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TOLSTOY'S INTERPRETATION

OF MONEY AND PROPERTY

MILIVOY S. STANOYEVICH, M.L.

Reprinted from "Liberty", December, 1916.

Liberty Publishing Co. Oakland, Cal.

TOLSTOY'S INTERPRETATION OF MONEY AND PROPERTY

A. Interpretation of Money.

Assuming that our society may exist without positive laws it could also exist without money. The Russian reformer, Leo N. Tolstoy, is consistent with his doctrine of social reform. According to him enacted law is violence, private property is evil, and subsequently "money as a centre around which economic science clusters" cannot be anything else, but a medium of oppression. Describing the economic nature and offices performed by money, he dissents widely from the politico-economists and disapproves of their teachings on the same subject-matter.

First, money is sometimes used to describe all media of exchange--gold, silver, paper, checks, bank drafts or the deposits which they represent, commercial bills of exchange, and even corporation stocks. These things all effect exchanges; in a way they all relieve the difficulties of barter. But this definition, however, is too inclusive, Prof. Kinley contends. It is inclusive because all mentioned articles do not attain the character of media of exchange because there is a demand for them for that purpose primarily. The medium of exchange includes money but its content is greater than that of money. All money can be a medium of exchange but all medium of exchange is not money.

Second, at the other extreme is a set of definitions which would restrict money to what may be called commodity money. Those who hold this view insist that money is an article of direct utility with specific value based on its direct services for consumption. They hold that it must have value due to a demand for other than a monetary system. The implication is that in the absence of this other demand the article would not have any value and therefore could not properly serve as a measure of value. This view of the nature of money is definite and clear-cut, but it is not correct because the article has value if there is a demand for it, whatever the reason for that demand.

Third, between these two extremes fluctuates the view that all media of exchange and payment, whose acceptance the law requires in discharge of debts, may properly be called money. This definition confines to standard money, or inconvertible paper, if it were legal tender. Both kinds of money circulate without reference to the possibility of recovering their value from the payer if they should fail to pass, and their value as money depends entirely on the fact that they are generally acceptable in exchange.

Taking now in view these three standpoints of the nature of money, we could define it in these words: Legal tender, inconvertible paper, and all commodities which are used as general circulating and paying media, are properly called money.

This is one of the most typical definitions including nearly all others supported by current political economy. Tolstoy as always disagrees with the teaching of economics and he simply says that money is a new and terrible form of slavery. His full definition is as follows: Money is a conventional token which gives the right, or more correctly, the possibility, to exploit the labor of other people. To explain this inadequate definition of money more appropriately and in its fuller extent, it is necessary to turn our attention to the functions of money as they are enunciated by Leo Tolstoy.

One of many other functions which money performes, according to Tolstoy, is the representation of labor. There exists a common opinion that money represents wealth, but money is the product of labor, and so money represents labor. This opinion, says Tolstoy sneeringly, is as correct as that other opinion that every political organization is the result of a pact . Yes, money represents labor, there is no doubt about that, but whose, labor of the owner of the money, or of the other people? In that rude stage of society, Tolstoy goes on, when people voluntarily bartered the fruits of their products, or exchanged them through the medium of money, substantially money represented their individual labor. That is incontestably true, and this was only so long as in society where this exchange took place, has not appeared the violence of one man over another in any form: war, slavery, of defence of one's labor against others. But as soon as any violence was exerted in society, the money at once lost for the owner its significance as a representative of labor, and assumed the meaning of a right which is not based on labor, but on violence. This is one of the functions of the medium of exchange in the pages of Tolstoy.

