Letter: Withering away of money? (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Withering away of money?

Dear Editors,

Responding to Max Hess’s article ‘Capitalist Money Madness’ (Socialist Standard, May) a suggestion. Perhaps, a way a Socialist government (if there ever was one ) could bring about a moneyless economy is to print the stuff in abundance and pay it out in salaries and wages. Everyone would be employed in goods and services and use money to buy whatever they needed, or thought they needed. Meanwhile, everyone would be working to produce and provide the goods and services but no one would ever be without enough dosh to ‘purchase’ whatever they wanted because they would have access to as much of the stuff that they wanted.

Of course, in no time at all there’d be run-away inflation but it wouldn’t matter if there were no money markets, exchange and financial institutions, there’d be no capitalist institutions because there would be nothing for them to do. As Max says, also no need for police, military, bankers, lawyers, prisons and prison officers  … a whole swathe of jobs related to money, it’s use and misuse.

People would soon realize that money isn’t necessary to maintain an economy. It’s just a method used by a profit system that was perhaps necessary in times past but now no longer appropriate, needed or wanted. They’d only need to continue doing what they always did do…work and consume without the need to use paper and metal tokens to do it.

If other capitalist countries wanted to trade with Britain we’d provide them with goods and services in exchange for what we needed of theirs. Their workers would soon see what ours have got up to and would bring about the same change in their countries. When people see that they don’t need money to maintain their standards of living and even raise them to heights only ever dreamed of they’d wonder why it was never thought of before.

Then they’d realize the great thievery that had been perpetrated upon them for centuries and resolve to never again allow capitalism to raise its fanged head again. Then, and only then, would a truly international common global economy evolve. Then, and only then, would mankind advance to the utopian world dreamt of by our ancestors .

Of course, things wouldn’t run smoothly at first but society by its very nature is a moral system and just as today layabouts and petty thieves are disdained and rejected, so too in a sane socialist system dissenters would have no argument and find it hard going to feel self respect and acceptance.

Am I right or am I right ?

Leo Aliferis (by email)

Reply:

You’re right that when people realise they don’t need money to maintain a very good standard of living, they’ll wonder why it was never thought of before. But that awareness can’t be achieved through a leftwing ‘socialist government’, which would have campaigned for, and been elected to, supervise capitalism — not abolish it.

In the highly unlikely event that such a government, led by a Trotskyist-style vanguard, sabotaged the profit-wages-money system by deliberately bringing about hyperinflation and economic chaos, the population would neither expect nor want this. All voters would then focus on is the ensuing financial turmoil and they’d be extremely alarmed by what was happening and they’d throw that government out of office at the earliest opportunity. Deliberately subjecting a pro-money population to economic chaos, as a means of supposedly leading them to socialist awareness, is doomed to fail.

Whereas, if a clear majority of the electorate vote for moneyless real socialism, because they have come to understand what it is and consciously want this system instead of capitalism, then there’d be no need to continue with a means of exchange. They would already “realize that money isn’t necessary to maintain an economy”. And after a clear majority of people have voted for real socialism in a general election, then plans and preparations to bring this about can be acted upon immediately without any widespread rejection and resistance that would be associated with trying to impose it on an unready and averse population from above.

Given the dire condition clapped-out capitalism is now in, and that we’re heading for a prolonged period of additional working class suffering and misery, mainstream party politicians will be trying harder than ever to dupe people into believing that money management offers the answer to alleviating and solving these capitalism-caused problems. They’ll want people submissively accepting worsening state-funded services. They’ll want those without jobs submissively accepting any low-paid work they are offered. They’ll want those with jobs submissively accepting pay restraint and cuts. They’ll want people turning against supposedly less-deserving recipients of welfare benefits.

We need to get people to completely reject this bogus capitalist agenda that managing money better is in our best interests. It isn’t. Abolishing money, and the capitalist system that requires it, is in our best interests.

We are not “all in this together”, as Cameron farcically states. Capitalists and their political stooges are in it for as much as they can get out of it. Everyone else is required to keep the pig trough as full as possible.  – Editors.