Stop this business! (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

A visitor from another world, or a really long-term Rip Van Winkle, knowing little of the complexities of Capitalism, might imagine that the problem of satisfying the needs of mankind is now as good as solved. Modern methods of production would appear to have made possible, if not a superabundance, then at least enough of the material things that most people would accept as a reasonable standard of living.

But, of course, our visitor would be mistaken. It is not enough to produce or to be able to produce toothbrushes and shoes and houses to ensure that those who need such things do get them. No, a socially useless, dehumanising, wasteful, cruel, unpredictable, man-made institution called a (world) market effectively stands in the way. Despite the fact that people are in need, for instance of shoes, if the supply is greater than the demand to buy, then some shoes will be sentenced to economic death—they might as well not have been produced at all.

In recent years the tendency has been towards a “buyers’ market,” as it always is after the devastation wrought by a major war has been patched up. The export drives are in full swing. In fact rival nations are taking so many swings at each other over who is to capture which markets that the result is a melée of no mean proportions.

One of the tricks used to cajole overseas buyers into placing their orders with British capitalists is the employment of hospitality. There is really no other word to use than “employment,” though it does sound strange when used in connection with something a£ apparently unbusinesslike as hospitality. This year the sellers of British goods are having to roll out their largest-ever red-white-and-blue carpet to keep pace with the hospitality offered by foreign rivals. They must entertain and throw parties on a lavish scale in order to get round buyers. The Daily Mirror (20.6.53) describes the general atmosphere of these parties:

“It’s exactly like entertaining a rich aunt . . . But like rich aunts these affairs are so often trying. Even when you’re not talking business, both you and your guest know perfectly well that the only reason you're together is that you want to get at his money."

Operating on a less ambitious scale, the commercial traveller is to be found peddling his employer’s goods from door to door. He, too, must preserve a friendly attitude towards his potential customer—not that he wouldn’t like their relationship to be a sincerely friendly one, but the nature of the business virtually precludes that. He must never argue and must never admit to the slightest blemish in his firm's product— his job is, in fact that of a professional prevaricator.

Each separate business deal is like an armistice in a perpetual war. Buyer and seller come together to agree on certain terms. Then they part to continue the struggle to gain advantage in the next deal. The trait of aggressiveness is prominent in those who aspire to get to the top of the ladder. Yet aggressiveness is condemned in such common remarks as "Don't push other people around,'' and those who behave in this way are usually hated by their colleagues. The individual is thus divided against himself, as the society of which he is part is divided against itself.

"Don't be selfish” is another common injunction, yet its opposite is also advocated: keep your own advantage in mind, and in so doing you will also be acting for the greatest advantage of all others. The idea that egotism is the basis of general welfare is one of the basic principles of competitive society, whose antagonisms of interest reach up and down to every aspect of life.

The ability to “put across” one's personality in competition with many others is the key to success in the business world. Erich Fromm gives a good account of this in “Man For Himself ”:

"If it were enough for the purpose of making a living to rely on what one knows and can do, one’s self-esteem would be in proportion to one’s capacities . . . but since success depends largely on how one sells one's personality, one experiences oneself as a commodity or rather simultaneously as the setter and the commodity to be sold. A person is not concerned with his life and happiness, but with becoming saleable."

One of the outstanding features of private property society is the fact that activities which are means to ends have usurped the position of ends, while the ends themselves have been lost sight of. People work in order to make money in order to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Without the money there are no fruits— yet in getting the money there is little time left in which to taste the fruits, which seem to have turned sour anyway.

Examples of the business approach to social affairs are found in the ideas of all the advocates of Capitalism and, despite their superficial differences, they form a united front in opposing the ideas of Socialism. Thus the Free Enterprise Campaigners will criticize countries in which  a few men at the top decide how everyone shall live,” yet their own alternative is nothing more colourful than to give you a chance “if you want to change jobs or start up on your own.” On the other hand, the T.U.C. will tell you (in their recently published report on Public Ownership, p5) that to leave industries in private hands means that decisions whether to invest, and what charges to make to consumers, may not conform to the public interest.

Socialism, by contrast, has nothing to do with changing your employer, or with who works out the best way of keeping you financially just alive. It is concerned with abolishing capitalism and with organising production and distribution solely and directly to meet people's needs. One of the most harmful effects of Capitalism upon men is that they become instruments for purposes outside themselves. They treat themselves and their fellows as commodities, with the result that they think they are as powerless to change society as the article on the shop counter is powerless to sell itself. They are not—as they will demonstrate when enough of them think as socialists do.

Stan Parker

Letter: Ending the money system can save the planet (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ending the money system can save the planet

Dear Editors,

Money may feel neutral — just a tool for exchange. And environmental destruction is usually framed as a technological problem, a political failure, or a lack of individual responsibility. But the primary driver of ecological degeneration is the system we live under. It requires endless growth, even though the earth itself does not grow – forests regenerate slowly, soils take centuries to rebuild.

In a monetary framework, nature has value only when it can be priced. So, for example, a living forest is ‘unused land’ and a felled forest is ‘economic activity’. Clean air, biodiversity, climate stability, and future generations tend to be ignored by balance sheets. It is more profitable to extract than to regenerate and so what cannot be monetised is treated as expendable, the result often being not stewardship, but liquidation. This doesn’t happen because people are evil. It happens because the system rewards the wrong behaviour.

The result is that total global debt now equals more than three years of the planet’s entire yearly output — everything humanity produces in one year, multiplied by three, already promised away. But growth and the borrowing that goes with it means more extraction and more pressure on land, oceans, climate, and people. We have in effect built a system that treats Earth as an infinite credit card — and even after maxing it out, it demands a higher limit.

That is why we do not have a problem that can be fixed with better regulation, greener growth, or smarter finance. The system that requires endless expansion on a finite planet is not malfunctioning. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

This brings us to the question of artificial scarcity. Money-based systems depend on scarcity, but not natural scarcity — manufactured scarcity. There is enough food, yet people starve. There are more than enough homes, yet people are homeless. There is an abundance of energy from the sun, yet we burn the planet for fuel. So scarcity is not a condition of nature. It is a condition of design. And scarcity doesn’t just damage ecosystems. It damages people and a wounded humanity consumes to compensate. Much of modern overconsumption is not driven by greed, but rather by emptiness. When work is disconnected from meaning, when time is stolen from life, when worth is measured numerically, people compensate by seeking status, possessions and distractions.

This is a system that erodes human dignity. You are valued only when you are profitable. So rest must be earned, care must be justified, illness is a liability, and ageing becomes a problem. Your right to exist depends not on being human but on being useful.

But ending money would change the questions. Without money, society would stop asking ‘Is this profitable?’ and begins asking questions like ‘Is this necessary?, ‘Is this sustainable?’, ‘Does this improve life for people and the planet?’ When production becomes needs-based, technology serves life, not return on investment, and durability replaces planned obsolescence.

It’s not that people aren’t trying to save the planet within the today’s monetary system — many are. But every serious environmental effort is forced to operate against the system’s underlying logic. Renewable energy must compete with fossil fuels on price. Ecosystem protection must justify itself in economic terms. Climate action must promise growth, jobs, and returns to be considered ‘realistic’. In other words, nature is allowed to survive only if it can be made profitable. And this creates a constant contradiction: we try to heal the planet while preserving the very engine that requires its continued destruction. As long as money, debt, and growth remain the organizing principles of society, ecological protection will always be partial, fragile, and reversible — tolerated only until it threatens profits. That’s why saving the planet without ending the monetary system is not just difficult; it may be structurally impossible.

You may say ‘What can we have instead? This is the only system we’ve got.’ But is it? When land, water, and ecosystems are no longer owned for profit, extraction loses its incentive, care becomes collective, and long-term thinking becomes natural.

