PROCESO DE PRODUCCIÓN

Money represents work. I have even met educated people who declare that money represents the work of him who possesses it. I confess that m an obscure way I formerly shared that opinion but I felt it necessary to know what money really is, and to find this out I turned to science.

Science says that there is nothing unjust or harmful in money, but that it is a natural con- dition of social life, necessary: (1) for convenience of exchange, (2) for fixing a measure of value, (3) for savings, and (4) for payments. The obvious fact that if I have three surplus rubles in my pocket which I can spare, I can at a whistle call together in any civilized town a hundred people who for those three rubles will perform most laborious, repulsive, and degrading tasks, is not due to the nature of money but to the very complex conditions of our economic life. The power some people have over others does not arise from money, but from the fact that the labourer does not receive the full value of his labour. That he does not receive the full value of his labour results from the nature of capital, rent, and wages, and from complex relations between these and the items of

production, distribution, and consumption, of wealth. In plain Russian it results that those who have money can twist those who have none into ropes. But science says that the truth of the matter does not lie in that. Science says that three factors enter into every kind of production: land, stored up labour (capital), and labour. From different interactions of these factors on one another, and because the first two factors - land and capital - are not in the hands of the workers but in those of other people-and from very intricate combinations arising from this, the enslavement of some people by others results. From what does the dominion of money, which amazes us by its injustice and cruelty, arise? Why do some people rule over others by means of money? Science says that this is due to the division of the factors of production, and from combinations that result there from and oppress the labourers. This reply always seemed to me strange, not merely because it leaves out one part of the question - namely, the significance of money in the matter - but also by its division of the factors of production, which at first sight always strikes one as artificial and not in accord with the facts. It is asserted that in all production three factors are always engaged: land, capital, and labour, and thereupon it is always assumed that wealth (or what represents it - money) is naturally subdivided among those who own these factors: the rent-the value of the land - belongs to the landlord; the interest to the capitalist; and wages - the payment for work - to the working man. Is that so? First of all, is it true that in all production these three factors are engaged?

Around me while I write this, hay is being produced. Of what is this production made up? I am told: of the land on which the grass has grown; of capital-the scythes, rakes, pitchforks, and carts necessary for gathering the hay; and of labour. But I see that this is not true. Besides the land the sun, water, and the social organization (which preserves these fields from trespass), the workers' knowledge, and their ability to speak and to understand words, and many other factors which for some reason political economy does not take into account - all take part in the production of this hay.

The power of the sun is just such a factor of all production as the land, and is yet more necessary. I can imagine a condition (say in a town) in which people assume a right to shut. off the sun from others by walls or trees; why is it not included among the factors of production? Water is another factor as essential as land. So is the air also. And I can again imagine people deprived of water and of pure air because other people claim an exclusive right to the water and the air that is needed. Social security is another such essential factor, and food and clothing for the workers are also such factors of production, as some economists admit education and the ability to speak, which make it possible to apply various kinds of work, are other such factors. I could fill a whole volume with such omitted factors of production. Why then have just these three factors of production been selected and put at the basis of the science? Sunlight and water can be reckoned as separate factors of production just as land is the labourers' food and clothing, knowledge, and its transmission, can be reckoned as separate factors of production, just like the labourers' implements. Why are sunbeams, water, food, and knowledge not reckoned as separate factors of production, but only land, implements, and labour? Is it merely because only in rare instances do people claim rights in sunbeams, water, air, or the right to speak and to listen, while in our society such rights are constantly claimed in the use of land and the implements of labour? There is no other basis for it, and so I see, first, that the division of the factors of production into three only is quite arbitrary and does not rest on the nature of things. But perhaps this division is so natural to people that wherever

economic relations are formed these three, and only these three, factors of production come to the front. Let us see whether that is so. I look first of all around myself at the Russian settlers, of whom there are and have been millions. These settlers come to some new land, settle down on it, and begin to work; and it does not enter any of their heads that a man who does not work the land can have any right to it, and the land does not advance any separate claims of its own, on the contrary the settlers regard the land as a common possession and consider that every man has a right to mow and plough where he pleases and as much as he can manage. The settlers bring implements for the cultivation of the land, for growing vegetables, and for building their houses, and again it does not occur to anyone that the tools of labour can of themselves produce an income nor does that capital make any claim, but on the contrary the settlers consciously recognize that any profit charged for the loan of implements or for a loan of grain - that is, for capital - is unjust. The settlers work on free land with their own tools or with tools lent to them without interest, each on his own account, or all together at a common task, and in such a commune it is impossible to find rent, interest on capital, or wages. In speaking of such communes I am not inventing, but am describing what has taken place everywhere and happens now, not only among Russian settlers but everywhere, as long as nothing infringes man's natural habits. I describe what appears to everyone natural and reasonable. People settle on the land and each one sets to work at what is natural to him; and each, having prepared what he needs for it, does his own work. If it is more convenient for them to work together they form an association, an artel; but neither in their separate farming nor in the artels are the factors of production separated, but there is only labour and the necessary conditions of labour: the sun which warms all, the air which people breathe, the water they draw, the land on which they work, clothes for their bodies, food for their stomachs, the crowbar, the spade, the plough, and the engine, with which people work; and it is evident that neither the sun, the air, the water, the land, nor the clothes for the body, nor the crowbar with which they work, nor the spade, nor the plough, nor the engine which they use in the artel can belong to anyone but to those who make use of the rays of the sun, breathe the air, drink the water eat the bread, cover their bodies, and work with the spade or the engine; because all these are needed only by those who use them. And when people act so, we all see that they act as is proper for men and as is reasonable. And so, observing the economic relations among men at the time of their formation, I do not see that the division of the factors of production into three is natural to man. On the contrary I see that it is unnatural and irrational. But perhaps it is only in primitive societies that the division into those three factors does not take place, while it is inevitable with an increase in population and the development of culture, since this division has taken place in European society and we cannot help acknowledging the accomplished fact. Let us see whether that is so. We are told that in European society the division of the factors of production has been completed that is, that some people possess the land, others the implements of production, and a third set is deprived of land and implements. The workers are deprived of land and of the implements of production. We are so accustomed to this assertion that we are no longer struck by its strangeness. But if we consider that expression, we at once perceive its incorrectness and even senselessness. There is an inner contradiction in the very expression. The conception of a labourer includes the conception· of the land on which he lives and of the tools he works with. If he did not live on the land and had no implements of labour he would not be a labourer.

