What is wealth? Money? Imagine a person with a bag of money. Alone. In a desert. Is he wealthy? Would he trade that bag for a glass of water? “Ah,” we will be told, “wealth is what we buy with money.” But now imagine—one person buys a new Mercedes, another donates money to an orphanage. Did the first become richer? Everyone will say yes. And the second? Few will say yes.
Let me give you my favorite example: awl and soap. The phrase “traded an awl for soap” describes a transaction that, we’re told, led to nothing. In fact, if the exchange was voluntary, each party improved their situation. The owner of the awl got soap; the owner of the soap got an awl.
I will be told that the improvement arose because both parties satisfied their objective needs. But here’s the trouble—how do we define “objective”? For example, I have an objective need to listen to good music. Or rather—not to listen to bad music. I physically cannot tolerate being in a place where some chanson is playing. “Well,” they’ll say, “these are just superstitions. Objective needs are food, housing, and reproduction.” Another problem: objective means what does not depend on our will. The Earth revolving around the Sun is objective. Day and night alternating. And other such things. But a person can refuse food, housing, and reproduction. They can even refuse their own life. Therefore, this is not objective.
We happen to live in a place where people who believed that objective needs exist ruled the rest for 70 years. The essence of Marxism is this: there is “fair” and “unfair” wealth, and so that everyone can be well off, wealth must first be redistributed. Then production should make “food products,” “clothing,” “consumer goods”; we should be served by “medicine” and taught by “education,” since all this constitutes objective needs. It didn’t work out. Everything fell apart, despite the mass terror. It turned out that nobody needs “food products”—what they need are specific goods that taste the way they like. Similarly, nobody needs “clothing.” And nobody needs “medicine”—what is needed is treatment for specific diseases in specific people.
Pay attention to the things that surround you in everyday life. Their staggering number becomes especially visible when they’re taken out of their nests during a move, for instance. Unnecessary clothes and shoes you’ll never wear, books you’ve read and books you haven’t read but bought anyway. All of this hasn’t lost its “objective” properties. But you no longer need it. In its time, you spent money and time to buy, and sometimes to acquire, these things. And now? They no longer hold value for you. And where has that value gone? In your head.