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