50 Years Ago: The Truth about the Co-operative Movement (1982)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the economic side they are merely capitalist concerns out for profits. As to purchasers' dividends, they are not alone in giving something back in order to retain customers. The practice of giving coupons entitling purchasers to free gifts is quite common and the article bought, plus the free gift, is generally the equivalent in value of the price paid. The fact that cooperators spend such a small proportion of their wages in the stores proves they are not deceived on the question of value for money. To the bulk of them the Co-op is just a convenient place to shop.

But so far as Co-op leaders hold out hopes to the workers that their support will help towards a new order of society, or will even provide an escalator to reach it, they are practising deceit. The only way out for the workers is to organise politically for that purpose. A special objective requires a special organisation for its achievement. However, the objective must not be obscured by lesser things of little or no importance.

Dividends and profits can have no place within a socialist system of society. They belong to the present lop-sided arrangement of starving workers and over-fed idlers. Dividends and profits belong to capitalism, and the practice of cooperatives helps to keep them alive in the minds of the workers, to the detriment of a true understanding of their real position.

(From an article "The Truth about the Co-operative Movement" by F. Foan, Socialist Standard, September 1932.)

Salute to Alice (1982)

Alice Jefferson

TV Review from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alice – A Fight For Life. ITV (July 20, 1982)

Alice was a heroine, but no flags were waved, no anthems were sung for her. A victim of mesothelioma, the asbestos-induced cancer of the lung, she died wretchedly after long anguish in body and mind; the courts had just decided that her life could be priced rather higher than the paltry amount her ex-employers had offered.

As the scandal was being exposed on television, the wage slaves who had faithfully done their masters’ dirty work in the Falklands were being rapturously welcomed back. There was no such fame or glamour for Alice. “You’ve got to fight while you’re alive”, she said with a poignant logic, “because you can’t fight while you're dead. Can you?”. That was Alice’s message, and the message of the other sufferers shown on the programme.

Alice was a member of the working class — the useful, productive majority. She contracted that terrible disease because of the way she sold her labour power. Her courage and patience were such as the Falklands jingoists would hardly acknowledge. She was bewildered, too; why did it happen to her? To anyone? Why was it allowed? While searching for answers to these questions, she fought.

There was no such courage in the besuited smoothies in the pay of the asbestos companies, who pretended that the danger of the fibre had been vastly overrated and that their employers had done everything possible to make the workplaces safe. These miserable twisters, in face of the facts of the horrifyingly high death toll, insisted that virtually nobody had died as a result of working with asbestos.

Compared to these people, and to the vacuous ballyhoo of the South Atlantic, Alice glowed as a triumphantly brave and honest human being. Salute her. She will stand as evidence that her class has the qualities needed to refashion society so that such tragedies as hers will not happen again.

CP war zigzag (1982)

Book Review from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engineers at War 1939-1945. Richard Croucher. Merlin Press 1982 (£4.80)

Although ostensibly a history of the effects of the Second World War on the engineering unions, this book inevitably becomes a record of the sordid conspiracy of the Communist Party to seize control of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Their attempts turned to farce after the first volte-face, when Harry Pollitt was booted back to Manchester and the CPGB was instructed (from Moscow) that the war was nothing but an "imperialist power struggle".

The CP reverted to all its old tricks— instigating strikes, sabotaging the war effort and harassing Bevin, the Minister of Labour. Then came the Nazi invasion of Russia, and overnight the War was again a sacred crusade for democracy against Hitler. Pollitt, Wal Hannington, Jack Owen, Bob Lovell and other CP notables, notorious for their vehement denunciations of Bevin and the TUC in 1941 rushed up and down the country, wherever a strike broke out, to beg the naughty workers to go back to work. With Jack Tanner, President of the AEU, they supported Bevin's Joint Production Committees and the notorious Regulation IAA, under which young girls (in Coventry, for example) were jailed for absenteeism from the war factory.

Perhaps the whole thing is best summed up by an ex-CP member, Alf Doig, a tool-maker at the Acton Works of the Napier Engine Company:

  What is all this nonsense we get from Harry Shaw (CP) these days about the "workers backing up their leaders". We do not elect "leaders", we elect representatives; the former command, the latter carry out mandates. Sheep need leaders, and where you have sheep, you have shepherds, crooks, and fleecers.
   Here I would like to appeal to the Rank and File of the Communist Party to lake a holiday from the Party: study other peoples’ views and read the literature of the Party between October 1941 and May 1945. Then consider whether you are to be taken in any longer by the nonsense of "Changing Conditions". “New Situations’* and "leading the Working-Class etc." I know it is a hard job to break away, having done it myself, but DO IT before it breaks you.

