hus it should be; it may be said, that this is
desirable; but by no means can it be said, that thus it is.

Money represents labor. Yes. Money does represent labor; but whose? In
our society only in the very rarest, rarest of instances, does money
represent the labor of its possessor, but it nearly always represents the
labor of other people, the past or future labor of men; it is a
representative of the obligation of others to labor, which has been
established by force.

Money, in its most accurate and at the same the simple application, is
the conventional stamp which confers a right, or, more correctly, a
possibility, of taking advantage of the labors of other people. In its
ideal significance, money should confer this right, or this possibility,
only when it serves as the equivalent of labor, and such money might be
in a community in which no violence existed. But just as soon as
violence, that is to say, the possibility of profiting by the labors of
others without toil of one's own, exists in a community, then that
profiting by the labors of other men is also expressed by money, without
any distinction of the persons on whom that violence is exercised.

The landed proprietor has imposed upon his serfs natural debts, a certain
quantity of linen, grain, and cattle, or a corresponding amount of money.
One household has procured the cattle, but has paid money in lieu of
linen. The proprietor takes the money to a certain amount only, because
he knows that for that money they will make him the same quantity of
linen, (generally he takes a little more, in order to be sure that they
will make it for the same amount); and this money, evidently, represents
for the proprietor the obligation of other people to toil.

The peasant gives the money as an obligation, to he knows not whom, but
to people, and there are many of them, who undertake for this money to
make so much linen. But the people who undertake to make the linen, do
so because they have not succeeded in raising sheep, and in place of the
sheep, they must pay money; but the peasant who takes money for his sheep
takes it because he must pay for grain which did not bear well this year.
The same thing goes on throughout this realm, and throughout the whole
world.

A man sells the product of his labor, past, present or to come, sometimes
his food, and generally not because money constitutes for him a
convenient means of exchange. He could have effected the ba