t to direct private people in what manner they ought to
employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most
unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be
trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate
whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a
man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
exercise it.

3. Competition and Freedom[194]

What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of
itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of
oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I _prefer_ to
choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against
my will; that's all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment
for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of
substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What
guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is
evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to
destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing,
judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill
man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern
reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to
annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is
the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the
source of all good.

4. Money and Freedom[195]

Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more
independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations
and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject
to an entirely new process of differentiation.

The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human
interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals
which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a
community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in
many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be
grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and
lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the
association.

In contrast to this form of organization the capitalistic system has
made possible innumerable associations which either require from their
members merely money contr