Horatio

Why workers must combine (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The wealth of society is produced by the class of men and women who neither own nor control the means of wealth production and distribution: this is the great social contradiction of capitalism. Labour is the source of value, but those who labour are destined to relative degrees of poverty, while those in positions of ownership enjoy lives of privilege and luxury and are not compelled to produce anything. To state that capitalism is a system of class exploitation is not to moralise about it, but to define it scientifically.

Wage labour and capital must always be in conflict; the class struggle is inevitable in a society where two classes have directly opposing interests. James the capitalist wants Jack, the worker to work hard, take low wages and be thankful he’s employed. Jack the worker wants to expend as little energy as he can and receive as high a wage as possible. Jack is grateful to James for "giving him a job and a wage" — if he thought about it he would see that he is in fact giving James a free ride in life. Employment is a contract which is only entered into when where is a likelihood that workers will create more than the value of their labour power.

If the working class were half as "selfish" and "greedy” as the propagandists for capitalism claim, there would have been a socialist revolution years ago. Socialists are depending on the self-interest of our fellow workers, for only when they are so inspired will they create a society in which the best things in life are free for all. At the moment, contrary to all the bogus talk about “selfishness”, workers willingly accept inferior lifestyles, die to protect their bosses’ markets and generally regard exploitation as inevitable. The majority support the status quo, not because they are stupid, but because capitalism is well-geared to perpetuate those ideas which defend the position of the capitalist class.

Capitalism's propaganda may divert workers from the socialist solution (although it will not be able to do so forever), but it cannot shield them from the problems which class society throws up. No amount of clever talk and trickery can deny experience. In the early days of capitalism, workers and animals were treated by the capitalists almost indistinguishably; indeed, the British ruling class have always cared rather more for their pet dogs than for their human wage slaves. Lives were casually lost because of the use of insecure machinery, slacking employees were ruthlessly beaten, the hours of labour were so long as to cause physical harm, children were forced to perform filthy, dangerous tasks and any workers who resisted were sacked and left to starve. All of this was experienced by British workers only five or six generations back, and many of the capitalists living in respectable affluence today owe their positions to such ruthless exploitation. The same horror story is, of course, a permanent social feature of many parts of the industrialising world of today.

Experience of exploitation teaches workers elementary lessons about self-defence, the first usually being the value of combination. Many capitalists would like it if workers were unwilling or unable to combine — if they could be kept atomised so that individual "trouble-makers" could be picked out and excluded from employment. The moment that workers combine for the purpose of looking after their interests the long journey to self-emancipation has begun. Trade unions combine two factors: consciousness and organisation. Firstly, trade unions mark the recognition on the part of workers that they produce the wealth of society, that by striking they can stop production and force the employer to take them seriously, and that there is a common enemy: the boss. Secondly, trade unions provide important training in how to organise in a democratic manner. In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx expressed his clear recognition of the importance of industrial combination:

Big industry masses together in a single place a crowd of people unknown to each other. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of their wages, this common interest which they have against their employer, unites them in the same idea of resistance — combination. Thus, combination has always a double end. that of eliminating competition among themselves while enabling them to make a general competition against the capitalist. If the first object of resistance has been merely to maintain wages, in proportion as the capitalists in their turn have combined with the idea of repression, the combinations, at first isolated, have formed in groups, and in face of constantly united capital, the maintenance of the association became more important to them than the maintenance of wages. This is so true that the English economists are all astonished at seeing the workers sacrifice a great part of their wages on behalf of the associations which, in the eyes of these economists, were only established in support of wages. In this struggle — a veritable civil war — are united and developed all the elements necessary for a future battle. Once arrived at that point, association takes a political character. (Kerr edition. p.188.)

If Marx was unduly hopeful in seeing trade unions as ‘training schools for socialism’, he was quite correct in realising that only experience of conscious solidarity can provide workers with the kind of self-awareness necessary to turn them into a revolutionary class. Because they were not mere idealists who painted pictures of socialism in their heads. Marx and Engels did not attack trade unions as non-revolutionary organisations; they realised that only from their experience of self-defence could workers learn to take political action to end exploitation itself.