Stewardship replaces ownership. The guiding question shifts from ‘How can we extract as much as possible?’ to ‘How do we keep this system healthy for ourselves and future generations?’ Just as a humanity stripped of dignity will compete, consume, and destroy, a humanity that feels safe, valued, and meaningful does not need to dominate its environment.

So while ending the monetary system does not magically save the planet, it does remove the root incentive that is currently destroying it — and it also gives both Earth and humanity a chance to recover. This is the core vision explored in my book, Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, a story that doesn’t ask whether such a new world is perfect, but whether it becomes possible once the old rules are removed. The question is no longer whether we can afford to imagine a world beyond money. The question is whether we can afford not to.

Harald Sandø

Reply:

We broadly agree, though we see the imperative to growth that is built into capitalism as resulting from its economic drive to make and accumulate more profit rather than from having to make money to repay interest on debt – Editors.

Blogger's Note:

Harald Sandø's novel was reviewed in August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Is Money the Master? (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the fact that the great majority of people never manage to obtain very much of it, money is without doubt the dominant thing in the life of everybody.

Those who have little of it are usually those who work for wages producing the wealth of society. Those who have a lot of it are usually those who produce nothing, but who own means of wealth production. Right away a contradiction presents itself. Those who spend their lives working, carrying out all the multifarious tasks in the world, when they come to the end of their working lives have accumulated precious little. Productiveness and possession are polar opposites.

Money is to the system we live under what oxygen is to organic life, the essence of existence. To most people’s minds, money is part of the natural order of things without which continued existence would be impossible. Money, or considerations resting on money, forms the basis of nearly everything we say and do. It is the centre of most everyday conversation. The theme and plot of most of what is euphemistically called entertainment on TV etc. The politician of the system would be speechless if he could not refer to money. Every promise and reform scheme from pensions to pollution and from H-bombs to education is argued in money terms. The reason given for promoting many reforms is to save money. The excuse for not pursuing others is that they haven’t got the money. Which is shadow and which is substance is a question most would find hard to answer. Such reverence is felt for money that its complete artificiality is rarely noticed.

Exchange & Incentive

To establish, as Marx did, that money is a means of exchange, a standard of price and a measure of value, is to raise the question as to why such a medium is needed. Again, most people and certainly the politicians would not answer the question. The working class need money to obtain life’s essentials, food, clothing and shelter. People have to buy and sell in order to live. It is accepted that access to life’s needs is possible only through money. So money is all-powerful. The legal machinery of the state stands ready to punish anyone found trying to obtain goods without money. Another contradiction. If money is there to circulate goods, why is it a barrier standing between you and what you cannot afford—even though you helped produce it?

If audiences in Hyde Park are anything to go by (they must represent a cross-section of the working class) money is the only conceivable incentive for doing anything in the minds of most people. That such a distorted view of life can prevail as popular opinion underscores the fact that the dominant ideas in society are those of the ruling class. (No, this does not rule out Socialism, because ruling-class ideas will cease to dominate when the workers have had enough of capitalism.) The idea that money is the real incentive for doing anything is part of the wider ideology of capitalism, an attempt to justify the profit motive.

The capitalist only risks his money in investments because he hopes profit will be forthcoming. This keeps him on his toes because he has to compete, and profit is his just reward for the service he provides for society. The workers, of course, should be grateful because he provides them with work. So monetary gain, in one form or another, is normal and natural. After all, nobody does anything for nothing. Simple, isn’t it? You must be a crank or a utopian dreamer to advocate a world without money.

Social Relations

The pundits of capitalism can avoid the really awkward questions, because their crude rationalization— the three-card trick—is accepted. Where did the capitalist get the money which he seeks to reinvest for further profit? How did a minority come to own and control the means of wealth production in the first place? Does not man’s development stretch back over many hundreds of thousands of years of communal existence without money, and without private property in the means of production? Were the first class systems (the beginnings of recorded history) not built upon the violent theft of common land and the ownership of slaves? Is the wages system operating throughout the world today anything more than a form of slavery?

The capitalist (state or private) is not saddled with direct personal responsibility for feeding, housing and maintaining his employees, as was the slaveowner. He pays them a wage out of the wealth they produce and which he owns, and they maintain themselves. Also, unlike the slaves of old who changed hands when they were bought or sold by their owners, the modern wage-slave is “free” to hire himself to any capitalist who is interested in his particular skills or abilities. This is what freedom amounts to for the working class.

But while a wage-worker can divorce himself from a particular capitalist, he cannot for long divorce himself from capital. Wage-labour is utterly dependent upon capital. Capital is utterly dependent upon wage-labour. They co-exist in mutual antagonism. Capital can live only on continuous supplies of fresh labour to reproduce it by the creation of new wealth, and labour submits to the draining away of its life- force, because in replenishing the vampire capital it is allowed to maintain and reproduce itself.

Those who believe the money system is natural and eternal have not begun to understand the world they live in, or the many phases of development through which human society has passed. Man did not descend from the trees clutching bundles of inflated dollars, roubles or pound-notes and head straight for the nearest supermarket. The nearest supermarket was about two million years away in the future. The universal rôle of money is a fairly recent development, historically speaking. For the far greater part of man’s existence he has produced the wherewithal of life without the use of money.

Attitudes

“Nobody does anything for nothing.” That is a glib piece of ignorance on the part of those who think money is the only possible incentive, but in another sense it is true. Man has always worked and produced to stay alive. That is not doing something for nothing. Even today, with the prevalence of the perverse attitudes ingrained by capitalism, people do a tremendous amount of work without receiving any money. The satisfaction gained by millions of people from the often back-breaking work of gardening, in many cases, simply to create a colourful display of flowers, is one of hundreds of possible examples.

Buried somewhere deep in the muddle-minds of the money-incentive school is the vague suspicion that work, as employment, lacks any satisfaction and sense of achievement. People only do it because they have to. Perhaps what they are really trying to say is that they can’t imagine any mentally healthy person doing many of the jobs done today, unless made to. Capitalism engenders many such tasks. Jobs that are monotonous, unfulfilling or socially destructive: we might instance banking, insurance, munitions-making and thinking-up fairy stories for TV commercials—there are many more. Work under capitalism means employment, working for wages. Work has lost much of its pleasure for most people. The idea of work (as employment) is not to produce clothing, food or furniture, but to obtain money. Surely this relegation of usefulness and the elevation of money to the supreme position in society, far from being a reason for the universal acclamation of money, is the strongest ground for condemning capitalism.

Very early in his life Marx understood and wrote about human alienation. Marx was a great admirer of the works of Shakespeare, and in 1844 he wrote an appreciation of Shakespeare’s grasp of the nature of money. Marx quotes from Timon of Athens:

Gold ! yellow, glittering, precious gold ! No gods,

I am no idle votarist: roots, you clear heavens !

Thus much of this will make black white; foul fair; 

Wrong right; base noble; old young; coward valiant. 

. . . Why, this

Will lug priests and servants from your sides;

Pluck stout men’s pillows from behind their head;

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accursed;

Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves,

And give them title, knee and approbation 

With senators on the bench: this is it T

hat makes the wappen’d widow wed again;

She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 

To the April day again. Come, damned earth.

Thou common whore of mankind, that putt’st odds 

Among the rout of nations . . .

Image or Reality ?

Marx’s essay, where he also quotes from Goethe’s Faust, runs to five pages. Space prevents reproduction in full. It is a stirring piece of writing. A short excerpt might prompt another look at capitalism by some of those who too readily swallow its sales talk.

I am an evil, dishonest, unscrupulous, dull-witted man, but money is held in honour — hence so is its possessor. Money is the highest good, hence its possessor is good: money saves me the trouble of being dishonest, so I am assumed to be honest. I am dull-witted, but since money is the real spirit of all things, how can its possessor be lacking in spirit? More-over, he can buy the cleverest people; and if a man has power over the clever-minded, is he not cleverer than they? I who, through money, can do anything the human heart desires — do I not possess all human virtues? Does not my money therefore transform all my inabilities into their opposite?

