Of all the occupations on Earth, the only one that allows us to be independent is farming. All occupations other than farming must depend at least upon agriculture, or else they have no source of life; for this reason independence is impossible. If, as a result of their contempt for agriculture, the other occupations try to become independent of it, their practitioners will soon die!
Agriculture is, at the least, none other than a "means in itself" for maintaining one's own life, so as long as one does not seek excesses such as convenience, extravagance, and ease, and is prepared for a life of austerity, it is possible to become totally independent.
What on earth do people mean, then, when they say, "It's impossible to get along just by farming. One can't keep food on the table by being a farmer"? It is one thing if one is referring to factories or apartment buildings in the concrete cities, but such a remark is quite incomprehensible if the speaker is a person who has the land which produces the food by which he can keep himself alive. But of course we know that these people mean it is impossible for them to acquire the trinkets and gimcracks and pleasures that urban extravagance offers.
The secondary and tertiary industries, in their infinite mercy, make their governments grant subsidies to agriculture, which is the only occupation on earth capable of independence, but this is nothing less than a clever reversal meant to pull the wool over our eyes. That agriculture must continually curry favor with others as well as suffer great difficulties is without a doubt because of the deception, dirty tricks, and schemes of Money (or the schemes and plundering of the money economy, known as the "market principle"), as characterized by agricultural subsidies. Could there possibly be any other reason?
I therefore believe that in order for agriculture to avoid the interference of the secondary and tertiary industries, it must first become independent of money. Money cheats the farmers; the devilish machinery of the money economy makes the farmers take on debts, and its phantom money (loans) make double plunder possible.
Note well that the ultimate cause of the farmers' privation lies in the exchange of food for pieces of paper, and that subsidies are mere bait to prepare for plunder.
Money: An Instrument of Plunder
The mint churns out tons of money, and with government bonds as the medium, wads of this money roll to all corners of the country (as, for example, the salaries of public employees and appropriations for public works projects). [51] Some of this paper money is saved, and some of it is used to buy food. If you take it to the store and throw it into a shopping basket, it changes magically into food. So there is absolutely no basis for asserting that money will not be used for the plunder of food. If there were no such plunder by means of money, it would be impossible for the city to survive for even a day unless it took food by force.
Let us assume now that part of that money which was saved is now lent out to the farmers in the form of agricultural loans. It will be immediately consumed by the purchase of machinery, fertilizers, and agricultural chemicals, whereby it is returned to the pockets of Capital; all that remains with the farmers are debts. And just as I pointed out before, these debts contribute, over a long period of time, to the plunder of agricultural products. In order to pay back their loans, the farmers must work themselves into the ground, continually offering great quantities of farm products to the city.
Money is none other than a weapon for the purpose of ripping off agricultural produce.