What is Money?

…“men of business rarely know the meaning of the word ‘rich.’ At least, if they know, they do not in their reasonings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite ‘poor’ as positively as the word ‘north’ implies its opposite ‘south.’ Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of a guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbor’s pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it, - and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist’s sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor.” John Ruskin. Unto This Last and Other Writings. London: Penguin Books. 1985. pp180-181. This was originally published in 1862. When Gandhi read this book, he found some of his deepest convictions in it and subsequently transformed his life.