Capitalism has the deceptive knack of turning things into their opposites. The imaginary has thus become the greatest reality. Man’s power does not derive from money. The power of money derives from man.

Socialism will end human alienation. In a world based upon common ownership, money will not exist. People will relate to each other purely as human beings. They will co-operate to produce life’s requirements and freely use or consume what they need. Under capitalism, need can only manifest itself through money; capitalism presumes that where money is lacking, no need exists.

Harry Baldwin

What is this money thing? (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Below is a report of how members of a society which had evolved beyond primitive communism but still retained some of its features and attitudes reacted to their first contact with the money economy.

The Treatment and Customs of the Governor’s House at Botany Bay as told by Tongan Chief Páloo Máta Moinga and his Wife, Fataféhi to Finow King of Tonga and Chief Filimóëátoo. Recorded by William Mariner, Resident of the Islands for 4 years, to John Martin M.D. Author of “The Natives of Tongan Islands”. Published 1818:

“The first thing he and his wife had to do, when they arrived at the Governor’s House, where they went to reside, was to sweep out a large court yard, and clean down a great pair of stairs; in vain they endeavoured to explain, that in their own country they were chiefs, and, being accustomed to be waited on, were quite unused to such employments: their expostulations were taken no notice of, and work they must, at first their life was so uncomfortable, that they wished to die; no one seemed to protect them; all the houses were shut against them; if they saw anybody eating, they were not invited to partake: nothing was to be got without money, of which they could not comprehend the value, nor how this same money was to be obtained in any quantity; if they asked for it nobody would give them any, unless they worked for it, and then it was so small in quantity, that they could not get one-tenth part of what they wanted with it.

One day, whilst sauntering about, the chief fixed his eyes upon the cook’s shop, and, seeing several people enter, and others again, coming out with victuals, he made sure they were sharing out food, according to the old Tongan fashion, and in he went, glad enough of the occasion, expecting to get some pork; after waiting sometime, with anxiety to be helped to his share, the master of the shop asked him what he wanted, and, being answered in an unknown language straightaway kicked him out taking him for a thief, that only wanted an opportunity to steal.

Thus, he said even being a chief did not prevent him being used ill for when he told them he was a chief, they gave him to understand, that money made a man a chief, after a time, however, he acknowledged that he got better used in proportion as he became acquainted with the customs and language, he expressed his astonishment at the perseverance with which white people worked from morning till night, to get money: he could not conceive how they were able to endure so much labour.

After having heard this account, Finow asked several questions regarding the nature of money: what is it made of?—is it like iron? can it be fashioned like iron into various useful instruments? If not why cannot people procure what they want in the way of barter?—but where is money to be got?—if it be made, then every man ought to spend his time in making money; that when he got plenty, he may be able afterwards to obtain whatever else he wants.

In answer to the last observation, Mr Mariner replied that the material of which money was made was very scarce and difficult to be got, and that only chiefs and great men could procure readily a large quantity of it; and this either by being inheritors of plantations or houses, which they allowed others to have, for paying so much tribute in money every year; or by their public services; or by paying small sums of money for things when they were in plenty, and afterwards letting others have them for larger sums, when they were scarce: and as to the lower classes of people they worked hard, and got paid by their employers in small quantities of money, as the reward for their labour: &c. That the King was the only person that was allowed to make (to coin) money, and that he put his mark upon all that he made, that it might known to be true; that no person could readily procure the material of which it was made, without paying money for it; and if contrary to the taboo of the King, he turned this material into money, he would scarcely have made as much as he had given for it.

Mr Mariner was then going on to shew the conveniences of money as a medium of exchange, when Filimóëátoo interrupted him, saying to Finow, I understand how it is:- money is less cumbersome than goods, and it is very convenient for a man to exchange away his goods for money; which, at any other time he can exchange again for the same or other goods that he may want; whereas the goods themselves may perhaps spoil by keeping (particularly if provisions) but the money he supposed would not spoil; and although it was of no true value itself, yet being scarce and difficult to be got without giving something useful and really valuable for it, it was imagined to be of value; and if everybody considered it so, and would readily give their goods for it, he did not see but what it was a sort of real value to all who possessed it, as long as their neighbours chose to take it in the same way. Mr Mariner found he could not give a better explanation, he therefore told Filimóëátoo that his notion of the nature of money was a just one.

After a pause of some length, Finow replied that the explanation did not satisfy him. He still thought it a foolish thing that people should place a value on money, when they either could not or would not apply it to any useful (physical) purpose: if, said he it were made of iron, and could be converted into knives, axes, and chisels, there would be some sense in placing a value on it; but as it is I see none: if man he added, has more yams than he wants, let him exchange some of them away for pork or gnatoo (cloth); certainly money is much handier, and more convenient, but then as it will not spoil by being kept, people will store it up, instead of sharing it out, as a chief ought to do, and thus become selfish; whereas, if provision were the principal property of a man, and it ought to be, as being both the most useful and the most necessary, he could not store it up, for it would spoil, and so he would be obliged to either exchange it away for something else useful, or share it out with his neighbours, and inferior chiefs and dependants for nothing. He concluded by saying ‘I understand now very well what it is that makes the Papalangis (Europeans) so selfish; it is the money!’ When Mr Mariner informed Finow that dollars were money, he was greatly surprised, having always taken them for Páänga (a kind of bear used in one of their games, they supposed dollars to be used among us for a similar purpose), and things of little value; and he was exceedingly sorry he had not secured all the dollars out of the ship Port au Prince before he had ordered her to be burnt: I had always thought said he, that your ship belonged to some poor fellow, perhaps King George’s cook (at these islands a cook is considered one of the lowest of mankind in point of rank); for Captain Cook’s ship which belonged to the King, had plenty of beads, axes, and looking glasses on board, whilst yours had nothing but iron hoops, oil, skins and twelve thousand Páänga as I thought: but if every one of these was money, your ship must have belonged to a very great chief indeed.”

Cooking the Books: Digital pound, what’s that? (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘New deputy governor will oversee project to mint digital pound’, was how the Times (2 August) reported the appointment of Sarah Breeden as a deputy governor of the Bank of England. Here’s the Bank’s description of what is envisaged:

‘The digital pound would be a new type of money issued by the Bank of England for everyone to use for day-to-day spending. You would be able to use it in-store or online to make payments. This type of money is known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC). […] The digital pound would be denominated in sterling and its value would be stable, just like banknotes. £10 in digital pounds would always have the same value as a £10 banknote. […] The digital pound would be like an electronic version of the banknotes issued by the Bank of England. […] The way that you would access digital pounds would be through a digital wallet that would be provided by a private company’ (Digital Pound ).

The press statement issued by the Treasury and the Bank in February announcing a consultation on the subject explained that the Bank would provide the infrastructure in the form of a ‘core ledger’; the private companies would offer people digital wallets through smartphones or smart cards (tinyurl.com/4nkjxvpt).

Money, as Marx pointed out in section 4 of chapter 1 of Capital on ‘The Fetishism of Commodities’, is not a physical thing but the expression of a social relation. He wrote of ‘a definite social relation between men that assumes… the fantastic form of a relation between things’. The relation between people he had in mind was between producers of different articles for sale who could only be brought into relation with each other via the market, which required a means of exchange. Today this includes the relation between buyers and sellers of labour power.

The physical thing in which this social relation is expressed can, and has, varied. In pre-capitalist times it had been, among other things, cows and cowrie shells but historically the most important form that money has taken has been the precious metals gold and silver. However, even these haven’t expressed money for many years now, having been replaced by intrinsically valueless paper notes and cheap metal coins issued by the state. We are currently in a period where these are being increasingly replaced by a computer code. The coming of central bank digital money would complete this change in the form (though not the substance) of money.

