MONEY AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY 221 
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The significance of the money economy for modern civ- 
ilization becomes more apparent if we view the resulting 
liberation in connection with the resulting restraints. It 
creates, namely, a specific form of impersonal mutual de- 
pendence which allows full scope to personal independ- 
ence. 
During the period of the natural economy, a person 
depended on a small number of individuals, but his de- 
pendence was a dependence on personal services. The 
complicated technique which could develop after the in- 
troduction 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 rela- 
tionships. The tendency of modern economic life which 
results from the division of labor is to make a person de- 
pendent 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 func- 
tion 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-suf- 
ficiency. 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