Lysander Spooner

But will the monopolists of money give up their monopoly?

They will hold on to it as long as they own and control governments as they do now.

Because to give up their monopoly would be to give up their control of those great armies of servants--the wage laborers--from whom all their wealth is derived, and whom they can now coerce by the alternative of starvation, to labor for…

And they can keep control of other men's labor only by depriving the laborers themselves of all other means of subsistence.

And they can deprive them of all other means of subsistence only by putting it out of their power to hire the money that is necessary to enable them to do business for themselves.

Thus it is that the monopoly of money is the one great obstacle to the liberation of the laboring classes all over the world, and to their indefinite progress in wealth.

Let it be repeated--as a vital proposition--that the whole industrial programme of these monopolists rests upon, and implies, such a degree of poverty, on the part of the laboring classes, as will put their labor in direct competition with…

Furthermore, this extreme poverty, in which the laborers are to be kept, necessarily implies that they are to receive no larger share of the proceeds of their own labor, than is necessary to keep them in a condition to labor.

It implies that their industry--which is really the national industry--is not to be carried on at all for their own benefit, but only for the benefit of their employers, the monopolists of money.

Liberate all this loanable capital--promissory notes--that is now lying idle, and we liberate all labor, and furnish to all laborers all the capital they need for their industries.

We shall then have no longer, all over the earth, the competition of pauper labor with pauper labor, but only the competition of free labor with free labor.

If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.