You can see the logic, from a capitalist point of view, of doing something like this. Payments these days are increasingly made electronically anyway, by transfers to and between banks. However, the ‘libertarian’ right are up in arms about it. Soon after the government’s announcement Nigel Farage tweeted on 7 February: ‘Central Bank Digital Currencies will give the state total control over our lives. This must be resisted’. In the recent by-elections, the Reform Party, the successor to the Brexit Party, promised to ‘oppose a cashless society and central bank digital currency’ while Piers Corbyn shouted ‘KEEP CASH!’ Yet another conspiracy theory.

The government is saying that the new form of money would not replace cash but that notes and coins would continue to be issued. What it would replace is bank transfers. Which would make it even clearer that banks only circulate money. They don’t create it. Only a central bank like the Bank of England can do that.

The socialist retort to Piers Corbyn might be ‘Smash Cash’, or, rather, change the social relation of which money is an expression by making productive resources commonly owned and democratically controlled. Money would then vanish into thin air.

What concerns you? (2023)

From the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is a society obsessed with ‘growth’, which had a practical economic purpose at the close of the Middle Ages, but which today can be destructively anachronistic, and since it threatens the future of ourselves and of all fellow beings on Earth, it is understandable that there should be concern. Even if most are not aware that capitalism is the root cause today of ecological and biological destruction and endangerment, the concern of so many involved in activism of this or that kind is proof in itself that the myth of inherent human evil is nonsense. The trouble is that vast majority are imbued with a sense of helplessness.

People are appalled by famine, by poverty, by war, by pollution, by rampant curable disease, by violence of every kind, by the holocaust against fellow animals. Charities prosper as a result, as good people throw money at the situation — which in the end resolves nothing. Most who give money to charity too are imbued with passivity, hoping ‘leaders’ or ‘experts’ will do what needs to be done, and not knowing what that is. Such is the fear of taking destiny into one`s hands — while a capitalist ideology of ‘selfishness’, though disproven by the average person`s generosity in giving, has convinced them that co-operation to get something achieved is out of the question. ‘Other people don`t care; only me; and I can`t do anything about it.’

What concerns this or that person most?

Pollution and ecological catastrophe? The accumulation of capital is the priority of capitalism. To survive in the capitalist marketplace costs must be cut and profits maximised. Promises and projects to check global destruction are up against capitalism’s main goal. You want to end destruction whilst keeping intact a system which necessitates destruction and cannot do otherwise? Capitalism is by definition a system of growth — and can no more stop growing than a malignant tumour can.

Famine? Famine is as unavoidable under capitalism as it is solvable by world socialism. In a world which can easily feed the entire population many times over, the capitalists are obliged to burn tons of food they cannot sell — leaving millions to starve amid abundance.

War? You want to end war but keep the system which produces modern war intact? Built into capitalism is a competitive struggle between rival capitalists and states supporting them over markets, mineral resources, trade routes, investment outlets, and strategic areas to protect these. Capitalism rules the capitalists, not the other way around. They too would rather not be blown up, but they are constrained by their own system, from which war is inseparable.

Unemployment? Capitalism’s boom and slump cycle makes periodic unemployment necessary. The only way to be rid of unemployment is to abolish employment — ie, abolish the wages system. Produce for use, not profit, and have free access for each to their needs, with the instruments of production available to everyone.

Animal ‘rights’? The exploitation of fellow animals is just too profitable for capitalism. You want to end this exploitation but keep the system of universal exploitation intact?

Racism? Sexism? Nationalism? A humanity at war with itself is what defines a class society such as capitalism, under which the worker is alienated from their work. Alienated from one another as we are from the forces of production, we seek scapegoats, believe in myths, devour our pleasures, hate the world. You want to resolve this alienation while keeping intact the system which causes it?

The alternative

We can have socialism, with industry, with technology, with all the comforts and bounty our history has made possible. We cannot go back, but we can go forward, either sanely or insanely. The latter is sadly the case at the present time, and will remain so while we sit passively, hoping ‘they’ — our capitalist masters — will ‘do something about it.’ They cannot. But we must.

It is time for the last ruling class to be toppled and absorbed by the rest of humanity. Then will a humanity that is finally in control of its own destiny consciously make decisions for its present and future.

The individual can then finally blossom, and the human race regain its place in nature — with all our fellow beings who, together with us, live upon and represent planet Earth.

In socialism the obstacle to the fulfilling of needs – the money economy – would be gone, so no one need go without.

Without the obstacle of money, necessary work which is now hindered through lack of money could go ahead, whether it is getting people fed, giving them what they need, projects of conservation, repairing damage caused by capitalism – what today charities and other organisations struggle with because of the obstacle of money.

Bearing in mind that socialism will only come about when a majority want it, then that majority would make it work. We would not be dealing with a helpless population waiting upon ‘government’ to do things for them, as is the case today, but with an active population knowing and enjoying the fact of themselves being society and of society belonging to them all.

Within socialism production and distribution will be organised to directly to meet needs, with most people happy and wanting to fulfil themselves by contributing their abilities and strengths for the common good, with all enjoying the respect of others for what they do. The labour time involved for each in satisfying the needs of a free society would be a fraction of what it is under wage-slavery, where one is exploited to create surplus value for a minority and where one has no stake in society as a whole. That would all be gone. In the same way as today people enjoy working in their garden or on their allotment, or creating art and doing fulfilling work of all kinds, so in socialism the whole world would be your ‘garden’. All society would be your family. You wouldn’t need money because everything would be free.

There would no longer be the dichotomy of alienation that we have today, with ‘me and my family on one side of a wall, beyond which is the ugly world outside that is the rest of society.’ The social animosity that is today’s existence for most under capitalism would be gone. A majority social revolution will have been made with majority enthusiasm, participation, and consciousness of kinship. The present ‘strangers versus what is mine’ would be gone.

Capitalism has us believing if people had free access to stores there would be a mad free-for-all brawl, with people madly grabbing loads of stuff they don’t need, stuffing themselves with food until they are throwing up, charging into houses to grab everything from each other, and ending up at each others’ throats. This is the myth put out by our rulers that, without them to hold us in check, we are all ravenous imbeciles. Then, how to explain all the co-operative voluntary work that people do even today?

With technology likewise emancipated, global needs can be fulfilled as well as regional ones, with regional ‘councils’ of people co-operating to meet needs over distances, getting together to enact projects, and – with technology freed from monetary restraints – even explorations beyond this planet.

A. W.

The Curse of Money (1998)

Book Review from the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

An important new book presents a powerful critique of money. Everything money touches acquires a price tag. That’s the problem.

Many people see money simply as a useful tool to facilitate the exchange of goods giving people a wider choice of things to consume. There is an element of truth in this. Without coins, and nowadays bank accounts and cheque books and credit cards, exchange at existing levels would be impossible, and wage and salary earners are better off being paid in money than in kind as it means that they, not their employer or the government, can decide what to consume (within the limits of their pay cheque, of course).

But this is only one side of the story. The other side is told by James Buchan in Frozen Desire. An Inquiry into the Meaning of Money (Picador). This is a history of money but one written not so much from an economic as from a cultural point of view. It records money’s role not just as a technical means of exchange but also the effect it has had on social relationships between humans. This is not to say that Buchan hasn’t got a grasp of economics. He has (at one time he worked for the Financial Times) but this is supplemented by a wide knowledge of literature and art on which he draws to illustrate his points.

For Buchan, money is the “frozen desire” of the title of the book. Before money existed people satisfied their everyday concrete needs (meals, clothes, a roof over their head) directly by concrete means, by themselves working or by sharing the fruits of the work of the other members of their community. With money this changes. Because money is a universal equivalent—something that can be spent on anything—the needs of its owners cease to be concrete and limited and become abstract and limitless.

