thing we can buy for money.[1] The significance of the possession of money does not lie in the object, but in its relation to the subject, the possessor, who can use it according to his wishes. The greater and higher the part that money plays in economics, the looser become the bands between people, because money is the absolute means. It is impossible to repeat here all the subtle remarks Simmel makes on the different kinds of property, on the character of exchange as the center of all monetary transactions; this must be read and enjoyed in its proper place. Also with regard to space, money loosens the bond between us and property. Only by money the shareholder, the public creditor, the landed proprietor who has let his farm, are enabled to live at a distance from their property, as this can be secured by money.
One remainder of the period of closer personal bonds is still to be found in our modern times—the relation of the servant to the master. Servants enter into this relation as whole persons, as they have not been hired for a special purpose. The labor movement would never have been able to become so powerful, if the contract between employers and employed did not bind the laborer to a special purpose only, and with his personal liberty did not leave him a good deal of self-esteem. The relation between servant and master, which is determined by the fact that the greater part of the wages is still paid in kind, has not yet reached the technical character which it is the tendency of all other relations between men to strive after.
Simmel's remarks on socialism will hardly be applauded by its followers. Schmoller justly supposes they will think him too much of an aristocrat. Simmel has learned a great deal from Marx, but neither in his theory of value, nor in psychological and ethical questions has he stopped there. For that reason the attacks one of the most talented of our younger socialists made against his book, which does not at all intend to give anything but a theory of value, seem to me one-sided and unjust. But this only by the way. There are very many subtle and clever
- ↑ This is already expressed by the ancient sentence: "Pecuniam habens, habet omnem rem quam habere vult."