Passing now to the third function of money, enumerated by Tolstoy, we see that he attributes to it a new contingent service which is not mentioned as such in any political economy. In modern civilised society, he says, all the governments are in extreme need for money, and always in insolvable debt. Wherefore they issue monetary tokens in the different countries. These tokens: legal tender, inconvertible paper, coin, bills, and other governmental fiats, are distributed among the people, in order that later they could be collected as direct, indirect, and land taxes. The debts of the present monetary state grow from year to year in a terrifying progression. Even so grow the budgets. A state which should not levy taxes, for a comparatively short time would go to bankruptcy. The taxes and imposts required from people may be paid in form of cattle, corn, furs, skins, and other natural products, but this "natural economy" never practices in a civilised state. Governments force people to pay those taxes usually in "hard" or "soft" cash, because this kind of money best suits the purposes of rewarding the military and civil officials, of maintaining the clergy, the courts, the construction of prisons, fortresses, cannon, and supporting those men who aid in the seizure of the money from the people. So we have the third function of money as the third method of enslavement, by means of tribute and taxes. In modern times, since the discovery of America and the development of trade and the influx of gold, which is accepted as the universal money standard, the monetary tribute becomes, with the enforcement of the political power, the chief instrument of the enslavement of men, and upon it all the economic relation of men are based.

Discussing money, Tolstoy cannot separate the economic question from the political. To him it appears inevitable that money performes a social service equivalent to the instrument of extortion. He does not take into consideration those inumerable utilities which circulating medium renders to the community and particularly to the commercial world, facilitating the transfer as well as aggregation of capital. "Chremmatistics" teaches us that money is the most general form of capital, capital in the fluid state, so that it can be immediately turned to new enterprises and transfered for investment to distant places. On the other hand, capital in the form of money is the most convenient vehicle of production and distribution of wealth. Tolstoy, as a medieval canonist, regards capital and wealth to be shameful and criminal things. He absolutely repudiates the theory that in all production only three factors take part: land, capital and labor. His disconcerting controversy in these matters contains nothing fundamentally new in political economy, but it is an odd manner in which he couches the notion of money in relation to production.

It seems strange, Tolstoy's theory runs, that economists do not recognize the natural objects in production of wealth. The power of the sun, water, food, air, and social security, are the requisites of production as much as the land or capital. Education, knowledge, and ability to speak are certain agents of production. I could fill a whole volume, says Tolstoy, with such omitted factors, and put them at the basis of science. The division into three factors of production is not proper to men. It is improper, arbitrary, and senseless. It does not lie in the essence of things themselves.

These theories on money respecting production do not appear of such nature that they could be applied in the other countries besides Russia. The Russian enlightened feudalism of the nineteenth century gave Tolstoy excellent material and a good reason to attack it with all his strength, and he was right. But his assault on political economy for its "omission" to treat the natural objects in production of wealth, are not justifiable, and could not be admitted. In the first place, any better political economy does not consider these objects at length, because nobody lays claims on them, as Tolstoy himself avowed this fact. The gifts of nature cannot be appropriated by any one. They are inexhaustible and unlimited as compared with the wants of men. Therefore they never have a direct value to be taken as factors of productions.

Tolstoy of course has no clear distinction either of wealth, or of money. He also confuses these notions, as many authors before and after him. To define wealth exactly is verily a difficult task; and to dwell upon it impartially is perhaps still more difficult. There are two theories in "Plutology" regarding the definition of wealth: first, that wealth is all exchangeable and valuable commodities and second, that it is power. Representatives of the first theory are Henry Fawcet and John S. Mill, of the second, Hobbes and Carey. Tolstoy is nearer to those theorizers who teach that wealth is power, than to those who define it as commodity. Yet, we should err gravely if we assumed that between Tolstoy's interpretation of wealth and that of other economists exists any conformity. For instance Carey defines wealth as the power to command nature. Tolstoy defines it as the power to command other people who have neither wealth nor "the signs" of wealth. "Only in the Pentateuch, wealth is the highest good and reward". In everyday life wealth is evil, deception and cause of enslavement. To be honest and at the same time to work for Mammon, is something quite impossible. This ethical principle may be true. But our theorist forgets that questions of what people ought to do, and questions of what it will profit men and nations to do, belong to different categories of sciences. He forgets that ethical ideas should not be read into the conceptions of wealth and money when they are employed in their everyday sense. Prof. S. Chapman justly says "If our aim is to indicate what people ought to want instead of what they do want, we had better speak of ethical wealth and ethical value".

