Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
TOLSTOY’S INTERPRETATION
OF MONEY AND PROPERTY
By
MILIVOY S. STANOYEVICH, M.L.
(University of California)
Reprinted from “Liberty”, December, 1916.
Liberty Publishing Co.
Oakland, Cal.
TOLSTOY’S INTERPRETATION OF MONEY AND PROPERTY
A. Interpretation of Money.
I
Assuming that our society may exist without positive laws it couldalso exist without money. The Russian reformer, Leo N. Tolstoy, isconsistent with his doctrine of social reform[1]. According to himenacted law is violence, private property is evil, and subsequently“money as a centre around which economic science clusters”[2] cannot beanything else, but a medium of oppression[3]. Describing the economicnature and offices performed by money, he dissents widely from thepolitico-economists and disapproves of their teachings on the samesubject-matter.
At the outset of the seventeenth chapter of his notable work, WhatShall We Do Then, Tolstoy inquires, What is money? And further onhe proceeds: “I have met educated people who asserted that moneyrepresents the labor of him who possesses it. I must confess thatformerly I in some obscure manner shared this opinion. But I hadto go to the bottom of what money was, and so to find this out,I turned to science. Science says that there is nothing unjustand prejudicial about money, that money is a natural condition ofsocial life—necessary: 1. for convenience of exchange; 2. forthe establishment of measures of value; 3. for saving; and 4. forpayments”[4].
Are these theories true? According to the teaching of economics theyare; according to Tolstoy they are not. Many writers even those ofthe earliest time argued that[Pg 2] money is a medium of exchange[5].The founders of classical economics, Smith[6], Ricardo[7], Mill[8],Carey[9], socialist reformers, Lassalle[10], and Marx[11], all agreein the main that money is an exchangeable commodity by means of whichpeople measure the value of other commodities. Professor Fishershortly and precisely defines money as What is generally acceptablein exchange for goods[12]. More acute determination of the nature ofmoney is given by Prof. Kinley in his elaborate study on Money[13].According to this author no definition of medium of exchange can beframed on the basis of the material of which it is m