The German Ideology/Section 16/Chapter III 43
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[edit] 3. Money
“Money is a commodity and indeed an essential means or faculty, for it protects wealth against ossification, keeps it fluid and affects its circulation. If you know of a better means of exchange, all right., but it too will be a variety of money” (p. 364).
On page 353 money is defined as “marketable property or property in circulations.
Thus the “union” retains money, this purely social property which has been stripped of all individuality. The extent to which Sancho is in the grip of the bourgeois outlook is shown by his question about a better means of exchange. Consequently, he first of aft assumes that a means of exchange is necessary, and moreover he knows of no other means of exchange except money. The fact that ships and railways, which serve to transport commodities, are also means of exchange does not concern him. Hence in order to speak not merely of means of exchange, but particularly of money, he has to include the other attributes of money; that it is a means of exchange that is universally marketable and in circulation, that it keeps all property fluid, etc. These bring in also economic aspects which Sancho does not know but which actually constitute money; and with them the whole present situation, class economy, domination of the bourgeoisie. etc.
First of all, however, we learn something about the — extremely odd — course of monetary crises in the union.
The question arises:
“Where is money to be obtained?... People pay not with money, of which there may be a shortage, but with their ability [Vermögen], thanks to which alone we are wealthy [vermögend].... it is not money that harms you, but your inability [Unvermögen] to obtain it.”
Now comes the moral exhortation:
“Let your ability [Vermögen] have its effect, brace yourself, and you will not lack money [Geld], your money, money of your coining.... Know then that you have as much money as you have power; for the extent to which You can assert yourself [Dir Geltung verschaffst] determines how much you are worth [giltst]"(pp. 353, 364) [Geld — money; sich Geltung verschaffen — to assert oneself; gelten — to be worth]
The power of money, the fact that the universal means of exchange becomes independent in relation both to society and to individuals, reveals most clearly that the relations of production and intercourse as a whole assume an independent existence. Consequently, Sancho as usual knows nothing about the connection of money relations with production in general and intercourse. As a good citizen, he unhesitatingly keeps money in force; indeed it could not be otherwise with his ‘view of division of labour and the organisation of landed ownership. The material power of money, which is strikingly revealed in monetary crises and which, in the form of a permanent scarcity of money, oppresses the petty bourgeois who ;s “inclined to make purchases”, is likewise a highly unpleasant fact for the egoist in agreement with himself. He gets rid of the difficulty by reversing the ordinary idea of the petty bourgeois, thus making it appear that the attitude of individuals to the power of money is something that depends solely on their personal willing or running. [114] This fortunate turn of thought then gives him the chance of reading a moral lecture, buttressed by synonymy, etymology and vowel mutation, to the astounded petty bourgeois already disheartened by lack of money, thus debarring in advance all inconvenient questions about the causes of the pecuniary embarrassment.
The monetary crisis consists primarily in the fact that all “wealth” [Vermögen] suddenly becomes depreciated in relation to the means of exchange and loses its “power” [Vermögen] over money. A crisis is in existence precisely when one can no longer pay with one’s “wealth” [Vermögen], but must pay with money. And this again does not happen because of a shortage of money, as is imagined by the petty bourgeois who judges the crisis by his personal difficulties, but because the specific difference becomes fixed between money as the universal commodity, the “marketable property and property in circulation”, and all the other, particular commodities, which suddenly cease to be marketable property. It cannot be expected that, to please Sancho, we shall analyse here the causes of this phenomenon. Sancho first of all consoles the moneyless and hopeless small shopkeepers by saying that it is not money that causes the scarcity of money and the . whole crisis, but their inability to obtain it. It is not arsenic that is to blame for someone dying who takes it, it is the inability of his organism to digest it.
After first defining money as an essential and indeed specific form of wealth [Vermögen], as the universal means of exchange, money in the ordinary sense, Sancho suddenly turns the thing round when he sees the difficulties this would lead to and declares all ability, [Vermögen] to be money, in order to create the appearance of personal power. The difficulty during a crisis is precisely that “all wealth” [Vermögen] has ceased to be “money”. Incidentally, this amounts to the practice of the bourgeois who accepts “all wealth” as means of payment so long as it is money, and who only begins to raise difficulties when it becomes difficult to turn this “wealth” into money in which case he also ceases to regard it as “wealth”. Further, the difficulty in time of crisis is precisely that you, petty bourgeois, whom Sancho addresses here, can no longer put into circulation the money of your coining, your bills of exchange; but you are expected to pay with money, not coined by you and which shows no evidence that it has passed through your hands.