A money-owner’s desires are no longer limited to what they can personally consume but only by the amount of money they possess. The more money they possess the greater their “needs” and, since there is no theoretical limit to the amount of money they can own, there is also no limit to their needs or, more accurately, to their “desires”. Put another way, people come to desire more than they reasonably need or consume. However, although there are no theoretical limits to the amount of money a person can own there are severe practical limits to what most people can. So, with money, most people are going to be constantly and permanently dissatisfied, and they are generally, without hope of relief.

Money, says Buchan, as the means to satisfy the unlimited desire which it generates, can itself be seen as a part of that desire but in concrete form, as “congealed” or “frozen” or “incarnate” desire. Although money does give people a wider variety of choice, it is only a choice of things that have a price tag on them and so doesn’t—in fact can’t—include non-monetary considerations such as friendships, relationships, sense of belonging to a community, artistic values and other non-material satisfactions. In fact, the choice of these things, which most people value higher than material things, is diminished since they don’t count in a monetary economy which either makes them disappear or else devalues them by trying to pin a price tag on them.

Cuckoo in the nest

Money is a social relation. It links together people and their work, but, says Buchan, it’s an insidious social relation. Once introduced into society it tends to spread and undermine and ultimately dissolve all other social relationships. As he puts it, “money enters the system of values, and then displaces all other values like a cuckoo in a nest”. At first this freeing of people from all obligations towards other people except monetary ones was a liberating process: serfs and workers were freed from dependence on feudal and religious hierarchies; women’s dependence on men was reduced; discriminations other than those based on how much money you have began to die out.

But the process doesn’t stop there. It has continued and tends to dissolve all non-economic relations between humans not just hierarchical and discriminatory ones. It leads to everything coming to have a monetary price and to everything being judged in monetary terms. The process is not yet quite complete but it gets nearer and nearer to completion all the time. For instance, in recent years we’ve seen the idea progress that the victims of atrocities, crimes and accidents can be “compensated” for their suffering by monetary awards. It is obvious that money can’t really relieve their past and present suffering but it is becoming more and more acceptable, even to the victims themselves, that a money payment can somehow compensate, for instance, the surviving Jewish victims of Nazism, former British prisoners of war in Japan or the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

Thatcher once notoriously said that society didn’t exist, only individuals and families did. As a description of the situation under capitalism it was accurate enough and is still true today to a large extent, but money is exerting pressure to dissolve the family too so that all that will be left in the end will be competing individuals whose only links with each other will be monetary. Buchan foresees the day when relations between the sexes to reproduce the species will be on a purely monetary basis: men will openly pay women to have their children and women will openly pay men to be the fathers of theirs. The signs are already there in surrogate mothers, divorce settlements and the philosophy and activities of the Child Support Agency.

Economics, says Buchan in a criticism of that old hypocrite Adam Smith (who preached free trade but took a job as a customs officer), instead of recoiling in horror from the prospect of all relations between people being reduced to monetary ones, positively welcomes this, indeed proclaims and preaches it, arguing that the pursuit of short-term monetary gain by individuals is the most efficient way to organise the production and distribution of wealth. This leads, Buchan says, not only to all social relationships being poisoned but to nature being raped. “For that is the end of economics: the world reduced to a scorching slum, its women to whores, its men to murderers”. Poetic licence perhaps, but who can deny that this is the direction the world is heading?

Unfit for humans

This understanding, Buchan points out, was the great contribution of the Romantics, the name given to those 18th and 19th century poets, artists and writers who objected to the rise of industrial capitalism and its utilitarian and money values:

“The Romantics reminded us of the evil of money: how the habit of calculating and making comparisons in money diminishes much that is strange and precious in creation, indeed abolishes quality itself as a mental category by which to understand reality; displaces trust in people by trust in money, and thus poisons the relations between human beings and atomises society; and submerges being in possessing”.

“These contradictions lie at the heart of the great sadness of our civilisation: that by using money, we convert our world into it. Humanity is . . . estranged by money from its natural habitat, without any hope of appeal. We are also . . . estranged by money from one another. It is this sense of a community of people atomised by money where all human relations are disrupted by money, that is the second great Romantic legacy to our age”.

In a chapter on Marx entitled “Death in Dean Street” Buchan, basing himself on Marx’s writings from 1843 and 1844, classifies Marx as being in the Romantic tradition because his objection to money and capitalism was not merely that it wasn’t an efficient economic system in terms of satisfying the material needs of the majority but that “a social system that evaluated men and women in terms of money and made morality a function of credit was unworthy of the human being”. This was why, explains Buchan, Marx’s utopia was “an ideal society without money”.

At the end of the final chapter (“Money: A Valediction”) Buchan hints that this is his utopia too. He doesn’t see why resources need to be distributed amongst separate owners and suggests that the unowned parts of nature pass “into communal ownership, which is no ownership at all” , and writes:

“I know you are weary of communism, of the lullaby of Calvary and Dean Street, but it will be heard as long as there is money; like the Sibyl’s books, it is offered to every age, and always at a higher price in money. To reject it is to persist in a delusion so complete that human beings exult in their irreparable losses; and like Hazlitt’s misers, ‘are not sorry when they die, to think they shall no longer be an expense to themselves'”.

Adam Buick

Sound Currency or No Currency (1958)

From the February 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The above title might read a bit “haywire” to the stockbrokers of Throgmorton or Wall Streets, but if such is the case, this is merely because their vision is limited to that of a buying and selling, production for profit system of society. A world of banks and bombs, courts and prisons, parsons and prostitutes, “Official Receivers' and un-official “receivers,” Merchant-Brokers and broke “merchants”; flood-lit palaces and gas-lit bad alleys, nuclear “progress” on one hand and National Assistance Boards on the other, plus all the rest of the paraphernalia of this “sorry scheme of things.” 

Anything outside this crazy world of Capitalism is —to the upholders of that social system—a “flight of fancy.”

A recent account by Tom Stacey (Daily Express) describes a fund formed in America, with donations of the “Almighty Dollar” already flowing in, to complete a sum to present to—Guess Who ?—“Our first visitor from outside space.” This is a classical example of bourgeois mentality. For them it is a foregone conclusion that “filthy lucre" could not fail to be held in esteem by any possible inhabitants of the whole vast Cosmos!

Such reasoning is of course fallacious. Social systems change in relation to changes in the mode of production and distribution. There can be no eternal Capitalism any more than there could have been an eternal Feudalism. The “Embryo” of Socialism has long existed within the aging Capitalism in the form of social production and distribution by the working class in the complicated arrangements required by world markets. It needs but the "midwife" of Socialist knowledge on the part of the working class to complete the “delivery" of the new society. A society wherein the beloved “currency” of the stockbrokers and their ilk will find its historic place as an exhibit in the museums.

This is an historic possibility overlooked by such writers as Frederick Ellis, Daily Express financial columnist, who, having his own ideas on what is “good for us all ” offers the following advice in his contribution towards the (doubtful) benefit of suffering humanity:—

   “A strong £ is essential to the welfare of the nation—as, a whole. Monkey about with the £ and you monkey about with Britain’s living standards. The bold and politically courageous moves of the Government, unpopular as they may be, are essential for a sound currency, and a sound currency is good for us all."—(Sunday Express, 3/10/57.)

This statement is typical of the general “run" of these writers who speak for King Capital. In their view, society is made up of nations within whose boundaries exists a total population with identical interests— “happy family” wherein strikes official or unofficial are “bad for us all”; for ever and anon, more work and higher production are “good for us all” with the “Almighty Dollar" as an eternal basis for their financial juggling.

In the first place we take it for granted that Mr. Ellis includes the working class when he talks about the “nation as a whole.” After all where would the “Nation” be without them ! As regards ”monkeying about with the £ and Britain’s living standards”—this advice is rather belated in view of the fact that various Governments since the turn of the Century have been performing tricks in this field, otherwise how explain the vast reduction in volume of commodities bought by the 1957 £ as against its 1900 counterpart? Then again what is Mr. Ellis' basis for a “living standard”? Is it the “Plimsol line” of the old age pensioners “ standard” or perhaps the “standard" of the habitues of the Dorchester. We have to quote these two extremes because Mr. Ellis is himself continually concerned about what is “good for us all.”

