Life of the Commons (2025)

Book Review from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Think Like a Commoner. A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. By David Bollier. New Society. xxi+247pp.

The premise of this book is that, in order to counter the way the society we live in, with its market, its competition, its states and its nationalisms, pulls us apart from each other, we must spread those forms of community and togetherness in art, leisure, agriculture, technology, environmental care and education that are already practised in a grassroots way by many across the world. With clarity and persuasive gusto the author insists that the non-hierarchical, socially cooperative activities, which he calls ‘commoning’, are, while little recognised, attuned to core human values and correspond to, as he puts it, ‘a deep human propensity to cooperate’. They offer, he argues, a practical antidote to the ills of capitalism, a way to mitigate its collapsing ecosystems, its dog-eat-dog ethic, its savage inequalities and much else. He sees such activities as residing in, for example, land trusts, community gardens, indigenous practices of reciprocity, town festivals, open-source learning, collaborative web initiatives like Creative Commons, blood donation systems, workers’ cooperatives, mutual aid networks, indeed anywhere at all where people gather to share and cooperate with one another and to practise reciprocally rewarding relationships without cash nexus domination. The people who practise this he refers to as ‘commoners’ and the totality of their activity as the ‘Commonverse’. This, he claims, ‘has exploded in size and variety and works ‘outside of both market capitalism and state power’. It is, he claims ‘a post-growth world powered by peer governance, respectful engagement with the earth, creative participations and fairness’, and ‘stewards wealth for everyone’s benefit’.

This is obviously a big claim. Does it stand up to scrutiny? Well, what it perceives and proposes is certainly tempting. Steeped as David Bollier is in knowledge and experience both of the capitalist world of markets and states (‘the market-state leviathan’, as he calls it) and in the history and practices of commoning which are seen as their diametrical opposite, he offers an exhilarating guide to the way humans have managed, and still manage, to fight back and to work together in an egalitarian, empathetic and interconnected manner within the interstices of a system that grinds them down. And he paints a compelling and optimistic picture of this and of the future possibilities of the ‘commons’ and of the ‘bottom-up’ ways it can compete with, and perhaps ultimately take over from, the wastefulness, inefficiency, inequality and rank cruelty of the system of production for profit.

Sadly, however, it is not a picture that a visitor from another planet experiencing the earth for the first time would be likely to recognise. They would be more likely to see the rule of capital as the overwhelming force across the planet and commoning as a relatively minor and irregular presence. The author’s reply to such a criticism, judging from the thrust of his book, might well be that commoning is far more widespread than any cursory glance might suggest. As he sees it, ‘the explosion of commons-based initiatives popping up around the world is creating powerful synergies and opening up rich possibilities for change’. And he sees it as having a future in cumulative and ideally local developments which will force those who currently rule the roost to curb their excesses and adopt more associative and inclusive policies which will make society more equal.

But herein lies the rub. While wishing for ‘postcapitalism’ and the end of the current regime of markets and states that humanity lives under, the author does not really see any way out of it. Despite many harsh words about the brutalities of the market and its ‘competitive individualism’ (eg, ‘In the service of private profitmaking, the market machine appropriates our lands, forests and water, genes, seed and lifeforms’; ‘Markets tend to care primarily about financial returns and see everything else … as secondary and discretionary’), he actually sees no real alternative to the market and appears to resign himself to its continued existence. He seems to somehow think it can be put on the right track, becoming more benign and less overwhelmingly anti-human and ecocidal by the spread of a ‘parallel’ commons economy based on sharing instead of profit. In his own words: ‘Private property rights are not necessarily hostile to functioning commons. Indeed I believe the two can be mutually compatible and even work hand in glove.’ In a similar way, despite his repeated condemnation of the state which he sees (correctly) as an executive body for capitalist interests (‘joined at the hip’, as he puts it), he ends up declaring that ‘state regulation is absolutely necessary’, ‘state power is not going away’ and ‘much will depend on finding creative ways to integrate the commons into state power’.

Yet, it is clear from much of what Daniel Bollier writes that his preference, like that of socialists, would be a world of voluntary and cooperative endeavour where each individual can live a life allowing them to satisfy their needs without stress or compulsion and to exercise their nature-given talents for the benefit of the community. Yet he does not foresee or advocate the only kind of social organisation in which this will be possible – one based on the end of private property, the state, the market and the money and buying and selling system through which it operates. Although some time ago, he edited a book entitled A World Beyond Market and State (wealthofthecommons.org), the indications from the current volume are that he regards that ‘world’ as unrealistic or at least too far into the future to contemplate. We would view it differently and would regard abandoning that idea to focus instead on the unfeasible ‘half-way house’ of a less harsh capitalism as a sure way of pushing it as far as possible into the future.

