Use of money is one of the principle obstacles to the preservation of equality among men and hence of free states, to the preponderance of true merit and of virtue, etc., etc. And its use is one of the principal reasons that introduce and gradually force society into oppression, despotism, servitude, the burden placed by single classes on others, in short, that extinguish the moral and inner life of the nations, and the nations themselves as nations. (561)

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.