The standard of living of the working class in Britain as elsewhere, is determined by the fact that they are a wage-slave class, dependent on the sale of their bodily energy (labour-power), which precludes their participation in the luxury standard of their masters— the Capitalist ruling class. So long as the working class support politically this state of affairs, their living standard will remain what it is today—A MEAN AND SHODDY EXISTENCE IN RELATION TO THE WEALTH THEY SOCIALLY PRODUCE BUT DO NOT OWN.

To sum up—in a class-divided society like Capitalism, wherein the Capitalist owning class buy the labour-power of the working class at its market value, whether they pay for it with a “strong” £ or a “weak one” (to use their own lingo) makes no difference to the working class.

Furthermore, the Capitalist Class buy this labour power of the working class, not from any benevolent motives, but because of its potentiality for producing a value over and above its cost in wages, i.e., for profit The relationship therefore in this transaction is that of exploiter and exploited; rather an unsound basis, to say file least for Mr. Ellis' “sound currency” social theories.

Fortunately we are not depending on the confused theories "of financial “experts” to get us out of the social morass of Capitalism. As Socialists we stand for the abolition of the wages system with its “currency madhouse” or “Sound Pounds,” “Almighty Dollars," State Roubles, Widows' Mites and Pensioners Pittances.

To replace it—something that will be good for us all—Socialism

G. R. Russell.

Capitalist Money Madness (2010)

From the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is basically a big scam that benefits a few at the expense of the many.

Read any newspaper, listen to any radio bulletin, watch any TV news broadcast, and there will be some instance of Capitalist Money Madness – detrimental, shocking or unbelievable thinking and behaviour influenced by money. Trains have been derailed because saving money came before rigorous track maintenance; cows have been ground up and fed to other cows in pursuit of greater profits; companies have been allowed to patent thousands of our own genes in a commodification of humankind’s DNA; there has been widespread use of toxic chemicals in fuel, household furnishings, deodorants, plastics used for food storage etc resulting in an increase in previously rare cancers and an asthma epidemic in children; and more recently, global capitalism has descended into economic chaos which will cause additional untold misery for decades to come. Along with such ‘big’ news stories, there is a never-ending news stream of robberies, burglaries, murders, muggings, scams and scandals involving money in some way or other.

Nothing new, of course. Money has been causing misery and deaths ever since its introduction thousands of years ago. Some time around 30 A.D. a Mr J. Iscariot betrayed a subversive called Jeshua of Nazareth for thirty pieces of silver, whereas more recently, a Mr T. Blair betrayed those who elected him so a huge fortune could be made by American and British companies from oil in Iraq. Times and economies may change, but money systems of assorted ruling classes have been ceaselessly causing despair and taking lives ever since a medium of exchange was first established.

Today, money is an indispensable part of the capitalist system, but capitalism is merely the most recent economic system where a tiny minority own and control the vital resources that provide food, fuel, transportation, clothing etc which humankind needs. These “means of production and distribution” have increased over the millennia from ‘simply’ farmland, livestock, woodland, gold mines etc to include mass-producing industrial factories, oil fields, power stations, rail networks etc. Because all of these resources are owned by a tiny proportion of the human race who want to exploit them for profit, they therefore make everyone pay for all of the commodities that these productive and distributive resources provide. If you want a pair of shoes, electricity, clean water, a train journey, a tin of beans or whatever, you have to hand over money. Many people (but by no means all) are able to buy goods and services that they need, because the capitalist system also compels those who are fit and able to work for capitalist employers in return for a wage or salary. Of course, the monetary amount paid to these employees is usually far smaller than the monetary value of the work they carry out, which is how the capitalist minority make their fat profits and get to enjoy far superior living standards. In this respect, capitalism is basically a big scam that benefits a few at the expense of the many.

As money is essential under today’s system, and due to it being rationed and restricted according to how much the ruling class and the economy are prepared or able to give to employees, the unemployed, the retired and others, the capitalist society has a great number of people who cannot readily obtain what they need. And because of this, all manner of needless misery, suffering and loss of life is caused. Elderly folk die from the cold every winter because they can’t afford or are afraid to heat their homes; those unable to obtain work or with inadequate incomes have to subject themselves to degrading bureaucratic procedures and rules; relationships are put under severe strain or ended by debts or work pressures; our doormats, email inboxes, phones, TV screens and websites we visit are inundated with junk that capitalists want to sell us. It really doesn’t have to be this way.

Although we now have a reasonably productive society after a few thousand years of minority ownership of vital resources and money, it was never the minority or money that brought us to where we are. It was those doing the work – not those giving the orders and taking most of the profit. A civilised society in which people’s needs are routinely met absolutely does not need money to function: only trade needs money to function. Human beings do not need money and trade to operate combine harvesters, to run power stations, to build houses, to drive delivery trucks, to carry out surgical operations, and do all the other necessary work. We only need to be willing to carry out these jobs with the objective of contributing directly to society as a whole, thereby obtaining a better way of living and working than exists under capitalism, instead of believing the lie that we can only carry out these jobs if we are paid to do so.

We are perfectly capable of working for ourselves, and producing goods and services for direct use by whoever requires them. A new system where, when you need, say, various food items, a couple of cartons of orange juice and a new radio to replace one you dropped and broke, you go to the nearest ’shop’ or ‘superstore’, take them off the shelves, and leave. No queuing at a checkout. No handing over money or a bank or credit card. You just take what you need and leave with it.

Furthermore, even though today’s capitalism is quite productive, it is by no means as productive and efficient as the new moneyless real socialist economy which now needs to replace it. More than half of all work carried out under capitalism is fundamentally useless as far as satisfying human needs goes. Millions of people in Britain are kept occupied in money-related drudgery (banking, retailing, manufacturing of money and credit cards, insurance, taxation, welfare payments, debt recovery etc), kept busy dealing with societal problems and crimes caused by capitalism (social workers, lawyers, police, prison officers etc) and kept engaged in so-called ‘defence’ activities to protect and advance the ruling class’s interests (armed forces, weapons research and manufacturing, intelligence agencies etc). Not forgetting the millions of unemployed people capable of working, but unwanted because capitalists can’t make a profit from them, and because they also serve an obscenely useful purpose in the capitalist economy by keeping wages down (bosses find it hard to resist demands for higher wages if there is no mass of job seekers to replace troublesome employees wanting more).

All of this represents a vast waste of human labour and resources. When all of these people and materials are freed up by capitalism’s replacement with moneyless real socialism, there will be no obstacle to producing sufficient goods and services to meet real needs on the basis of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. That is, each person works according to how much they choose to contribute, and freely takes whatever they themselves decide they need. And with all of these extra people available to contribute something useful to this new society, the average working week will be far shorter than it is under capitalism.

When people first hear of this new radically different society, with all work being voluntary, and free access to whatever we need, most immediately view this as bizarre and impossible. Unsurprising, given that we have spent our entire lives being brainwashed and conditioned by schools, politicians, employers, the media etc into swallowing capitalism’s propaganda that this is the natural way of things. Sadly, we are also mainly influenced into accepting the capitalist employment-wages-money-buying status quo by our own parents. Which is why capitalism is so utterly vile; perpetuating itself by getting the preceding generation of indoctrinated victims to raise the following generation to become victims themselves.

Fortunately, for those who can get beyond the initial shock of first hearing about moneyless real socialism, by simply comparing what both the present and new system offer the majority of us, it should be downright obvious that increasingly-damaging outdated capitalism must be scrapped and replaced with the real socialist alternative. In most parts of the world, the majority have won the right to vote for who they want to lead them. We can use that opportunity to vote to be led by no one person or minority ruling class, and choose instead to vote for a genuine democracy where the people themselves rule and decide what happens. New socialist moneyless co-operation, or more endless capitalist money madness?