Howard Moss

Cranks. (1906)

From the May 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are people about who actually take pride in being called cranks. Crankiness (or is it crankery?) bids fair to become an established cult: it already has one periodical, The Crank, as an official organ, and there are hundreds of newspapers and magazines, daily, weekly, and monthly, that preach it under one or other of its hundred forms.

On the cover of “An Unconventional Magazine” a crank is defined as “a little thing which makes revolutions,” but the dictionary gives us a much less flattering account :—”a crook or bend ; a conceit in speech ; a whim.” Into the composition of the modern crank all these constituents would seem to enter.

The crank is a man (or woman) who sees a part as the whole, a triviality as all important; his mind is so filled with his particular whim or fad that, nothing else has place there. He looks at it so closely that he cannot see beyond it, like a man who holds a small object so near his eye that it obscures his view of everything else.

To set forth all the classes and subdivisions of cranks is impossible in a short paper, for they are “as the sands of the sea shore are multitude,” but we all know and have suffered from, among others, the health crank, the food crank, the religious crank, the land reform crank, the municipal crank, the education crank, the social reform crank, the temperance crank, the political crank.

All these people have recognised that there is something wrong with existing conditions, but instead of analysing these conditions as a whole in order to seek a remedy, they have all and each seized on some particular detail and made reform thereof a hobby horse to be ridden to death. And so there are hundreds of little sects of cranks, each trying to remedy some little social evil. Enormous quantities of ink and paper are wasted every year in voicing their views; each little group completely ignores all the others, and each has its own little patent panacea for the evils of Society.

“Reform” is the watchword of them all, and they have it in common that they all devote their attention to eliminating some effect of economic conditions while leaving those conditions themselves unchanged.

The Socialist, on the other hand, has regard to the whole rather than to any particular detail. He analyses all social conditions and traces them back to their economic root; he recognises that to alter effects is impossible without eliminating causes. In a word his method is the direct opposite to thatof the crank !

The Socialist proves that all the evils from which Society suffers have their origin in the class ownership of the means (land, machinery, mines, etc.) by which the necessaries of life are produced, and the consequent wage-slavery of the great mass of the people; he shows that from this one great economic wrong at the basis of Society arise all the other wrongs, social, political, and moral, and that therefore to right these, it is necessary first of all to change the economic basis of Society by bringing the means of production and distribution under the ownership and control of the whole community. To the Socialist it is just as sensible to try to rid a garden of nettles by picking off their leaves as to attempt to reform the social edifice while the rotten foundations remain untouched.

The Socialist therefore is not a crank.

But there are many cranks who call themselves Socialists. Sometimes these add a distinguishing epithet as “Christian” Socialists. When they do not do so, however, they can only be judged by their words and works. The crank Socialist is always going to do great things for Socialism after his own pet fad is achieved as a first step. To give a full list of these “first steps” would be impossible in the space at my disposal, but among the most familiar are :—Female Suffrage, Adult Suffrage, Payment of Members, Reversal of the Taff Vale Decision, Solution of the Unemployed Problem, Free Maintenance of School Children, Old Age Pensions, etc, etc. “Reform” is the magic word of the crank Socialist by which all these things are to be conjured up out of nowhere, while wage-slavery is still to remain, though shorn of all its ill effects by successive acts of Parliament, and capitalism, though still existing, is to become a kind of metaphysical entity, an evil thing with no evil properties ! This is the dream of the crank Socialist, but it is not Socialism.

Unfortunately, crankery is not only humorous, but, harmful. Thousands of the working class who should be organising for Socialism have been drawn off to follow the will-o’-the-wisp of reform in search of the paradise of cranks.

If this were not so, and if crankery were confined to the bourgeoisie, we could afford to laugh at it; but as things are we must fight it and destroy it as perhaps the most dangerous obstacle in the path of Socialism.

R.A.V.M.

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard see the snippet entitled, “The Earth for all?"

I initially thought 'The Crank' was a made up title/journal for the purposes of the article. A catch all title for all the reformist journals from that time, with their 'do something now and we will think about socialism later' proposals but it turns out it was very much a real magazine, published by C. W. Daniel, and rooted in Tolstoyan and Pacifist principles. 

