, wax, blacking,
kerosene, hay, wood, and beef. And all these people work hard all day
long and every day, so that I may be able to talk and eat and sleep. And
I, this cripple of a man, have imagined that I could help others, and
those the very people who support me!

It is not remarkable that I could not help any one, and that I felt
ashamed; but the remarkable point is that such an absurd idea could have
occurred to me. The woman who served the sick old man, helped him; the
mistress of the house, who cut a slice from the bread which she had won
from the soil, helped the beggar; Semyon, who gave three kopeks which he
had earned, helped the beggar, because those three kopeks actually
represented his labor: but I served no one, I toiled for no one, and I
was well aware that my money did not represent my labor.

CHAPTER XVII. {124}

Into the delusion that I could help others I was led by the fact that I
fancied that my money was of the same sort as Semyon's. But this was not
the case.

A general idea prevails, that money represents wealth; but wealth is the
product of labor; and, therefore, money represents labor. But this idea
is as just as that every governmental regulation is the result of a
compact (_contrat social_).

Every one likes to think that money is only a medium of exchange for
labor. I have made shoes, you have raised grain, he has reared sheep:
here, in order that we may the more readily effect an exchange, we will
institute money, which represents a corresponding quantity of labor, and,
by means of it, we will barter our shoes for a breast of lamb and ten
pounds of flour. We will exchange our products through the medium of
money, and the money of each one of us represents our labor.

This is perfectly true, but true only so long as, in the community where
this exchange is effected, the violence of one man over the rest has not
made its appearance; not only violence over the labors of others, as
happens in wars and slavery, but where he exercises no violence for the
protection of the products of their labor from others. This will be true
only in a community whose members fully carry out the Christian law, in a
community where men give to him who asks, and where he who takes is not
asked to make restitution. But just so soon as any violence whatever is
used in the community, the significance of money for its possessor loses
its significance as a representative of labor, and acquires the