Money is here understood in the broadest sense, it means both "commodity money and credit money,"[791] by no means coin alone; "if the idea of the royalty of gold and silver could once be knocked out of the people's heads, and they could once understand that no particular kind of merchandise is created by nature for monetary purposes, they would settle this question in a trice."[792] "If they only had the liberty to do so, there are enough large and small property-holders willing and anxious to issue money, to provide a far greater amount than is needed."[793] "Does the law of England allow citizens to form a bank for the issue of paper money against any property that they may see fit to accept as security; said bank perhaps owning no specie whatever; the paper money not redeemable in specie except at the option of the bank; the customers of the bank mutually pledging themselves to accept the bank's paper in lieu of gold or silver coin of the same face value; the paper being redeemable only at the maturity of the mortgage notes, and then simply by a return of said notes and a release of the mortgaged property,—is such an institution, I ask, allowed by the law of England? If it is, then I have only to say that the working people of England are very great fools not to take advantage of this inestimable liberty."[794] Then "competition would reduce the rate of interest on capital to the mere cost of banking, which is much less than one per cent.,"[795] for "capitalists will not be able to lend their capital at interest when people can get money at the bank without interest with which to buy capital outright."[796] Likewise the charge of rent on buildings "would be almost entirely and directly abolished,"[797] and "profits fall to the level of the manufacturer's or merchant's proper wage,"[798] "except in business protected by tariff or patent laws."[799] "This facility of acquiring capital will give an unheard-of impetus to business";[800] "if free banking were only a picayunish attempt to distribute more equitably the small amount of wealth now produced, I would not waste a moment's energy on it."[801]
Free land is needed in the second place.[802] "'The land for the people,' according to 'Liberty', means the protection of all people who desire to cultivate land in the possession of whatever land they personally cultivate, without distinction between the existing classes of landlords, tenants, and laborers, and the positive refusal of the protecting power to lend its aid to the collection of any rent whatsoever."[803] This "system of occupying ownership, accompanied by no legal power to collect rent, but coupled with the abolition of the State-guaranteed monopoly of money, thus making capital readily available,"[804] would "abolish ground-rent"[805] and "distribute the increment naturally and quietly among its rightful owners."[806]
In the third and fourth place, free trade and freedom of intellectual products are necessary.[807] If they were added to freedom in money, "profit on merchandise would become merely the wages of mercantile labor."[808] Free trade "would result in a great reduction in the prices of all articles taxed."[809] And "the abolition of the patent monopoly would fill its beneficiaries with a wholesome fear of competition which would cause them to be satisfied with pay for their services equal to that which other laborers get for theirs."[810]
If equal liberty is realized in these four spheres, its realization in the sphere of property follows of itself: that is, a distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor.[811] "Economic privilege must disappear as a result of the abolition of political tyranny."[812] In a society in which there is no more government of man by man, there can be no such things as interest, rent, and profits;[813] every one is guaranteed the ownership of the product of his labor. "Socialism does not say: 'Thou shalt not steal!' It says: 'When all men have Liberty, thou wilt not steal.'"[814]
3. "Liberty will abolish all means whereby any laborer can be deprived of any of his product; but it will not abolish the limited inequality between one laborer's product and another's."[815] "There will remain the slight disparity of products due to superiority of soil and skill. But even this disparity will soon develop a tendency to decrease. Under the new economic conditions and enlarged opportunities resulting from freedom of credit and land classes will tend to disappear; great capacities will not be developed in a few at the expense of stunting those of the many; freedom of locomotion will be vastly increased; the toilers will no longer be anchored in such large numbers in the present commercial centres, and thus made subservient to the city landlords; territories and resources never before utilized will become easy of access and development; and under all these influences the disparity above mentioned will decrease to a minimum."[816]
"Probably it will never disappear entirely."[817] "Now, because liberty has not the power to bring this about, there are people who say: We will have no liberty, for we must have absolute equality. I am not of them. If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."[818]
6.—REALIZATION
According to Tucker, the manner in which the change called for by every one's self-interest takes place is to be that those who have recognized the truth shall first convince a sufficient number of people how necessary the change is to their own interests, and that then they all of them, by refusing obedience, abolish the State, transform law and property, and thus bring about the new condition.
I. First a sufficient number of men are to be convinced that their own interests demand the change.