Max Hess

Getting nastier (2001)

Book Review from the May 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Age of Access: the New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid-for Experience’. By Jeremy Rifkin, (Penguin-Putnam, 2000, New York)

Rifkin is a writer, teacher, president of the Washington Foundation on Economic Trends, and has the reputation of being a trenchant critic of capitalism. The reputation is undeserved. He reports many unsavoury features of capitalism much as any capitalism-compliant journalist reports a natural disaster or an accident. He clearly has his preferences for, and aversions to, different types of capitalism, but he nowhere expresses any opposition to it as a system.

Rifkin’s main theme, briefly, is that markets are giving way to networking, sellers and buyers are replaced by suppliers and users and virtually everything is accessed at a price. Spelling this out, he writes:

  “We are making a long-term shift from industrial production to cultural production . . . commerce in the future will involve the marketing of a vast array of cultural experiences rather than of just traditional industrial-based goods and services. Global travel and tourism, theme events and parks, destination events and centers, wellness, fashion and cuisine, professional sports and games, gambling, music, films, television, the virtual worlds of cyberspace and electronically mediated entertainment of every kind are fast becoming the center of a new hypercapitalism that trades in access to cultural experiences.”

Much of this isn’t new. Rifkin spends a good deal of his book quoting the findings of others detailing the trends. But, like most reformers, he makes a show of seeking to set limits to the penetration of capitalism into every nook and cranny of our lives. He does this by inviting us to envisage what will happen if we don’t “imagine a world where virtually every activity outside the confines of family relations is a paid-for experience”. The way capitalism is going, this doesn’t take a lot of imagination because in many ways it’s already here.

Rifkin piles on the flesh-creeping pressure a bit more. “Think of waking up one day only to find that every aspect of your being has become a purchased affair, that your life has become the ultimate shopping experience.” Again, we don’t have to think too hard. Examples are all around us-thus a “common-interest development” (gated community) in South Carolina charges non-members $3 for the right to walk on its streets.

With all the chapter and verse of a nasty system that is getting even nastier, Rifkin could have outlined a plan for something fundamentally better. But he doesn’t. He anticipates an Age of (paid-for) Access which in many ways is already here. Socialists look forward to the Age of Free Access, which unfortunately isn’t here, but could be if enough of us resolved to work for it.

Stan Parker

Pathfinders: Round in circles (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the May 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Round in circles

Ever since a gaggle of mushroom-intoxicated neolithics first got the idea of piling a big flat stone on top of two uprights people have been having creative ideas about the living spaces of the future. Over the length of social history living spaces have evolved, from medieval all-purpose pens containing bed, hearth, toilet, animals, humans, rats and plague, to the Victorian taxonomic mania for cataloguing and categorising, putting every human function from snoring to shitting to snooker in its own walled chamber. Now things are changing again as central heating and double glazing, as well as a pressure of space and cost, drive a return to more open-plan knock-throughs and multipurpose domestic environments (‘The Story of Our Rooms’, BBC Online, 12 April).

With the high priority now being placed on low-carbon living and low-impact building methods and materials, science is increasingly being designed into planning models. As old structures age and have to be replaced anyway, what if – say the scientists – whole cities could be redesigned to factor in all the known elements necessary to make them virtually self-sustainable?

If one were really to rebuild whole cities from scratch, imagine the energy savings. A city like Los Angeles, a chaotic urban mega-sprawl, is a huge energy sink which forces most people to drive miles to their nearest supermarket, and even more miles to work. Rational planning might have optimised all utilities and transport networks into the very crown joules of ergonomic design. And big cities have their own form of economy of scale, with smaller environmental footprints and higher standard of living per capita than small ones. If one were to pull them down and start again, one could build modular urban centres that were carbon-efficient, pedestrian-friendly, accessible and navigable.

Some planners promote designs for just this (New Scientist, 26 March). Zeitgeist’s Venus Project is another, 3D rendered attempt. The trouble is, even on the page these symmetrical designs look soul-destroying, like laboratory mazes for lobotomised rats. It’s no wonder many Zeitgeist supporters are reportedly in two minds about the idea of self-sufficient circular cities. Somewhere in the debate about efficiency the human element gets left out. What is beautiful about old cities is their riotous and labyrinthine irregularity, forced on them by the constraints of city walls and overbuilding, as well as their elaborate and artistic but ‘inefficient’ construction. The more planned a cityscape is, the more dreary it tends to look and the worse it is to live in. Well-meaning but paternalistic experiments in 1950s urban planning gave rise in the UK to the horrors of high-rises and disaffected concrete council estates, with all their attendant social problems, as Lynsey Hanley documents in her entertaining book Estates: An Intimate History (Granta, 2007).

Could planners ever plan efficiency to look like Venice or Rouen or York? Does the future always have to look like a plastic Thunderbirds set? Nowadays there is the potential of wiki-citizenry to offer collective input so as to avoid planners imposing antiseptic structures on our aesthetic sensibilities. But this just might mean a committee-designed camel instead of a geek-planned horse. Sometimes there is something human and endearing about organic inefficiency. In socialism there will no doubt be plenty of people calling for large-scale ‘social engineering’ projects. Let this be the first salvo fired in opposition to such notions.

A Poor Motivator

Interestingly, given all the hoo-ha about ‘obscene’ bankers’ bonuses, not many ever question the apparently self-evident truism that money is a great motivator. Socialists have always gone against the commonly received wisdom by claiming that, conversely, money is actually a poor motivator and in many cases no motivator at all. As evidence we cite the voluntary sector, so large that it is known as the ‘third sector’ of the economy, but then we might be biased given that we propose a social system composed entirely of volunteers. Support however comes from studies which suggest that not only are external motivators like money decoupled from internal ones like interest, commitment or curiosity, they may indeed be inversely related, so that an excess of one can lead to a deficiency in the other (New Scientist, 9 April). It is perhaps surprising and counter-intuitive to learn that financial rewards actually reduce the incentive to work hard, but “the facts are absolutely clear”, says one long-time researcher. “In virtually all circumstances in which people are doing things in order to get rewards, extrinsic tangible rewards undermine intrinsic motivation”. Next time you hear some know-nothing blather on about how money drives progress, you might point out that the science says otherwise. People are not spurred on by money, they are simply whipped on by fear of poverty.

Capitalist Priorities 

‘Owing to unfavourable economic conditions the search for the ultimate explanation of life, the universe and everything has been suspended.’ Perhaps this is pitching it a bit strong, but with the Large Hadron Collider due to close for a year for extensive repairs you would have thought that this was precisely not the time to be shutting down its nearest and dearest rival, the Fermilab Tevatron. The Tevatron, named because it can accelerate protons up to energies approaching a trillion electron volts or 1 TeV, is supposedly obsolete now because the LHC can manage energies up to 7 TeV. Of course that’s in theory. In reality the LHC has only once reached half this energy, has already broken down twice and now is due for another extended pit-stop. Most notably, of course, it hasn’t found anything, unlike the Tevatron which last month announced the discovery, to within 3 orders of certainty, of a new particle that may be evidence of a ‘fifth force’ of nature (‘Tevatron accelerator yields hints of new particle’, BBC Online, 7 April). Meanwhile the famous Higgs, as well as mythical dark matter ‘neutralinos’ could be lurking out there in any eV range, so even with two colliders operating it would be like two explorerers searching for penguins, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the south. Keeping the Tevatron going would cost a measly $35m – peanuts by their standards – and there’s no engineering problem, but the beancounters have given it the thumbs down. Any socialist comment on capitalist priorities at this point would be as redundant as a Chicago physicist.