Sadly, there is not a lot of information about it on the net but reading through Daniel's wiki page it does conjure up images of that famous sneering quote from George Orwell about the "fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England . . . ” from The Road to Wigan Pier.

“The Earth for all”? (1906)

From the May 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the heading “The Earth for all” The Crank proposes to publish a series of papers on political economy. The introductory article says “under conditions where there was no private property in land extremes of poverty and wealth could not exist.” Couldn’t they ? If the writer proposes to show that extremes of poverty could not exist under a system of nationalized land only, we shall await further contributions with interest.

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard see the article, 'Cranks'.

Moneyless or not (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“While there is money, there is scarcity”. “. . . Work itself becomes voluntary. The new incentives will be pleasure, pride and social responsibility”

These are among the ideas expressed in the final chapter of the book Play-power by Richard Neville, one of the editors of OZ convicted of producing what the Law regards as an obscene publication.

Quite true; men could use modern technology to design and construct machines to do the boring and repetitive jobs involved in the production of wealth, thus freeing human beings to engage in interesting, creative work of their choice. Employment could be abolished and work become voluntary.

But before this could be done the machines and the other means of production must have ceased to be the property of a privileged minority and have come instead under the democratic control of all the people. Only then could they be used to turn out an abundance of good-quality consumer goods and services which people could use to satisfy their needs. Money would become redundant.

There is no doubt at all that in writing about “a moneyless society” Neville was directly influenced by the ideas of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. For he was quoting with approval from one of a number of articles that have appeared in OZ written by a Socialist (‘The Food Explosion” OZ 19 and 26. See also “Smash Cash” OZ 17).

The only trouble is that Neville isn’t consistent and so gives the impression of having used our arguments merely to justify shoplifting and fare-dodging. People who do this, he says “are training themselves for a moneyless society”. There is of course nothing “immoral” in these practices but they have nothing to do with a moneyless, socialist society, and are practised by many others besides Socialists and those Neville calls “drop-outs”.

Neville’s inconsistency comes out on the very next page where he uses a quite different argument to justify the practice of non-employment (what is sometimes called “refusing to work”). He conjures up the vision of a society where, in order to maintain consumer demand in the face of growing unemployment caused by automation, the State pays everybody a guaranteed income. This would presumably be paid in money, so what became of the moneyless society Neville was supposed to be training for?

We can only say that, if Neville really does believe in a State guaranteed income, he is way behind the times. In this age of potential abundance nothing short of free access to wealth will do. He was right the first time: future society will have no need for money. Today’s notes and coins—dollars and cents, pounds and pence, roubles and kopecks—can be relegated to the museums alongside the Romans’ coins and the South Sea Islanders' cowrie shells.

Life and Times: Brighter Times? (2022)

The Life and Times column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was doing some house painting the other day and called into my local ironmongers for a bottle of white spirit. I picked some up from the shelf, went to the counter to pay and was surprised to see something unexpected there – a pile of entirely non-DIY magazines with main title Brighter Times and sub-title ‘Magazine for an Alternative World’. My curiosity piqued, I picked one up and had a quick look through. It was a well-illustrated professional-looking publication with a cover charge of £1. I decided I could afford it, but when I tried to add it to the cost of the white spirit, Jane who serves in the shop told me the magazine was free. ‘Good’, I said, even if it gave me a slightly odd feeling that they should be giving it away. While it’s true that every minute of every day people do countless things for others without the intervention of money, in the buying and selling society we live in actual products usually have a price tag that must be paid. If there’s no price tag, it tends, perhaps sadly, to make you suspicious about them, to make you think that, if the product is free, it can’t be much good or that there’s some other underlying reason why it’s being given away.

A World Gone Mad?