The earliest records of working class industrial combination stand as clear proof of just how heroically and effectively workers are capable of struggling. At the end of the eighteenth century the British capitalist class was so scared of combination that they passed the notorious Combination Acts, which made it illegal for workers to unite in their own defence. But illegality was no barrier to the dedicated workers who formed underground combinations. They understood that only by uniting could they be strong — just as the workers in Poland did when they defied their state capitalist masters and set up Solidarity. In 1812 the Scottish weavers came out on strike, defying the laws of their masters. In 1816 the South Wales miners came out. . . in 1818 the Scottish miners ... in the same year the Lancashire spinners. Many of these men and women were imprisoned or deported, but the combinations survived them. The north-east miners formed an illegal brotherhood and each worker had to swear “a most solemn oath to obey the orders of the brotherhood, under the penalty of being stabbed through the heart or of having their bowels ripped up”. When the Combination Acts were finally repealed in 1825 the workers responded with a wave of well-organised strikes. In 1826 the Lancashire cotton spinners fought a vigorous, but ultimately unsuccessful battle to resist a reduction in wages. In 1831 the marines and cavalry were used to crush a strike by the Durham miners. The ferocity of that assault, and that of the troops in their barbaric attack upon the Welsh ironmasters in the same year, showed that the capitalist state could and would use every violent tactic, including the killing of strikers, in order to protect the power of the parasitic elite. Although state violence secured short-term gains for the capitalists, in the long-term it only contributed to a greater feeling of hatred by trade unionists against the bosses. As Brontcrrc O’Brien wrote in 1834 :

The great advantage of a strike is that it increases the enmity between labourers and capitalists, and compels workmen to reflect and investigate the causes of their sufferings. . .

Legalised robbery

Many workers over-estimated the importance of trade unions as forces in the class struggle. They did not realise that as long as they confined themselves to struggling over the rate of exploitation — over how much of the values produced by workers shall go to the capitalists and how much shall constitute the price of labour power (wages and salaries) — there could be no way of breaking free from the inherently exploitative nature of the wages system. The economic laws of capitalism demand that workers must be legally robbed of the fruits of their labour in order for the system to run profitably. Trade unions can only provide limited defence against the level of exploitation; they are powerless to eradicate wage labour as such.

Socialists stand for the abolition of the wages system and argue that it is to this end that workers of all lands must combine, politically and democratically. But that does not mean that we arc unaware of the immense importance of industrial combination for the working class. The socialist attitude towards the industrial struggle is necessarily ambivalent; we encourage workers who are organising along sound lines in their own defence; but we recognise at the same time that most trade unionists support capitalism, knowingly or otherwise, and that the trade unionist aim of “fairness” under capitalism is illusory and reformist. Writing in The Labour Standard in 1881. Engels explained the impossibility of establishing “fairness” within the wages system:

But let us inquire out of what fund does Capital pay these '“very fair wages”? Out of capital, of course. But capital produces no value. Labour is, besides the earth, the only source of wealth; Capital itself is nothing but the stored-up produce of labour. So that the wages of Labour are paid out of labour, and the working man is paid out of his own produce. According to what we may call common fairness, the wages of the labourer ought to consist in the produce of his labour. But that would not be fair according to political economy. On the contrary, the produce of the workman’s labour goes to the capitalist, and the workman gets out of it no more than the bare necessaries of life. And thus the end of this uncommonly ‘fair’ race of competition is that the produce of the labour of those who do work is unavoidably accumulated in the hands of those who do not work, and becomes in their hands the most powerful means to enslave the very men who produced it. (7 May 1881.) •

As members of the exploited class, socialists join trade unions to defend their living standards. While a majority of workers support the wages system there is no other action which a socialist worker can take; except, of course, to engage in socialist propaganda. As socialists we support the principle of trade unionism. We do so because we understand where workers would be without unions and also because we see them as providing useful experience in the class struggle. In countries where democratic trade unions do not exist we urge workers to form them; and in countries like Britain, where apparently independent unions do exist, we urge workers to ensure that they are run as democratically as possible and to refrain from allowing trade union strength to be sidetracked into support for capitalist political parties. Much as we support trade unionism, as opponents of the wages system we [also] reject the limited, sterile and ultimately conservative position of most trade unions. So, socialists support trade union action and we seek to establish a system of society where industrial combination will no longer exist because exploitation has been ended.

