One of many other functions which money performes, according to Tolstoy, is the representation of labor. There exists a common opinion that money represents wealth, but money is the product of labor, and so money represents labor[18]. This opinion, says Tolstoy sneeringly, is as correct as that other opinion that every political organization is the result of a pact (_contrat social_). Yes, money represents labor[19], there is no doubt about that, but whose, labor of the owner of the money, or of the other people? In that rude stage of society, Tolstoy goes on, when people voluntarily bartered the fruits of their products, or exchanged them through the medium of money, substantially money represented their individual labor. That is incontestably true, and this was only so long as in society where this exchange took place, has not appeared the violence of one man over another in any form: war, slavery, of defence of one’s labor against others. But as soon as any violence was exerted in society, the money at once lost for the owner its significance as a representative of labor, and assumed the meaning of a right which is not based on labor, but on violence[20]. This is one of the functions of the medium of exchange in the pages of Tolstoy. The second function of money is the representation of the standard value. “Catallactics” admits this function of money. Tolstoy himself should recognize it in an ideal state of society, in a society where extortion has not made its appearance[21]. If people exchanged directly commodity for commodity; if they themselves determined the standards of values by sheep, furs, hides, and shells[22], then one could speak of money as an instrument of exchange, as an ideal standard of value in an ideal state of society. But in such a society there would be no money as such, as a common standard of values, as it has not existed and cannot exist[23]. The standard value of money is determined by law and government, and these institutions are based chiefly on deceit[24], or represent the organized force[25]. What in recent time receives a value is not what is more convenient for exchange, but what is demanded by government. If gold is demanded gold will be a common denominator, if knuckle-bones are demanded, knuckle-bones will have value[26]. If this were not so why has the issue of this medium of exchange always been the prerogative of the government? In such a state of society in which we live, the standard of values ceases to have any significance, because the standard of value of all articles depends on the arbitrary will of the oppressor[27]. By this reason we could speak only on arbitrary and conventional value of money, not of its intrinsic, nor of its standard value.