Anyway I took it home and, when I had some spare time, sat down for a read. The front cover said ‘How to navigate a world gone mad’, which had probably been one of the other things to draw me to it, since, as a socialist, I can’t but see that the world is in thrall to a kind of madness, the madness of the capitalist system. The first two or three short articles gave me a feel for where the magazine was coming from. There was an advertisement on page 2 for a book entitled The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment whose author Eckhardt Toller is described as a ‘spiritual teacher’. It told us that his teaching came about ‘as a result of a profound inner transformation at the age of 29 which radically altered his life’, prior to which ‘he had suffered severe anxiety and depression but this shift in consciousness saw his suffering dissolve away’. Then there was an editorial that, while denying adherence to ‘conspiracy theories’, expressed doubt about Covid vaccination and advised resistance to ‘the mainstream narrative’ and to ‘the darker forces that seek to dominate us’. And there was also a report of the inaugural conference of ‘the World Council for Health’, which characterised itself as an organisation of ‘Covid dissidents’ looking to a ‘future of integrative healthcare and wellbeing rooted in sovereignty, informed consent, and personal empowerment’. Other articles highlighted the apparent dangers to health of 5G technology, ‘Frankenstein foods’ produced using genetic technology, the World Economic Forum described as ‘an unaccountable corporate body which wishes to impose outright tyranny upon the world’, the ‘outdated practice of water fluoridation’ called a ‘Class 2 poison’, and the ‘controversial science’ of man-made global warming.

Virtuous Activity

We can see where this is going. But it’s also only fair to say that, when I read on, I didn’t as a whole find the same kind of standard conspiracy theory publication (eg, ‘The Light’) that relentlessly and crazily pushes the button of conspiratorial global domination by a small group of ‘elite’ individuals. It did veer towards that but sugared the pill with its generally more ‘moderate’ language and ‘nice’ articles on, for instance, the need for camaraderie, soil regeneration, community-based food production, and ‘healthy love’ between couples, much of which appeared laudable even if the dog-eat-dog attitude the society we live in drives us to makes such cooperative activity difficult to carry out in any kind of overall and consistent way. The back page of the magazine was given over to what it called ‘The ABCs of Life’, which were short, ‘virtuous’ suggestions for living, beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Examples included: ‘accept differences’, ‘give freely’ ‘harm no one’, ‘open your mind’, ‘reciprocate’, ‘value truth’, zealously support a worthy cause’.

Helplessness and manipulation

Reading this magazine, I couldn’t not ask myself what drives the people who produce it and, read and support it, and manage to get it placed in shops such as my local ironmongers? It seems to indicate on the part of those involved an attempt to give meaning to a life situation in which they feel fundamentally helpless, a ‘world gone mad’, as the front page had it. They feel trapped in a system that dictates what happens to them and those around them, and the apparently far-out theories and ‘regenerative’ activities they advocate are attempts to have some say in that situation, to reach for some kind of control over their lives and their futures. It goes without saying of course that the system that traps them is not one engineered by some shadowy group of conspirators controlling the world and manipulating events from afar, even if such an idea may seem to make things easier to grasp. Rather what the ‘brighter lives’ people are trapped by – as we are all – is the world market, an unplanned, chaotic, wasteful force that no individual or group controls.

So, yes we need ‘brighter times’, we need ‘an alternative world’, but that can only meaningfully come via majority democratic political revolution to establish a system of common ownership, democratic control and production for use. And before we can get that, we need clear understanding on the part of the majority of workers (i.e, all those who have to sell their energies for a wage or salary) of how the current system works and what can be done to change it. Without this, the helplessness so many feel in the face of seemingly uncontrollable forces will continue to lead them down the same kind of blind alley as frequented by the ‘Brighter Times’ community. 

Howard Moss

50 Years Ago: Hippies: An abortion of Socialist Understanding (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since the explosion of “Flower Power” in Summer 67, the world’s working-class has been aware of the Hippy movement, or as it is now more frequently called, “The Underground”. Attitudes to the hippies have varied from amused fascination to angry revulsion. Many people have grown more hostile to them over the past two years, as their emphasis on such harmless-sounding words as “Love” and “Beautiful People” has declined, and their tendency to smoke pot has become more widely publicised.

In Britain the occupation of 144 Piccadilly confirmed the hippies’ bad reputation—though the occupiers were not typical of the Underground by any means. TV news announcers put on their frowns for this item, were careful to identify the occupation with soccer hooliganism (both were “violence to property”), and equally careful to avoid dragging in irrelevant details like the fact of empty houses alongside homeless people.

A wave of horror swept the country at the realisation that there were people who not only wore long hair (and obviously smelt foul, as anyone could see by looking at their TV screens), but actually believed they had a right to live without working. In one television programme, David Frost, Hughie Green and Robert Maxwell—those highly productive labourers who toil so usefully to justify their existence—led an attack on the hippies for their conscientious objection to work. When Richard Neville (editor of the Underground magazine Oz) suggested that the idea of work as a duty hadn’t a very ancient historical pedigree, that work in the modern world was “really a form of slavery,” and that with today’s productive techniques there could easily be more than enough wealth for everyone, he was devastated by Frost’s crisply intelligent retorts: “Very high‑ flown I’m sure” and “I really am an old fuddy-duddy you know.”

