CHAPTER XVII. {20}
Into the delusion that I could help others I was led by the fact that I fancied that my money was of the same sort as Semyon's. But this was not the case.
A general idea prevails, that money represents wealth; but wealth is the product of labor; and, therefore, money represents labor. But this idea is as just as that every governmental regulation is the result of a compact (contrat social).
Every one likes to think that money is only a medium of exchange for labor. I have made shoes, you have raised grain, he has reared sheep: here, in order that we may the more readily effect an exchange, we will institute money, which represents a corresponding quantity of labor, and, by means of it, we will barter our shoes for a breast of lamb and ten pounds of flour. We will exchange our products through the medium of money, and the money of each one of us represents our labor.
This is perfectly true, but true only so long as, in the community where this exchange is effected, the violence of one man over the rest has not made its appearance; not only violence over the labors of others, as happens in wars and slavery, but where he exercises no violence for the protection of the products of their
