to be investigated during centuries, we have here, where all the forms of monetary violence have fully developed themselves, concentrated in a s.p.a.ce of ten years.

The drama begins thus: the American Government sends ships with loaded guns to the sh.o.r.es of the islands, whose inhabitants they want to enslave. The pretext of this threat is monetary; but the beginning of the tragedy is the levelling of guns against all the inhabitants,--women, children, old people, and men,--though innocent of any crime.

"Your money or your life,"--forty-five thousand dollars, then ninety thousand or slaughter. But the ninety thousand are not to be had.

So now begins the second act: it is the postponement of a measure which would be b.l.o.o.d.y, terrible, and concentrated in a short period; and the subst.i.tution of a suffering less perceptible, which can be laid upon all, and will last longer. And the natives, with their representative, seek to subst.i.tute for the ma.s.sacre a slavery of money. They borrow money, and the method at once begins to operate like a disciplined army.

In five years the thing is done,--the men have not only lost their right to utilize their own land and their property, but also their liberty,--they have become slaves.

Here begins act three. The situation is too painful, and the unfortunate ones are told they may change their master and become the slaves of another. Of freedom from the slavery brought about by the means of money there is not one thought. And the people call for another master, to whom they give themselves up, asking him to improve their condition. The English come, see that dominion over these islanders will give them the possibility of feeding their already too greatly multiplied parasites, and take possession of the islands and their inhabitants.

But it does not take them in the form of personal slaves, it does not take even the land, nor distribute it among its a.s.sistants. These old ways are not necessary now: only one thing is necessary,--taxes which must be large enough on the one hand to prevent the workingmen from freeing themselves from virtual slavery, and on the other hand, to feed luxuriously a great number of parasites. The inhabitants must pay seventy thousand pounds sterling annually,--that is the fundamental condition upon which England consents to free the Fijis from the American despotism, and this is just what was wanting for the final enslaving of the inhabitants. But it turns out that the Fiji-Islanders cannot under any circ.u.mstances pay these seventy thousand pounds in their present state. The claim is too great.

The English temporarily modify it, and take a part of it out in natural products in order that in time, when money has come into circulation, they may receive the full sum. They do not behave like the former company, whose conduct we may liken to the first coming of savage invaders into an uncivilized land, when they want only to take as much as possible and then decamp; but England behaves like a more clear-sighted enslaver; she does not kill at one blow the goose with the golden eggs, but feeds her in order that she may continue to lay them.

England at first relaxes the reins for her own interest that she may hold them tight forever afterwards, and so has brought the Fiji-Islanders into that state of permanent monetary thraldom in which all civilized European people now exist, and from which their chance of escape is not apparent.

This phenomenon repeats itself in America, in China, in Central Asia; and it is the same in the history of the conquest of all nations.

Money is an inoffensive means of exchange when it is not collected while loaded guns are directed from the sea-sh.o.r.e against the defenceless inhabitants. As soon as it is taken by the force of guns, the same thing must inevitably take place which occurred on the Fiji Islands, and has always and everywhere repeated itself.

Men who consider it their lawful right to utilize the labour of others, will achieve their ends by the means of a forcible demand of a sum of money which will compel the oppressed to become the slaves of the oppressors.

Moreover, that will happen which occurred between the English and the Fijis,--the extortioners will always, in their demand for money, rather exceed the limit to which the amount of the sum required must rise, so that the enslaving may be earlier. They will respect this limit only while they have moral sense and sufficient money for themselves: they will overstep it when they lose their moral sense or even do not require funds.

As for governments, they will always exceed this limit,--first, because for a government there exists no moral sense of justice; and secondly, because, as everyone knows, every government is always in the greatest want of money, through wars and the necessity of giving gratuities to their allies. All governments are insolvent, and involuntarily follow a maxim expressed by a Russian statesman of the eighteenth century,--that the peasant must be sheared of his wool lest it grow too long. All governments are hopelessly in debt, and this debt on an average (not taking in consideration its occasional diminution in England and America) is growing at a terrible rate. So also grow the budgets; that is, the necessity of struggling with other extortioners, and of giving presents to those who a.s.sist in extortion, and because of that grows the land rent.

Wages do not increase, not because of the law of rent, but because taxes, collected with violence, exist, with the object of taking away from men their superfluities, so that they may be compelled to sell their labour to satisfy them,--utilizing their labour being the aim of raising the taxes.

And their labour can only be utilized when, on a general average, the taxes required are more than the labourers are able to give without depriving themselves of all means of subsistence. The increase of wages would put an end to the possibility of slavery; and therefore, as long as violence exists, wages can never be increased. The simple and plain mode of action of some men towards others, political economists term _the iron law_; the instrument by which such action is performed, they call a medium of exchange; and money is this inoffensive medium of exchange necessary for men in their transactions with each other.

Why is it, then, that, whenever there is no violent demand for money taxes, money in its true signification has never existed, and never can exist; but, as among the Fiji-Islanders, the Phoenicians, the Kirghis, and generally among men who do not pay taxes, such as the Africans, there is either a direct exchange of produce, sheep, hides, skins, or accidental standards of value, such as sh.e.l.ls?

A definite kind of money, whatever it may be, always becomes not a means of exchange, but a means of ransoming from violence; and it begins to circulate among men only when a definite standard is compulsorily required from all.

It is only then that everybody wants it equally, and only then does it receive any value.