The hippy phenomenon is a movement, a set of attitudes, a subculture or a nuisance, according to your point of view. It consists of several hundred thousand people, drawn mostly from the working class, in the advanced regions of Capitalism. It is vaguely defined, fuzzy-edged—no one can draw up a hippy manifesto; no one can specify who is a hippy and who isn’t.

(From the Socialist Standard, December 1969)

The Naff Caff (2000)

A Short Story from the June 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dillon's Diner stands in a narrow alleyway in the centre of the city. At first glance it is a mean-looking building nestling between a baker's shop and a trendy gift shop (the latter frequented by tourists and those people who are eager to fritter their money away on largely useless items). It sits there solid as a rock, the wood surrounding the huge windows painted a workhouse green. Dillon's Diner is better viewed from within. The café is known locally, though not by the proprietors I hope, as the Naff Caff.

Smart people or tourists seldom visit the Naff Caff. From my place at a table inside I have a clear view of anyone stopping by to study the menu and to peer into the steamed-up windows; either they don't like the look of the people inside or the blatant message of the menu—sausage, egg and chips, bacon sandwiches, chicken nuggets, tea at thirty-five pence a cup, has no attraction for them as few of them ever come in. The clientele includes city buskers, Big Issue sellers, students from the local school and people who like me who welcome a cup of tea and a plate of chips cooked in vegetable oil. The Naff Caff is known by reputation or by those who, years before, wandered in on a wet day and got hooked on the atmosphere.

Almost everyone talks uninhibitedly. At one oilcloth-covered table a group discuss Unidentified Flying Objects and crop circles, whilst at another politics are more the priority. Occasionally people sitting at one table will leave it to join those sitting at another table if the conversation sounds more inviting. Sometimes voices are raises and raucous laughter fills the air. We all take it in our stride and most of the time so does Mr Dillon, the proprietor though he is idiosyncratic to say the least. He has strong political opinions mainly about the iniquities of local government. He will deliver speeches at the top of his voice either from behind his counter or standing at a table to harangue customers over their chips and baked beans. He rarely pauses for breath and his language is colourful.

One day Mr Dillon ordered a man off his premises for making racist remarks about a young Asian man. But on another day he banished a young woman because of her Mohican hairstyle and the three tiny rings she wore through her nose. She came into the café with her mother and her young son and sat quietly at a table waiting for a place of chips to be served to the little boy. Mr Dillon told her that "this is a respectable establishment and you will frighten my customers with that weird hairdo". This in a café where long hair and beards, ragged jeans, anoraks and appearances suggestive of lurking poverty are the order of the day. I witnessed the incident but it all happened too quickly for me to intervene. I chided myself for days afterwards for not having lifted a finger to protest.

The Naff Caff is cheap but it isn't chic and the grub is unremarkable. Even its nickname is derisory so why do so many people have an affection for it? Well, it is unpretentious, honest and clean. And it is alive. The clientele can either converse animatedly or sit silently over a cup of tea for two hours and nobody will give them any hassle. Within the walls of the Naff Caff dwells a little bit of socialism. The prevailing environment speaks of comradeship, mutual respect and social harmony. It was the customers who long ago created this idea. In what other public place have I come across people who will unashamedly eavesdrop on a conversation where a tricky and personal problem is being aired and make it their business to offer helpful solutions? And the astonishing thing is that nobody seems to mind. Perhaps it is that showing an interest in and caring about the fate of others is always preferable to indifference. The Naff Caff responds to a need in our society. Every city should have one.

Heather Ball

Smash Cash (2004)

From the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Article by a then Socialist Party member that was published in 1968 in issue 17 of the sixties counter-culture magazine Oz .)

400BC: Hey all you thirsty people, though you've got no money, come to the water. Buy corn without money and eat. Buy wine without money and milk without price. (Isaiah).

1652: There shall be no buying and selling . . . If any man or family want grain or other provisions, they may go to the storehouse and fetch without money. (Gerrard Winstantley).

1968: The Abolition of Money. The abolition of pay housing, pay
media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education, pay clothing, pay medical help and pay toilets. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of "full unemployment" . . . (Yippie election leaflet).

