MONEY AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY 229
ale
.es-
- of
ess
in-
ac-
be-
ion
ce.
nd
do-
» at-
the
the
itis
but
WS
nal
er-
118~
he-
en-
1fi-
ing
one
“ion
nto
:ar-
/08~
the
subject and its objects were not viewed in contrast and op-
position; and even when differentiation in consciousness
began, it was long before it resulted in actual independence.
Possession among primitive people was an immediate
activity of the individual; feudalism tied the individual to
the possession; hereditary professions and caste and guild
systems signify an intimate connection between the pos-
session or the economic function and the whole of the per-
sonality. With the advance in civilization there begins a
differentiation which results in the growth of self-suffi-
cient economic processes, in the development of an imper-
sonal technique on the one hand and a growth in individual
independence on the other hand.
In this process of differentiation, money exercises the
function of enlarging the distance between the possessor
and his possessions. The shareholder of an industrial con-
cern and the landholder who leases his farm leave the run-
ning of their property to a purely technical administration.
They merely enjoy the fruits without participating in the
actual production. This is possible only in a money econ-
omy. Money allows the possessor and the possession to
exist each according to its own laws, and drives them com-
pletely apart.
This completion of the process of differentiation
through the introduction of money is manifest, not only in
the receiver of rent or interest, but also in the producer
of goods or of services. It means in all cases a differentia-
tion between the personality and the object or the service,
and the entrance of one of these into the economic system.
The money economy allows the substitution for personal
services of an objectively defined function, either in terms
of objects for a market instead of for a client, or in terms
of a definite amount of labor power. In this case only the
function enters into the economic system and finds its