The Socialist Party exists to encourage our fellow workers to acquire an appetite for something more than the crumbs from the cake which we, as a class, have baked. Put an end to pleading for a little more — to demanding the "right” to be exploited — to seeking "fairness” from a system which is based on the legal robbery of the workers as a class. Having learnt to combine for the purpose of negotiating with the master class, let us now unite to abolish their political power.

Steve Coleman

Editorial: Lessons from the past and present (1982)

Editorial from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The stubbornly high level of unemployment is producing a wealth of material for the use of economic and financial "experts" in comparing the present to the last time the total of jobless workers reached such heights. Even better, for the reminiscent journalist in need of a newsline, is the fact that it happened half a century ago—in 1932, when the post-1914-18 slumps were at their peak.

These comparisons usually overlook the period in between, when there was comparatively full employment—particularly from 1945 until the mid ’60s. Those were the days when Keynesian theories were supposed to have triumphed, when the economists and politicians claimed to be able to hold unemployment at bay by such measures as varying the rate of taxation—which, they assumed, was a controlling mechanism. If any of these measures were ever criticised in detail, it was usually enough for the politicians to threaten to discard the controls, which would inexorably bring back the misery of the 30s.

Now the Keynesian policies have been shown up in all their impotence. Unemployment remains high in spite of all the economists and financial wizards can do. The recession—world wide—is immune to all the curses, cajoling and incantations of the medicine men of modern capitalism. Indeed, in their more sombre moments (which nowadays means most of the time) those same experts will admit that the outlook is for the slump to continue, even to worsen, and for unemployment to increase. Workers who are sacked when they are in their forties and fifties, we are being told, may have to compose their minds to never being employed again. Those years the experts spent with their text-books, their lecturers and their calculators have left them as innocent of an understanding of capitalism as when they started out.

But are there comparisons between the present and the 30s and if so how valid are they? What contribution can they make to an understanding of society? As we pointed out last month, it is misleading to compare just the bald figures for unemployment. This game of doctoring statistics is played by politicians of all parties in their efforts to pick up the votes of the uninformed. The game takes no account of the fact that the level of unemployment has a specially awful significance for the working class, who depend for their livelihood on the sale of their labour power. It adds to the pressure in our daily survival struggle and debilitates our efforts to defend our living standards— as the railway workers have recently experienced.

This provides one valid comparison with the past. The period after the First World War was marked by some epic working class struggles against the pressures from the employers, as the world economy slithered into recession. Many of those battles ended in defeat for the workers; they were perhaps quickly humiliated, or like the miners after the General Strike, starved into a bitter defeat. In those days, as at present, workers who were trying to defend their living standards were castigated by the gutter journalists as wreckers, idlers and subversives.

As the ruling class felt their strength. the screw was tightened still further. Workers who were barely surviving on unemployment pay had what were called their ‘benefits' (a prime example of the political misuse of language) cut. In 1982 unemployed workers have waiting for them the ‘safety net' of Supplementary Benefit, which they receive after passing through an extremely humiliating experience. One of the ‘safety nets' of the 30s was the Unemployed Assistance Board, whose representatives were liable to advise workers to lighten their poverty by selling their furniture, cutlery and so on. The 30s, like the 80s, were times of exceptionally blatant degradation for the working class.

Yet through all this the political party which openly and arrogantly proclaimed its support for capitalism maintained its popularity. The Conservatives came through the 30s strong and united, apparently entrenched in power for ever. At election time, the workers gave them a hearty vote of confidence. The Labour Party was in disarray, with many of its leaders departed into a coalition with the Tories and the Liberals. There is a similar situation now, as an influential faction in the Labour Party runs for what they hope will be the cover of the Social Democratic Party, leaving the rest to contemplate an eternity in the political junk room.

If there are comparisons which can usefully be made over the past fifty years, they can be explained by the fact that this social system does not basically change. Capitalism in the 80s is the same society as it was in the days of Baldwin and Macdonald. It is similarly anarchic. It produces the same desperate, devastating problems. Its leaders are as impotent now as they were in 1932.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that, unless something is done to change this state of affairs, our successors in 2032 will be making similar comparisons, and reaching the same depressing opinion. In fact, capitalism cannot change. When it produces a war, or famine, or mass unemployment, it is not behaving in a wayward fashion but exactly in character. There can be no escape from the results of the system, in 1932 or in 1982, short of abolishing capitalism itself.

That is the crucial issue, the lesson to be gained from looking back over the past half-century. At present the working class absorb a staggering amount of punishment from the workings of capitalism and they dumbly accept that this must always be. But the future is in our hands. We have the power world wide to end capitalism and all its problems. We can have a world of common ownership and free access—a world of abundance and harmonious cooperation. If there is one lesson the past fifty years has for the working class it is of the urgent need for the new social system— socialism.