Abolition of Money! Down through the ages this wild and visionary slogan has been whispered by a subversive few. Ever since human beings discovered cash, they have hated it and tried to rid themselves of it whilst their own actions have kept it alive. In this respect, money is like syphilis.

Today the whisper has become a shout though still the shout of a tiny minority. Tomorrow it will be the roar of the crowd, the major topic of discussion in every pub and coffee house, factory and office.

The abolition of money is an ancient dream, the most radical demand of every social revolution for centuries past. We must not suppose that it is therefore destined to remain a Utopia, that the wheel will simply turn full circle once more. Today there is an entirely new element in the situation: Plenty.

All previous societies have been rationed societies, based on scarcity of food, clothing and shelter. The modern world is also a society of scarcity, but with a difference. Today's shortages are unnecessary; today's scarcity is artificial. More than that: scarcity achieved at the expense of strenuous effort, ingenious organization and the most sophisticated planning.

The world is haunted by a spectre the spectre of Abundance. Only by planned waste and destruction on a colossal scale can the terrifying threat of Plenty be averted.

Money means rationing. It is only useful when there are shortages to be rationed. No one can buy or sell air: it's free because there is plenty of it around. Food, clothing, shelter and entertainment should be free as air. But the means of rationing scarcity themselves keep the scarcity in existence. The only excuse for money is that there is not enough wealth to go round but it is the money system which makes sure there cannot be enough to go round. By abolishing money we create the conditions where money is unnecessary.

If we made a list of all those occupations which would be unnecessary in a Moneyless World, jobs people now have to do which are entirely useless from a human point of view, we might begin as follows: Customs officer, Security guard, Locksmith, Wages clerk, Tax assessor, Advertising man, Stockbroker, Insurance agent, Ticket puncher, Salesman, Accountant, Slot machine emptier, Industrial spy, Bank manager, before we realized the magnitude of what was involved. And these are merely the jobs which are wholly and utterly useless. Nearly all occupations involve something to do with costing or selling. Now we should see that the phrase "Abolition of Money" is just shorthand for immense, sweeping, root and branch changes in society. The abolition of money means the abolition of wages and profits, nations and frontiers, armies and prisons. It means that all work will be entirely voluntary.

Of course, the itemizing of those jobs which are financial does not end the catalogue of waste. Apart from astronomical sums spent on the Space Race, and the well known scandal of huge arms production, we have to realise that all production is carried on purely for profit. The profit motive often runs completely counter to human need. 'Built-in obsolescence' (planned shoddiness), the restrictive effects of the patents system, the waste of effort through duplication of activities by competing firms or nations these are just a few of the ways in which profits cause waste.

What this amounts to is that ninety per cent (a conservative estimate) of effort expended by human beings today is entirely pointless, does not the slightest bit of good to anybody. So it is quite ridiculous to talk about "how to make sure people work if they're not paid for it". If less than ten per cent of the population worked, and the other ninety per cent stayed at home watching telly, we'd be no worse off than we are now.

But there would be no need for them to watch telly all the time, because without the profit system work could be made enjoyable. Playing tennis, writing poems or climbing mountains are not essentially any more enjoyable than building houses, growing food or programming computors. The only reason we think of some things as 'leisure' and others as 'work' is because we get used to doing some things because we want to and others because we have to. Prostitutes despise love. We are all prostitutes. In a Moneyless World work would be recreation and art. That work which is unavoidably unhealthy or unpleasant, such as coalmining, would be automated immediately. Needless to say, the only reason these things aren't done by machines at present is because it is considered more important to lower the costs of the employer than to lower the unhappiness of his slaves.

The money system is obsolete and antihuman. So what should we do about it? In years to come, with the increasing education and increasing misery of modern life, together with growing plenty, we can expect the Abolition of Money to be treated more and more as a serious issue, to be inserted into more and more heads. The great mass of individuals will first ridicule, then dare to imagine (Fantasy is the first act of rebellion Freud), then overthrow.

In the meantime, as well as propagating the notion of a Moneyless World, those of us who see its necessity have a responsibility to sort our own ideas out, in order that we may present an intelligible and principled case. We must stop thinking of the Moneyless World as an 'ultimate aim' with no effect upon our actions now. We must realise that the Abolition of Money is THE immediate demand. A practical proposition and an urgent necessity not something to be vaguely 'worked towards'.

