At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

 

The big question raised by the OZ trial is of course: what is pornography? What is it in society that depraves and corrupts to such an extent that those responsible need to be punished and shut away where they can do no more damage? Any adult who has ever been a child, remembering their own sexual fantasies and confusions, must wonder whether they would be corrupted by the kind stuff in OZ and the rest of the underground press. It might even be argued that such matter, by its very blatancy, is the very opposite of corruptive. But what about other forces in society whose pernicious influence is undeniable? We are not discussing here anything which even appears in any magazines, but the real, everyday experiences of life under capitalism. How else can we describe the men responsible for incidents like the My Lai, if not corrupted by the war? What effects does poverty and repression have on our lives, if not to deprave us? Is bad housing the kind of environment calculated to solidify or to destroy human relationships? What has happened to the ‘morals’ of a man who debases himself to the boss for the sake of a bit of promotion or a pettyfogging rise? Capitalist society is essentially depraved and it corrupts everything in it, including its people. No court with the wigged judge will ever try the system but it has been examined, found wanting and condemned. We should lose no more time in locking it away into the prison of unpleasant memories.

One of the great tragedies of capitalism is in the fact that, again and again, workers are misled into believing that they are doing something to end the system when in reality they are doing nothing of the kind. Faced with the reality, the incident usually becomes written into historical myth, which dies very hard. Such were the Spanish Civil War, the General Strike, the successive Labour Governments. The latest candidate in this dismal line is the so-called workers’ take over of the Upper Clyde. Part of the delusion here is that the shipyards collapsed as a result of a Government failure to subsidise them, when in fact they collapsed because they could not live up to the basic capitalist requirements of making a profit. Whoever runs them will be faced with that reality. And if the ‘take-over’ fails the workers will also face the greater bitterness stemming from the promise and the delusion. Yet we know from experience that failure will only strengthen the myth; It will be explained in terms of accident or treachery or the like. The ‘take-over’ of Upper Clyde is tailor-made for the fairy tale story books of the left wing.

 

Abroad

 

President Nixon, it is reported, is disappointing many of the people who backed him in 1968 for the presidency by his policy of negotiations with China. It is no new thing for a politician to win power on promises, both explicitly and implied, which he goes back on after he has won. Very often the promises are easily seen, at the time of making them, to be impermanent and impractical. In the nature of the thing, we are more accustomed to leaders of the left being involved in this sort of double cross, but there have been notable exceptions from the other side. In this country, there was Macmillan after Suez and with his policy on Africa. Abroad there was the classic case of de Gaulle, who so outraged the people who helped him to power that they tried several times to kill him. And now Nixon is upsetting his friends by fashioning his policy to meet the real demands of capitalism rather than political theories. There is some amusement to be had from observing the reaction of the disappointed supporters, who in each case thought about betrayal and turned for salvation to another leader. The left wing are of course well familiar with this tactic. Nixon’s angry followers are now thinking about supporting Ronald Reagan for president in 1972, as if he would be able to run American capitalism on assumptions other than those applied by Nixon—and as if he is any more consistent and had in any case not already been straightened by the President. The search by capitalism’s supporters for the honest, consistent leader who will never go against his word is never ending—until capitalism itself ends.

 

Politics

 

As the months go by the government of Edward Heath is increasingly shown up as equally bankrupt and impotent as its predecessors. As each successive blow falls — Ulster, Upper Clyde, Unemployment, Rising prices to name only a few — the Labour Party’s excitement heightens, with its hunger at approaching power. One report has it that constituency parties have been alerted to face a general election in the near future. This may be wishful thinking, a generous dose of which is essential to keep any capitalist party ticking over. What can be said now is that any general election will be presented to us in familiar, lying terms. The Labour Party will claim to be able to make capitalism work in our interests when they can’t. And we will be told that the issue of the election is something like the Common Market or law and order or nationalisation versus free enterprise when it fact it is, as always, capitalism or Socialism.

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.

SPGB Lectures and Special Meetings (1971)

Party News from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

• The first two issue of the Swedish Socialist journal can be read at the following link.
• Mention of Harry Baldwin doing a meeting on the Oz magazine reminds me that David Ramsay Steele's article, 'Smash Cash', appeared in issue number 17 of Oz magazine in 1968.