Finally, Stirner distorts the bourgeois motto “You are worth as much as the money you possess” into “You have as much money as you are worth”, which alters nothing, but only introduces an appearance of personal power and thus expresses the trivial bourgeois illusion that everyone is himself to blame if he has ne, money. Thus Sancho disposes of the classic bourgeois saying: L'argent n'a pas de maitre [money has no master], and can now mount the pulpit and exclaim: “Let your ability have its effect, brace yourself, and you will not lack money.” Je ne connais pas de lieu à la bourse où se fasse le transfers des bonnes intentions [I do not know a place at the stock exchange where people trade in good intentions]. He had but to add: Obtain credit; knowledge is power ; it is harder to earn the first taler than the last million; be moderate and save your money and, most important of all, do not multiply overmuch, etc. — to reveal not one ass’s ear, but both at once. In general, the man for whom everyone is what he can be and does what he can do, ends all chapters with moral exhortations.
The monetary system in Stirner’s union is, therefore, the existing monetary system expressed in the euphemistic and gushingly sentimental manner of the German petty bourgeois.
After Sancho has paraded in this way with the ears of his ass, Don Quixote-Szeliga draws himself up to his full height and delivers a solemn speech about the modern knight-errant, in the course of which money is transformed into Dulcinea del Toboso and the manufacturers and commerçants en masse into knights, namely, into chevaliers d'industrie. The speech has also the subsidiary aim of proving that because money is an “essential means”, it is also essentially a daughter”.* And he stretched out his right hand and said:
“On money depends fortune and misfortune. In the bourgeois period it is a force because like a maiden” (a dairymaid; per appositionem Dulcinea) “it is only wooed but is not indissolubly joined in marriage to anyone. All the romance and chivalry of wooing a dear object is revived in competition. Money, an object of ardent desire, is abducted by the bold chevaliers d'industrie” (p. 364).
Sancho has now arrived at a profound explanation why money in the bourgeois epoch is a power, namely, because in the first place fortune and misfortune depends on it and, secondly, because it is a maiden. He has further learned why he can lose his money, namely, because a maiden is not indissolubly joined in marriage to anyone. Now the poor wretch knows where he stands.
Szeliga, who has thus made the burgher into a knight, now in the following way makes the communist into a burgher and indeed into a burgher husband.
“He on whom fortune smiles leads the bride home. The ragamuffin is fortunate, he takes her into his household, society, and destroys the maiden. In his home she is no longer a bride, but a wife, and her maiden name disappears with her maidenhood. As a housewife, the money-maiden is called labour, for labour is the name of the husband. She is the property of the husband.
“To complete the picture, the child of labour and money is again a girl” (“essentially a daughter”), “an unmarried girl” (has Szeliga ever known of a girl coming “Married” out of the maternal womb?) “and therefore money” (according to the above proof that all money is an “unmarried girl”, it is self-evident that “all unmarried girls” are “money”) — “therefore money, but having its definite descent from labour, its father” (toute recherche de la paternité est interdite [any investigation regarding paternity is forbidden — the formula used in article 340 of the Code Napoléon]). “The shape of the face, the image, bears a different stamp” (pp. 364, 365).
This story of marriage, burial and baptism is surely of itself sufficient proof that it is “essentially a daughter” of Szeliga, and indeed a daughter of “definite descent”. Its ultimate basis, however, lies in the ignorance of his former stableman, Sancho. This is clearly seen at the end, when the orator is again anxiously concerned about the “coining” of money. thereby betraying that he still considers that coins are the most important medium of circulation. If he had taken the trouble to examine a little more closely the economic relations of ,none Y, instead of weaving a beautiful. leafy bridal wreath for it, he would have known that — without mentioning state securities, shares, etc. — the major part of the medium of circulation consists of bills of exchange, whereas paper money forms a comparatively small part, and coin a still smaller part. In England, for example. fifteen times as much money circulates in the form of bills of exchange and bank-notes as in the form of coin. And even as regards coin, it is determined exclusively by the costs of production, i.e., labour. Hence Stirner’s elaborate process of procreation was superfluous here.
Szeliga’s solemn reflections about a means of exchange based on labour but, nevertheless’, different from the money of today, which he claims to have discovered among certain communists, only prove once again the simplicity with which our noble couple believe everything they read without even examining it.
When the two heroes ride homewards after this “knightly and romantic” campaign of “wooing”, they are bringing back no “fortune”, still less the “bride”, and least of all “money”, but at best one “ragamuffin” is bringing home the other
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