There are several such examples of "ethical interpretation" of economics among the most illustrious thinkers. They may be exculpated for their disagreements only on the ground that they lived in times when social science was in incumbent stage, when scientific ideas were intermingled from one sphere of science into another. Good, gentle Tolstoy, may also be pardoned for his "blunders of expression" because he made them in his fanatic love of truth, and truth although it is truth, does not always seem true, says a French proverb. To treat the delicate and intricate complexity of money and wealth, and never mislead, one should be a higher-man, a superman. But supermen are not yet born in this sordid earth as fitly objected a well-known philosopher.

FOOTNOTES:

The first method of the enslavement of men is by means of personal violence, according to Tolstoy, and second is by depriving people of their land. .

B. Interpretation of Property.

When two Greek law-givers, Lycurgus and Solon, imposed their laws upon the Greek nation, they both had the same purpose--to establish the equal right of all men to the use of land and other properties. Plutarch, speaking of Lycurgus, observes that at that time "some were so poor that they had no inch of land, and others, of whom there were but few, so wealthy that they possessed all". Lycurgus persuaded the citizens to restore the land to common use, and they did so. Solon had no other end in giving laws to the Athenians but to set up justice among all his fellow-citizens. He says that ambition of the rich knows no bounds, that they respect neither sacred property nor public treasure, plundering all in defiance of the holy laws of justice. "I had commanded the wealthiest and most powerful to refrain from harming the weak," says he further, "I had protected great and humble with a double buckler, equally strong both sides, without giving more to one than to the other. My advice has been disdained. Today they are punished for it".

Taken as a whole this doctrine of Lycurgus and Solon is not in accordance with Tolstoy's teaching on laws and property. But nevertheless it shows clearly that law and property are two indivisible civil institutions which can not exist separately. Tolstoy is in opposition to both of them, law and property, because they offend against humanity, especially against the commandment not to resist evil by force.

In the philosophy of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries the institution of private property was justified by many jurisconsults, reformers, and philosophers who, based their teachings on human nature. Among these are significant theories of Grotius, Locke, Hobbes, Thiers, and Coulanges. In opposition to these writers we find, throughout the French Revolution and later on, the writers who assailed private property as pernicious. Rousseau expressed himself with all his fervid eloquence upon this theme, and he found a large public to sympathize with his declamations. Rousseau was the inspirer of those revolutionary writers, inferior in genius but equally daring, who helped to diffuse his doctrines. Mirabeau and Robespierre were also Rousseau's adherents. Even the socialists, though they have dropped some of his first principles and have adopted some of the conclusions of modern science, have inherited no small portion of his spirit.

In America we find many of Rousseau's followers who were inspired by philosophers of the French Revolution. Among these followers is Henry George, and in Russia, Tolstoy. The difference between these two reformers is that George would put the rent of real property in the hand of government for better and more righteous taxation than is now the case. Tolstoy, meanwhile, is against all taxation, because it can only be collected by force, and all force is forbidden by Christ. George is for nationalization of land, Tolstoy for full communalization, against all government and all state ownership.

Of this Tolstoy's criticism of literature, science, and private property, were cogent objections. He was called an utopian, a sophist, an inconsistent author who speaks one thing and works something else. Some called him charlatan, destroyer of sacred institutions, and a man who did not know what he was preaching. These epithets remind one of that which Jean Bodin gave to Machiavelli calling him a "butt of invective", and "wretched man", or of those names which Voltaire gave Rousseau honoring him as a "Punchinello of letters", "the fanfaron of ink", "arch-madman", "scoundrel", "mountebank", and other choice epithets.

Such criticism might be valuable and apropos to a certain sort of newspapers, but not to serious investigators and critics. Throwing this kind of adjectives at an author, does not mean that he is really wrong. Indeed, Tolstoy's doctrine of abolishing individual ownership constitutes no valid grounds for criticism of the historic right of private property in land. Most of his great expectations would not be realized. The problems of wealth distribution, land, and money, are much deeper and more complex than he presumed. They cannot be explained solely by a theory, nor solved by refusing to serve in military and state obligations. They are the inheritance of the present generation from a long past, the resultant of a complex of forces, material and spiritual, political, economic, moral, and social. They can only be unraveled by a most minute and careful study of historical records, interpreted by the aid of the best results of the thought of economists, sociologists, and politicians. And yet, in many ways, Tolstoy aided the solution of these problems. He helped to accelerate it by the example he set of earnestness, altruism, and intense devotion to ideals which he made the creed of future society.