And further, it is not the thing that is most convenient for exchange that receives exchange value, but that which is required by the government. If gold is demanded, gold becomes valuable: if knuckle-bones were demanded, they, too, would become valuable. If it were not so, why, then, has the issue of this means of exchange always been the prerogative of the government? The Fiji-Islanders, for instance, have arranged among themselves their own means of exchange; well, then, let them be free to exchange what and how they like, and you, men possessing power, or the means of violence, do not interfere with this exchange.

But instead of this you coin money, and do not allow anyone else to coin it; or, as is the case with us, you merely print some notes, engraving upon them the heads of the tsars, sign them with a particular signature, and threaten to punish every falsification of them. Then you distribute this money to your a.s.sistants, and, under the name of duties and taxes, you require everybody to give you such money or such notes with such signatures, and so many of them, that a workman must give away all his labour in order to get these notes or coins; and then you want to convince us that this money is necessary for us as a means of exchange!

Here are all men free, and none oppresses the others or keeps them in slavery; but money appears in society and immediately an iron law exists, in consequence of which rent increases and wages diminish to the minimum.

That half (nay, more than half) of the Russian peasants, in order to pay direct and indirect taxes, voluntarily sell themselves as slaves to the land-owners or to manufacturers, does not at all signify (which is obvious); for the violent collection of the poll-taxes and indirect and land taxes, which have to be paid in money to the government and to its a.s.sistants (the landowners), _compels_ the workman to be a slave to those who own money; but it means that this money, as a means of exchange, and an iron law, exist.

Before the serfs were free, I could compel Ivan to do any work; and if he refused to do it, I could send him to the police-sergeant, and the latter would give him the rod till he submitted. But if I compelled Ivan to overwork himself, and did not give him either land or food, the matter would go up to the authorities, and I should have to answer for it.

But now that men are free, I can compel Ivan and Peter and Sidor to do every kind of work; and if they refuse I give them no money to pay taxes, and then they will be flogged till they submit: besides this, I may also make a German, a Frenchman, a Chinaman, and an Indian, work for me by that means, so that, if they do not submit, I shall not give them money to hire land, or to buy bread, because they have neither land nor bread. And if I make them overwork themselves, or kill them with excess of labour, n.o.body will say a word to me about it; and, moreover, if I have read books on political economy I shall be quite sure that all men are free and that money does not create slavery!

Our peasants have long known that with a ruble one can hurt more than with a stick. It is only political economists who cannot see it.

To say that money does not create bondage, is the same as to have a.s.serted, fifty years ago, that serfdom did not create slavery.

Political economists say that money is an inoffensive medium of exchange, notwithstanding the fact that its possession enables one man to enslave another. Why, then, was it not said half a century ago that servitude was, in itself, an inoffensive medium of reciprocal services, notwithstanding the fact that no man could lawfully enslave another?

Some give their manual labour, and the work of others consists in taking care of the physical and intellectual welfare of the slaves, and in superintending their efforts.

And, I fancy, some really did say this.

CHAPTER XIX

If the object of this sham pseudo-science of Political Economy had not been the same as that of all other legal sciences,--the justification of coercion,--it could not have avoided noticing the strange phenomena that the distribution of wealth, the deprivation of some men of land and capital, and the enslavery of some men to others, depend upon money, and that it is only by means of money that some men utilize the labour of others,--in other words, enslave them.

I repeat that a man who has money may buy up and monopolise all the corn and kill others by starvation, completely oppressing them, as it has frequently happened before our own eyes on a very large scale.

It would seem then that we ought to examine the connection of these occurrences with money; but Political Science, with full a.s.surance, a.s.serts that money has no connection whatever with the matter.

This science says, "Money is as much an article of merchandise as anything else which contains the value of its production, only with this difference,--that this article of merchandise is chosen as the more convenient medium of exchange for establishing values, for saving, and for making payments. One man has made boots, another has grown wheat, the third has bred sheep; and now, in order to exchange more conveniently, they put money into circulation, which represents the equivalent of labour; and by this medium they exchange the soles of boots for a loin of mutton, or ten pounds of flour."

Students of this sham science are very fond of picturing to themselves such a state of affairs; but there has never been such a condition in the world. This idea about society is like the fancy about the primitive, prehistoric, perfect human state which the philosophers cherished; but such a state never existed.

In all human societies where money has been used there has also been the oppression by the strong and the armed of the weak and the defenceless; and wherever there was oppression, there the standard of value, money, whatever it consisted of, cattle or hides, skin or metals, must have unavoidably lost its significance as a medium of exchange, and received the meaning of a ransom from violence.

There is no doubt that money does possess the inoffensive properties which science enumerates; but it would have these properties only in a society in which there was no violence,--in an ideal state. But in such a society money would not be found as a general measure of value. In such a community, at the advent of violence, money would immediately lose its significance.

In all societies known to us where money is used it receives the significance of a medium of exchange only because it serves as a means of violence. And its chief object is to act thus,--not as a mere medium.

Where violence exists, money cannot be a true medium of exchange, because it is not a measure of value,--because, as soon as one man may take away from another the products of his labour, all measures of value are directly violated. If horses and cows, bred by one man, and violently taken away by others, were brought to a market, it is plain that the value of other horses and cows there, when brought into compet.i.tion with stolen animals, would no longer correspond with the labour of breeding them. And the value of everything else would also change with this change, and so money could not determine values.

Besides, if one man may acquire by force a cow or a horse or a house, he may by the same force acquire money itself, and with this money acquire all kinds of produce. If, then, money itself is acquired by violence, and spent to purchase products, money entirely loses its quality as a medium of exchange.

The oppressor who takes money and gives it for the products of labour does not exchange anything, but obtains from labour all that he wants.