Criminals or victims? (1972)

From the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent months so-called British Justice has frequently been called into question. The main points of contention have been the trials of OZ, Jake Prescott and Ian Purdie of the ‘Angry Brigade’, Pauline Jones, who kidnapped the baby Denise Weller, and the ‘Mangrove Nine’, a group of black immigrants living in Notting Hill. These trials have caused quite a stir in the Press, and several valid points were raised and questions asked by some of the newspapers. For instance, in the OZ trial Judge Argyle said that as the convicted men were not rich a fine would not be relevant, and therefore a prison sentence would be more in order. Some of the newspapers came to the realisation that by this token someone with money could bribe his way out of a prison sentence and that capitalist society was on the side of money, not people!

Jake Prescott was found guilty of conspiracy and sentenced to fifteen years in gaol. His actual crime was addressing three envelopes which contained letters informing the police that certain explosions were the handiwork of the self-styled Angry Brigade. In the Press, especially the underground press, the length of Jake Prescott’s sentence was contrasted to the sentence of two to three years meted out to two youths for throwing a fire bomb into a West Indian party and severely injuring ten black people. The fact that the punishment for the Angry Brigade bombings (which were directed against property) was harsher than the punishment for the injury to the West Indians only goes to show that under capitalism property is always more important than people, as we learned with the thirty year sentences some of the Train Robbers received, while murderers are sometimes freed before serving ten years.

Pauline Jones was sentenced to three years (now reduced to twenty-one months) imprisonment for kidnapping a baby while under mental stress. The Press was quick to point out that this punishment could not benefit the parents of Denise Weller, the kidnapped child, or in any way compensate them for their anguish, or rehabilitate the disturbed Pauline Jones. The papers did not go as far as to say, though they should have, that no one has ever been helped by prison sentences, and that capitalist “justice” is always obsessed with punishment, not rehabilitation, in a crude attempt to protect the position and the property of the ruling class and to keep an innately unworkable system stable. The philosophy is that anyone causing an inconvenience to the maintenance of a profit and property motivated society, whether ideologically, as in the case of OZ, or Prescott, or unknowingly, as in the case of thieves etc., must be restrained as cheaply as possible.

In the early days of capitalism it was simple; people were hanged for all sorts of petty offences. The capitalists could not afford prisons or orphanages to fit the requirements of the age, so destitute adults or children could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, or in some cases for vagrancy. Since, however, modern capitalism has found it necessary to engender an educated and versatile working class these old methods are no longer acceptable. Prison and Borstal are the punishment for those whose behaviour is fashioned by their deprived circumstances; for remember, it is rarely that members of the ruling class find their way into penal establishments.

The Mangrove Nine were charged with various offences from assault to disturbing the peace, for their part in a demonstration in Notting Hill. There were allegations of police brutality and deliberate incitement of black people. While many journalists were able to write that perhaps the relationship between the police in Notting Hill and the black immigrants of the area “left much to be desired”, apparently no one realised that this was just another manifestation of the old capitalist maxim “divide and rule”, for while white members of the working class are arguing and fighting with black members of the working class, the working class as a whole will not concentrate on the real problem of abolishing capitalism.

While many valid points were raised in connection with these trials, as is to be expected, the real vital questions were not asked. For instance, there was no enquiry into the role of “justice”, and while the press often sympathised with the accused, no one asked “Why are these people criminals? Is not society to blame in some degree?” As already shown, the role of “justice” is merely to keep the present corrupt system running as smoothly as possible. Although the alleged obscenities of the underground Press are no more than amusing or deliberately sick, the fact that so many of the younger generation spend a good deal of time actively and overtly mocking and rejecting the values of the society they find themselves in, is symptomatic of the fact that that society is in a state of decadence.

When one considers the case of Jake Prescott, one must look again at the environment of the society in which he lives. Although no Socialist could condone bombings as a constructive revolutionary activity, he could quite easily understand what motivates someone of Prescott’s background to unreasoned violence. Prescott has spent his entire life being shunted around from orphanage to foster home to Borstal, to prison, and so on, a victim of the fact that capitalism cannot or will not take care of those who do not fit readily into the normal pattern of things. Capitalism’s need for a mobile working force is not met by the “extended families” and pattern of semi-communal living of the old rural economy and this has given way to the more insular and mobile nuclear family, consisting solely of man, wife and children. Naturally enough there are many who cannot fit into the scheme (the unmarried, old age pensioners whose children have grown up, orphans, illegitimate children), and capitalism being what it is, they have to suffer for it.