FOOTNOTES:

"I do not think", says Aristotle, "that property ought to be common". . On the other place he argues that there are two things which principally inspire mankind with care and affection, namely, the sense of what is one's own, and exclusive possession.

In aeltester Zeit das Ackerland gemeinschaftlich, wahrscheinlich nach den einzelnen Geschlechtsgenossenschaften bestellt und erst der Ertrag unter die einzelnen dem Geschlecht angehoerigen Haeuser vertheilt ward ... erst spaeter das Land unter die Buerger zu Sondereigenthum aufgetheilt ward.

Tum erat res in pecore et locorum possessionibus, ex quo pecuniosi et locupletos vocabantur.-- primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, divisit viritim civibus.

REPLY TO CHICAGO CRITICS.

I know very well that the Catholic Church claimed during the Dark Ages, and still claims, that references had been made to the gospels by persons living in the first, second, and third centuries; but I believe such manuscripts were manufactured by the Catholic Church. For many years in Europe there was not one person in twenty thousand who could read and write. During that time the church had in its keeping the literature of our world. They interpolated as they pleased. They created. They destroyed. In other words, they did whatever in their opinion was necessary to substantiate the faith.

The gentlemen who saw fit to reply did not answer the question, and I again call upon the clergy to explain to the people why, if salvation depends upon belief on the Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew didn't mention it. Some one has said that Christ didn't make known this doctrine of salvation by belief or faith until after his resurrection. Certainly none of the gospels were written until after his resurrection; and if he made that doctrine known after his resurrection, and before his ascension, it should have been in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as in John.

The replies of the clergy show that they have not investigated the subject; that they are not well acquainted with the New Testament. In other words, they have not read it except with the regulation theological bias.

"And when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying,"

And then follows the speech of Paul, wherein he gives an account of his conversion. It seems a little curious to me that Paul, for the purpose of quieting a mob, would speak to that mob in an unknown language. If I were mobbed in the city of Chicago, and wished to defend myself with an explanation, I certainly would not make that explanation in Choctaw, even if I understood that tongue. My present opinion is that I would speak in English; and the reason I would speak in English is because that language is generally understood in this city, and so I conclude from the account in the twenty-first chapter of the Acts that Hebrew was the language of Jerusalem at that time, or Paul would not have addressed the mob in that tongue.

I sincerely regret that clergymen who really believe that an infinite God is on their side think it necessary to resort to such things to defeat one man. According to their idea, God is against me, and they ought to have confidence in this infinite wisdom and strength to suppose that he could dispose of one man, even if they failed to say a word against me. Had you not asked me I should have said nothing to you on these topics. Such charges cannot hurt me. I do not believe it possible for such men to injure me. No one believes what they say, and the testimony of such clergymen against an Infidel is no longer considered of value. I believe it was Goethe who said, "I always know that I am traveling when I hear the dogs bark."

THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY.

I told him that night that I congratulated the world that it had a minister with an intellectual horizon broad enough and a mental sky studded with stars of genius enough to hold all creeds in scorn that shocked the heart of man. I think that Mr. Beecher has liberalized the English-speaking people of the world.

I do not think he agrees with me. He holds to many things that I most passionately deny. But in common, we believe in the liberty of thought.

My principal objections to orthodox religion are two--slavery here and hell hereafter. I do not believe that Mr. Beecher on these points can disagree with me. The real difference between us is-- he says God, I say Nature. The real agreement between us is--we both say--Liberty.

His brain is controlled by his heart. He thinks in pictures. With him logic means mental melody. The discordant is the absurd.

For years he has endeavored to hide the dungeon of orthodoxy with the ivy of imagination. Now and then he pulls for a moment the leafy curtain aside and is horrified to see the lizards, snakes, basilisks and abnormal monsters of the orthodox age, and then he utters a great cry, the protest of a loving, throbbing heart.

He is a great thinker, a marvelous orator, and, in my judgment, greater and grander than any creed of any church.

Besides all this, he treated me like a king. Manhood is his forte, and I expect to live and die his friend.

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