Revealing admission (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an interview published in Le Matin on 28 May, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the French Minister of Research and Technology (since promoted Minister of Industry and Research) declared:

We must not make a mistake as to the period in which we are living or as to the nature of the objectives which are accessible. We are in a country which can and must go further towards a living democracy. The objective in the present historical period is not socialism, which presupposes a level of consciousness, a sense of civic duty, in short a change in attitudes from which we are still far away. (Our emphasis)

Now socialism does indeed presuppose a certain level of consciousness: before it can be established there must be a majority that wants and understands it. Such a socialist consciousness clearly does not exist today and that is why socialism can’t be established straight away. In fact this is the only reason why it can’t, since everything else is there: a world-wide productive system capable of providing abundance for all and trained and qualified workers able to operate it.

It might be thought that in these circumstances people who called themselves ‘socialist’ would devote all their efforts to helping a socialist understanding to develop. But not the French Parti Socialiste. In a later radio interview Chevènement, who drafted the 1972 PS Government Programme and the more recent Projet Socialiste (an article in the Guardian on 16 July even speaks of him as a future Prime Minister),stated:

François Mitterrand was not elected to achieve socialism; he was elected on the basis of 110 proposals which commit us to this perspective, but this is not the objective of the present period (Radio Luxemburg 20 June, our emphasis).

But if Mitterrand wasn’t elected to achieve socialism — which is true — he is clearly obliged to act within the framework of capitalism. Mitterrand, in other words, was elected to run capitalism while trying to make 110 reforms to it. Chevènement implicitly recognised this when he explained to Le Matin journalists what the government’s present aim was:

Well, it is to gradually build the modern Republic. In the present historical period, the French model is that of a mixed economy, largely open to the world market, dominated by capitalism. But it is a society where the weight of the public sector, of the democratic tradition, of left wing political and trade union forces, is such that can be built there a democracy — I don't know how to qualify it, I would have said ‘advanced’ if the word ‘advanced’ hadn't been compromised in recent times. So let us say a vanguard democracy (our emphasis).

So in this ‘vanguard democracy’, this ‘modern Republic’, capitalism is going to continue. In fact, as Chevènement admits, this is the pipe-dream which the French Communist Party has been peddling for years under the name of ‘advanced democracy’, of a State capitalism freed from the grip of the monopolies and made to work in the interests of the workers by a Left government. It is a pipe-dream because capitalism cannot work other than as a system where profits must come before human needs. The austerity measures adopted by the PS/PC government in July, which will severely hit the living standards of workers in France, are dramatic confirmation of this. This U-turn was no accident, but something imposed on the government by the logic of capitalism, a logic which any party taking on government responsibility is sooner or later forced to accept and apply.

If, for the French PS, socialism is not the objective in the present historical period it remains so for us. That is why we are doing all we can to help the development of the majority socialist understanding which is indispensable before socialism can be established: the ‘level of consciousness’ which Chevènement talked about but towards the growth of which he himself does nothing to help. On the contrary, the confusion over the word “socialism” created by the PS only makes our task more difficult. As, for example, does the following remark by Michel Rocard, PS Minister for the Plan (and an ex-leader of the small leftist PSU): “As a socialist, I have never reproached employers for making too many profits, but more frequently for not making enough” (Le Monde, 14 July)!

Adam Buick

Letter From Europe: Money must go (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article recently appeared in the Luxemburg journal, News Digest.

Those who follow the adventures of the spacewoman Axa in the Sun will remember that when in March she arrived in the City of Artisans the following conversation too place:

Artisan: You're hungry.
Axa: Yes, but I've no money to pay for food.
Artisan: Money? We never use it! Take what you want and eat!
Axa: If your people don't use money they must be happy.

Presumably Axa based this conclusion on her experience of other planets, such as Earth, where money is used and where you do go hungry of you don't have any. In any event she raises an interesting point: would we on Earth also be happy if we didn't use money?

I remember about ten years ago buying a paperback on Euston Station entitles Who Needs Money? The book so intrigued me that I contacted the author who was called, I think, Herbert Lomas. He told me that there was a conspiracy to prevent his idea of abolishing money getting out as his publisher had not printed enough copies of his book and wasn't advertising it properly. I put this down to the paranoia sometimes associated with people who have seen the Light and found the Truth and can't understand why others don't too. After all, the publisher did publish his idea and so did help to spread his idea.