There never has been or could be a labourer without land or implements. There cannot be an agricultural labourer without land on which to work, and without scythe, cart, and horse; nor can there be a shoemaker without a house on the land, without water, air, and implements of toil with which he works. If a peasant has no land, horse, or scythe, or a shoemaker has no house, water, or awl, this means that someone has driven him off the land and taken from him, or cheated him out of, his scythe, cart, horse, or awl, but it does not mean that there can be an agricultural labourer without a plough, or a shoemaker without tools. As a fisherman on land and without tackle is unthinkable unless someone has driven him off the water and taken his tackle, so is a peasant or shoemaker unimaginable without the land on which he lives and without implements of labour, unless someone has deprived him of land and taken away his tools.

There may be people who are driven from one spot to another and from whom their implements of toil have been taken, and who are compelled to work with other people's tools at articles they do not need, but that does not indicate that such is the nature of production; it only means that there are cases when the natural conditions of production are infringed. If one accepts as the factors of production everything of which the worker may be deprived by other people's violence why not consider a claim on a slave's person to be a factor of production? Why not regard a claim to the sun's rays, to the air, to the water, as being such factors? A man may appear who, having built a wall, shuts out the sun from his neighbour; there may be someone who diverts the water of a river into a pond and so pollutes the water; or someone may appear who regards another as his possession; but neither the first, nor the second, nor the third pretension, even if forcibly carried into effect, can be admitted as a basis for a division of the factors of production, and it is as incorrect to accept an imaginary right to the land and to the implements of toil as separate factors of production as it would be to reckon the imaginary right to control the rays of the sun, the air, the water, or the person of another man, as being such factors. There may be people who claim a right to the land and to a worker's implements of toil, as there have been men who claimed a labourer's person, and as there may be men claiming an exclusive use of the sun, of water, or of the air, and there may be men who drive the worker from place to place and forcibly take from him the produce of his toil as soon as it is made, as well as his implements of labour, and who compel him to work for a master and not for himself, as is done in factories - all this is possible; but there can still be no workman without land and without tools, just as a man cannot be another's chattel despite the fact that men long declared that it was so.

Just as the assertion of a right of property in another man's person cannot deprive a slave of his innate right to seek his own welfare rather than that of his owner - so now the assertion of a right of property in land and in other men's implements of production, cannot deprive the labourer of each man's innate right to live on the land and with his personal or communal tools to produce things he considers useful for himself. All that science, observing the present economic conditions, can say is that there exist claims made by certain people to the workers' land and tools, in consequence of which for some of those workers (by no means for all) the conditions of production natural to man are violated in such a way that the workers are deprived of the land and of the implements of production and compelled to use other people's tools; but it cannot be said that this casual infringement of the law of production is itself the law of production.

By affirming that this division of the factors of production is the basic law of production, an economist does what a zoologist would do who, seeing a great 1my greenfinches with clipped wings in little cages, should conclude that a little cage and a small water-pail drawn up along rails, are the essential conditions of the life of birds, and that the life of birds is composed of these three factors. However many finches there may be with clipped wings in cardboard cages, the zoologist should not consider cardboard cages a natural condition of birds. However many workers may be driven from their places and deprived of their produce and of the implements of their toil, the natural characteristic of a worker to live on the earth and produce with his own implements the things he needs will remain the same. There are the claims made by some people to the earth and to the labourers' implements of toil, just as in the ancient world there were the claims of some men to own the persons of others; but as there cannot be a division of people into owners and slaves, such as people wished to establish in the ancient world, so there cannot be a division of the factors of production into land and capital, such as economists in present- day society wish to establish. But these unjustifiable encroachments by some men on the freedom of others, men of science call natural factors of production. Instead of taking its bases from the natural characteristics of human society, science has taken them from a specific case and, wishing to justify that specific case, has admitted one man's right to the land whereon another feeds himself, and to the tools of labour with which another works; that is, it has admitted a right which never existed and never can exist and which bears a contradiction in its very expression, for the right a man claims to land he does not work on is really nothing but the right to use land I do not use, and the right to the tools of labour is nothing but the right to work with tools I do not work with. Science by its division of the factors of production asserts that the natural condition of the workman is the unnatural condition in which he finds himself, just as in the ancient world, by the division into citizens and slaves, people asserted that the unnatural condition of the slaves was a natural characteristic of man. That division, accepted by science merely to justify an existing evil which it has adopted as the basis of its investigations, has resulted in science vainly trying to furnish some kind of explanation of existing facts, and while denying the clearest and simplest answers to the questions presented, giving answers that amount to nothing.

The question for economic science is this: What is the cause of the fact that some people who have land and capital are able to enslave those who have no land or capital? The reply which common sense presents is that this results from money, which has the effect of enslaving people. But science denies this, and says that it does not result from the nature of money but from the fact that some people have land and capital and others have not. We ask: Why can people who have land and capital enslave those who have none? - and we are told: 'Because they have land and capital.' But that is what we were asking about. To be deprived of land and of the tools of production is enslavement. It is the old