MONEY AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY 221

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The significance of the money economy for modern civilization
 becomes more apparent if we view the resulting
liberation in connection with the resulting restraints. It
creates, namely, a specific form of impersonal mutual dependence
 which allows full scope to personal independence.

During the period of the natural economy, a person
depended on a small number of individuals, but his dependence
 was a dependence on personal services. The
complicated technique which could develop after the introduction
 of the money economy makes a single person
dependent on countless individuals, but these individuals
have a significance for the subject only as bearers of an
economic function, as possessors of capital, producers of
goods, retailers or merchants. What they are outside of
their economic function is of no concern. The totality of
their personality remains outside of the economic relationships.
 The tendency of modern economic life which
results from the division of labor is to make a person dependent
 on an increasing number of individuals, but to
free him more and more from the personalities behind their
functions.
The small circle on which a person was dependent in a
natural economy was a personal circle. The large circle
on which a person is dependent in the modern economy is
not a personal circle, but a circle of objective economic
functions. He depends on more people, but much less on a
specific individual. Because he is dependent on the function
 and not on the bearer of the function, he can change
and select the latter according to his own choice. This gives
him an inner independence, a feeling of individual self-sufficiency.
 His freedom consists in his ability to change the
individuals on whom he shall depend. Not dependence as
such is the opposite of freedom, but dependence on specific