Pauline Jones is another victim of the family structure which has been instituted by capitalism. She became pregnant while unmarried; the stigma of this in a nuclear-family based society is enough in itself to cause the greatest anxiety. She then lost the baby through a miscarriage. The resultant psychological instability led to the kidnapping of Denise Weller, and capitalism’s solution to the whole sordid business is to incarcerate Pauline in gaol! The disturbing fact is that, despite the unusually large publicity given to these people, their cases are by no means exceptional. Britain’s gaols are full of people who, like Jake Prescott, have never been given a chance by capitalist society. Britain’s other prisons, the mental asylums, are also full of people for whom the system has been too much. In fact, no one is safe from the corrupting influence of capitalist society. Any child born into a working class family stands a very good chance of facing the authorities charged with some petty offence at some time in his life. Many people will be driven into mental asylums because they cannot fit into society’s “norms”. Sexual deviants, unmarried people, women who are sterile yet would love to help rear children, are all subject to neuroses deriving from their treatment at the hands of capitalism.

Most crimes are directly concerned with money or want, neither of which would exist in Socialist society. Freed from the strictures of the economic unit that is the nuclear family Man would become a far more social animal, and become, in the words of Marx, “Truly human for the first time”. The loneliness, bewilderment with, and hostility towards, society would not exist, and would not therefore, give rise to the many neuroses which lead to crime today. Capitalism is a dangerous system from which no one is safe — the “criminals” of today, including those discussed in this article, are more sinned against than sinning.

J.P.L.

Party News (1969)

From the March 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

PROPAGANDA IN LONDON

May we draw your attention to three important meetings being held in London over the next few weeks.

The Government White Paper on Trade Unions, "In Place of Strife", has caused a stir in T.U. circles. But only a logical sequence to the running of Capitalism by the Labour Government. These T.U. restrictions and the Socialist alternative will be discussed on Monday 10th March, 8 p.m. at Head Office. Advertise this at your T.U. Branch.

Student unrest, bound up with the educational system, is the theme of our meeting at Friends House, Euston Road, on Thursday, 20th March, 7.30. Leaflets are in the course of printing and will be available to members for distribution. This is an interesting and important topic and Friends House is a new venue for Party meetings. Try and attend yourself and bring some friends. A number of our speakers have attended various colleges and universities over the past months, to put the Socialist case. If your college would like a speaker, drop us a line.

Our Conference rally this year, Friday, 4th April, Conway Hall, 6 p.m. will be a little different. Instead of the usual lecture, we shall have four or five speakers, dealing with the organisation and policies of the various 'Left' Parties. The S.L.L., Radical Students Alliance, International Socialism etc. We hope it will take the form of a 'speak-in' and go on for a couple of hours.

NEW ZEALAND

The voice of Socialism continues to be heard in New Zealand. Wheels, the journal of the Drivers' Federation, is the second union paper there to republish our article on devaluation. Meanwhile the New Zealand Building Worker has our article "Get Rid of Wages" and a couple of others.

The December 1968 issue of the left-wing New Zealand Monthly Review inadvertently introduces its readers to the view that in North Vietnam there is state capitalism and not Socialism. In a report from London on the October 27 demonstration, Freda Cook makes the following fatuous remark:

"Apart from such political freaks as the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which advertises Vietcong, No! Mao, No! Che, No! Socialism, Yes! and bleats that North Vietnam is 'State Capitalism' . . ."

Our thanks for the free advertisment.

UNDERGROUND

No. 17 of the "underground" paper Oz carried an article "Smash Cash" by a Socialist explaining that money could only go after a world-wide social revolution converting the means of life into common property and not before or apart from as suggested by some Hippies.

Smash Cash (2004)

From the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article was originally published in 1968 in issue 17 of the counter-culture magazine, Oz.

At the time of writing its author, David Ramsay Steele, was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This transcript is taken from the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard, which was a special issue given over to marking the hundredth anniversary of the SPGB.

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.

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.