The question of economic science is this: What is the cause of the fact that some men, by means of money, acquire an imaginary right to land and capital, and may make slaves of those who have no money? The answer which presents itself to common sense is, that it is the result of money, the nature of which is to enslave men.
But economic science denies this, and says: This arises, not from the nature of money, but from the fact that some men have land and capital, and others have neither.
We ask: Why do persons who possess land and capital oppress those who possess neither? And we are answered: Because they possess land and capital.
But this is just what we are inquiring about. Is not deprivation of land and tools enforced slavery? And the answer is like saying, “A remedy is narcotic because its effects are narcotic.” Life does not cease to put this essential question, and even science herself notices and tries to answer it, but does not succeed, because, starting from her own fundamental principles, she only turns herself round in a vicious circle.
In order to give itself a satisfactory answer to the question, science must first of all deny that wrong division of the agents of production, and cease to acknowledge the result of the phenomena as being their cause; and she must seek, first the more obvious, and then the remoter, causes of those phenomena which constitute the matter questioned.
Science must answer the question, Why are some men deprived of land and tools while others possess both? or, Why is it that lands and tools are taken from the people who labour on the land and work with the tools?
And as soon as economic science puts this question to herself she will get new ideas which will transform all the previous ideas of sham science,—which has been moving in an unalterable circle of propositions,—that the miserable condition of the workers proceeds from the fact that they are miserable.
To simple-minded persons it must seem unquestionable that the obvious reason of the oppression of some men by others is money. But science, denying this, says that money is only a medium of exchange, which has no connection with slavery of men.
Let us see whether it is so or not.