Paddy Shannon

The museum piece (1998)

A Short Story from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let’s let Mr Money retire from the management of our mode of survival and find shelter in a museum niche to rest beside flint stone hammers, anvils and bronze axes. Visitors might then like to stop a while in front of the niche, ponder over the antique family accommodated therein and discover Mr Money among them; but this time with a difference. For the old, Mr Money might still rouse great reminiscences, but for the young merely an inquisitiveness about an odd article, now stripped of any individuality.

Our kids would surely be much amused to observe the currency note with printing on the paper and ask “What’s that, mummy?”, “Papa, what is it?” and we “papas” and “mummies” would be prompt enough with our ready knowledge: “That was money.”

“Well, what was money?” our kids would wonder.

“Money was what money did.”

“What did it do?”

We should then recite what we had to memorise by rote from the lecture-notes of, and texts written by, our revered professors in the lately-dead economics departments of universities–“Money had four functions: exchange, measure, payment, store.”

“Exchange? Peculiar.” “What did it mean?”

“Buying and selling.”

“And, what was it that buying and selling stood for?”

“You see, in actual fact, functions do not define a thing; they only describe its form; but it has also its content which has to be sought in its source. The source of money was exchange-value that expressed value that stood for the social labour necessary to produce something useful. Exchange, or to sell to buy, so to say, was engendered by private property relations. You couldn’t sell what wasn’t exclusively yours; you couldn’t buy what was exclusively yours. Money couldn’t be eaten; money couldn’t be worn. You couldn’t use money to build houses. Money did not lay and hatch eggs, or bear fruits, or produce young. You couldn’t sow money and reap a harvest. Nothing useful could be produced merely by laying and sowing money. Money did not even produce money.”

“Why was it necessary, then?”

“Because there was a social alienation—an owner/non-owner divide.”

“Why was society divided that way?”

“Oh Dear! Why do you need to know all this here and now? It’ll take a lot of time to explain the whole lot. Anyway for the time being, try to understand just a difference. Nowadays, as and when we feel hungry, what do we do? We just take what we need from where it is stored; and that’s all, simply because we all have free access to them, we all collectively own and control them. But in those days when only a few people privately owned and controlled all means of production and distribution, the vast majority of us had little or nothing to own or control but our ability to work, which we were obliged to sell for a wage or a salary which was always less in terms of value than what we produced, and then we had to spend the money thus received to buy what we ourselves had produced and stocked at the behest of our employers—our food, clothes and all that we needed.”

“Really, very interesting! But, what happened when you couldn’t find a buyer for your ability to work?”

“Can’t you follow? We had to starve. It’s as simple as that!”

“Starve? A strange word, but what did it mean?”

“It meant to die of hunger. Understand?”

“Did it? Die of hunger? Even if there were enough stocks to meet everybody’s need? And that merely because you didn’t possess these coloured pieces of worthless paper to buy the products of your own labour? Horrific! What a shame on you!”

“Indeed! Quite so, the state of affairs was exactly what you’ve just stated. Yet, my sweet little observers, money wasn’t just coloured pieces of worthless paper. In itself it might have been worthless, but it represented a great worth—private property. It was the ultimate form of expression of a relation between people mediated as though it was a relation between things. A relation between active social forces carried through a unique, indirect and roundabout manner working exactly like natural forces, irrespective of people’s will, forcibly, coercively, destructively, blindly, behind the backs of the producers themselves. A totally inhuman relation reigning over humanity.”

“And, that day, when we were listening to you reading off a passage from your school history book, we heard the author boast, claiming such a society to be civilised, and you said you were required to go on cramming such stuff for your exams. How stupid you were!”

Binay Sarkar

Money: Icon of Slavery (2020)

From the February 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who is to blame? You would need two very long arms to list the problems facing ourselves and this planet today. We all point a finger. It just isn’t us. We’re just going about our business. Trying to stay alive for as long as possible. What can we do? So we point the finger. The truth though, is that there is not one person alive today who is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. Nobody has instigated anything. We are all victims. Simply born into a system, that was ordained well before any of us came into existence. All we have done is try to get along within the dictates laid down by this system as best we can.

And you do follow those dictates. Because that’s the way it is. Always has been. How things are done around here. How you get on. So you go along. As best you can. Even when things are going wrong. You go along. Because that’s the way it is. Always has been. How things are done around here.

Essentially there is not a lot of difference between people. We all generally want the same. Family, friends, community and improving our lot, whilst having as much fun along the way as one can. Labour, Conservative, Green, Monster Raving? English, French, Romanian, Russian? Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh? We are all after the same things. Have the same fundamental beliefs and yearnings. The differences occur because we all differ in our opinions concerning who should benefit and who should pay. So we have conflict. Perpetual conflict between everybody.

Capitalism. When you actually stop and think about it, is absolutely absurd. It is a system built around the construct that somebody else should benefit more from your efforts than you do yourself. It is a system that, rather than give you your life requirements, actually denies them to you until you have paid due diligence with sweat and toil. And then ensures you continue to pay. It rations what you can do. It limits your choice and it takes away your very freedom. We all bemoan the symptoms caused by this system. Yet! We support it?

We give money the credit for everything. Built the world it did. Total rubbish. What did build the world with all the wonders we have created for ourselves is work! Hours of work. All done by people who are co-operating. Money’s only influence has been one of a coercive and controlling nature. An artificial construct that humans seem to think we need in order to facilitate. Intelligence and understanding would do a far better job. Everything ever built or achieved has been done because somebody somewhere put in a few hours of work. That is a reality. A fact. Money did nothing bar create an illusion of supposed wealth that cannot be attained by the vast majority of people.

The illusion of wealth. What is being wealthy all about? It’s something all of us dream of. And this is the thing about money. It does create an illusion of wealth. Something to be attained. What capitalism actually does is to take all the wealth of our creation away, and then dangle it in front of us like a carrot. True wealth is really down to access. Goods, services, housing, health care, weekends away, transport, leisure. Now, we as workers put in hours of work to create all of this wealth. We then allow somebody else to come along and say that we cannot have access to this wealth that we have just striven to create, because it belongs to them. And if we want access to any of this wealth, we will have to pay a cost that is way above the actual value of the item. Because profit has to be made. Does this make sense? Yet this is the system we all support. Wealth. Having access to the proceeds of our own work and not having to worry.

Our pursuit of profit is destroying this planet. Why do poachers poach? Or loggers log? Why do we over-fish? Or over-cultivate our land? Why do we dump waste into our seas? Or pollute the very air we breathe? We all know the answer. We have to make profit. So we have to cut a few corners along the way. How utterly absurd. We would lay this whole planet to waste simply to put a few extra zeros in a bank account. Good management costs nothing and all it requires is a little understanding and co-operation. Which tends to come quite naturally when individual self-interest is taken out of the equation and mutual interest is put in.

But how do we live without money? By actually understanding what holds the fabric of society together. Work, pure and simple. It is not trade deficits, GDPs or anything to do with share prices on the stock exchange. I am intelligent enough to understand that to live the life I have become accustomed to, requires a little work. I tend to believe that most people think this also. The combination of work. Different people, all doing whatever it is that their work happens to be. That is what has built this world and that is what will keep it running. Money? What does it do?

What money will do is always get in the way of something that could be better. It will always postpone a holiday. Is very good at inducing fasting regimes on days leading up to pay day. Will always prevent any political party from carrying out its agenda. Always make every little incident infinitely worse. It is absolutely brilliant at making you worry. Creating negative attitudes. Spreading disharmony. Feelings of discontent. Disunity. Abandonment. Just how long could this list go on for?

The way I see it, if you are working you are contributing towards society. A tooth on the cog as it were. So why should you not be able to then go and help yourself to what that society has to offer? Everything free. All goods and services, totally free, for everyone. Why does that concept seem so absurd to people? No matter what your present status is in life, it is a winner. No losers. Cake and eat situation.

Colin Aries