Unfortunately those who want the Moneyless World frequently wade in a mire of mystification. Above all it is necessary to understand the workings of this society, capitalist society (Moscow, Washington and Peking are all in the same boat) if we are to know how to destroy it.

For example there is a commonly held view that Automation is going to settle all our worries, that money will expire automatically as part of a "natural process of evolution". This is quite wrong. As pointed out above, this society only automates to increase profits and for no other reason. Employers even take machines out and put workers back in if they find that labour-power is cheaper. Any gain from automation these days is more than cancelled out by the waste explosion. Do not imagine that the slight increases in living standards of the last twenty years are the beginning of a smooth transition to Abundance. Another huge world slump is approaching.

A different illusion, also popular, is that cash can be abolished by example, by opening giveaway shops or by starting small moneyless communities which are parasitical upon the main body of society. These experiments accomplish little. Those people, for instance, who open stores to give and receive books without payment, face a predictable result: a large stock of lousy books.

These projects stem partly from a belief that we need to prove something. Relax. We don't need to prove anything. The defenders of this insane society, it is they who stand accused, they who have to supply the arguments arguments for poverty and enslavement in a world of Plethora!

All theoretical constructions which relate to wages, prices, profits and taxes are ghosts from the past, as absurdly outdated as the quibbles about how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. 'Incomes policy' is irrelevant we want the abolition of incomes. "Fighting crime" is irrelevant we want the abolition of the law. 'Workers' control' is irrelevant we want the abolition of 'workers'. 'Black Power' is irrelevant we want the abolition of power over people. 'The national interest' is irrelevantwe want the abolition of nations.

And let no one raise the banal cry: what are you going to put in their place? As though we would say to a research scientist: "And when you've cured Cancer, what are you going to put in its place?"

Then there is the myth of the small-scale. We cannot go back to being peasants and we should not want to. Keeping several thousand million people alive on this planet necessitates railways, oil wells, steel mills. Only by intricate organization and large-scale productive techniques can we maintain our Abundance. Do not be afraid of machines. It is not machines which enslave, but Capital, in whose service machines are employed. McLuhan represents the beginning of the New Consciousness of man-made artifacts. Computors are warm and cuddly creatures. We will have a beautiful time with them.

Many of the worst errors which retard the development of the New Consciousness, the Consciousness of Plenty, are to be found in Herbert Lomas' piece on "The Workless Society" in International Times 43. This at least has the merit that someone is putting forward a case for the removal of money in specific terms. Unfortunately, they are specific non-starters.

According to Herbert Lomas, a political party is to be formed which will take power and proceed as follows. Useless workers in industry will be gradually be laid off and paid for not working. The process will be extended until money can be abolished. In the meantime, those being paid for doing nothing will do what they like. To begin with many of them might play Bingo; eventually more and more would aim at higher things.

What is wrong with this projection? Many things, but chiefly two. First, it fails to take account of the systematic nature of society. Second, it assumes that present-day society exhibits a harmony of interests.

In the first place, Lomas says: "Why are these people working? They are not working for the sake of production, for the truth is that if they were removed production could be increased beyond measure". He concludes that they are working because of their attitudes, the attitudes of their employers, the attitudes of the rest of society. But the fact of the matter is that these workers are working for the sake of production not the production of goods but the production of profits. The reason why things are "made with great ingenuity to wear out" is not because of the attitudes of the people involved. The management may think it's criminal but they are paid to optimize profits. If they produced razor blades to last for centuries, the firm would go broke. It is not the attitudes which are crucial, but economic interests. If a teetotaller owns shares in a brewery, it does not make booze less potent.

Which brings us to the second point. Today's world is a jungle of conflicting vested interests. The Abolition of Money will represent the liberation of slaves, yes but also the dispossession of masters, i.e. the employing class. We cannot view the government as an impartial panel which looks after the best interests of everybody; it is an instrument used by one set of people to oppress another.

On one point Herbert Lomas is correct. The movement for the Abolition of Money must be political, because when we destroy money we destroy the basis of the power of our rulers. They are unlikely to take kindly to this, so we must organize politically to remove them.

For the moment though, what is needed is more discussion and more understanding. We must be confident that the movement will grow. We must think, argue, and think again but never lose consciousness of the one, simple, astounding fact: Plenty is here. The Moneyless World is not an ultimate millennium. We need it now.

DAVID RAMSAY STEELE, OZ, 1968.