But, conspiracy or no conspiracy, Bertie Lomas at least did not have to suffer the fate of one of his more illustrious precursors as an advocate of abolishing money. Sir Thomas More, the man who inspired the film A Man for All Seasons, had his head chopped off by Henry VIII, not, I agree, for advocating the abolition of money but for remaining loyal to the Pope of Rome, though I'm sure Henry found both these opinions equally obnoxious.

More, who has the unique distinction of having a place both in the Marxist Hall of Fame and as a Catholic Saint on the right hand of God, expressed his ideas in a book entitled (some would say appropriately) Utopia which was first published in Louvain in 1516. It was written in Latin so it can't have had much of a readership at the time, but it has since been translated into many languages and must be the most read book by someone arguing for the abolition of money. In fact since More introduced the word "Utopia" into English (and into most other languages too) a money less society can be regarded as the genuine, original Utopia.

But to return to our question: would we on Earth be happy if we didn't use money? Well, one group who on the face of it would have no reason to be happy would be those whose jobs depend on the existence of money. People who work for banks are an obvious example, but they are not alone. There are also those who work in insurance, in advertising and marketing, those who calculate our wages, pensions, family allowances and all other payments, those who issue, collect or punch holes in tickets, shopkeepers, shop assistants, tax inspectors, accountants, Securicor, salesmen and buyers of all kinds. In fact in an administrative and financial centre like the town of Luxemburg well over half the population must be directly dependent on work connected with the use of money for their livelihood.

Only a minority are actually engaged in the work of producing the useful things or of performing the useful services we need to live. I'm thinking of the street cleaners, the building workers, those in the Arbed factory in Dommeldange and those making lavatory bowls and urinals at Villeroy and Boch — though in More's Utopia even these latter would be out of a job since he suggested that chamber pots should rather be made from the gold which would no longer be needed as money.

I hasten to add that this is not meant as a criticism of those employed in these non-productive functions connected with money (my own job wouldn't be above such a criticism either). I'm merely noting a fact and am fully aware that people have to find work where they can since without a job, they would have no money and without money . . .

But if there's no money, how would you distribute goods and services? "Take what you want and eat", as the Artisan said to Axa. Which seems a good enough to me. After all, you would have thought it unchallengeable that food should be grown to be eaten and not to be stockpiled as butter mountains and wine lakes or worse destroyed — which is what happens today when food is produced to be sold for money.

So the alternative to money would not be a return to barter, nor even equal shares for all, but free access for all to what they needed to live and enjoy life. As in More's Utopia: "When the head of a household needs anything for himself or his family, he just goes to one of these shops and asks for it. And whatever he asks for, he's allowed to take away without any sort of payment, either in money or in kind. After all, why shouldn't he?" Because, some would no doubt reply, there'd be chaos, it would be worse than Harrods on the first day of the sales; people would grab more than they needed. Or would they?

I once heard a Hyde Park orator deal with this particular objection to a moneyless society. He pointed out that even today certain things are free, either completely like the air we breathe or at least at the time of use like the water from the taps in our homes, yet you don't see people going around hoarding air or water; we only use water when we need it for drinking or cooking or washing.

I can give you another example. Down in Vittel in the Vosges there are public drinking fountains from which you can draw without paying the same water for which you pay a ridiculous price after it has been put in bottles. The locals use these fountains regularly nut, once again, take any one time only as much as they need. Sir Thomas More realised the reason for this as long ago as 1516: "There's more than enough to go round, so there's no risk of his asking for more than he needs—for why should anyone want to start hoarding, when he knows he'll never have to go short of anything?"

But back to Hyde Park. A heckler interjected that if things were freely available there'd be no incentive to work so that the stores could not be kept  continuously stocked with plenty of what people needed; therefore a moneyless system couldn't work. Q.E.D. I can't remember how the orator dealt with this point, but it didn't appear to be a problem in the City of Artisans. There people worked because they liked working:

Axa: You work for fun, then, in this City of Artisans.
Artisan: Stupid to work for anything else! 

Why indeed work for any other reason if you've got the choice? Today most people work at boring jobs in offices and factories not because they like the work (masochism is only a minority deviation) but because . . . they need money.

If you think about it, the abolition of money would mean other changes too and the disappearance of a whole host of problems we have to put up with today. There'd be no inflation, no taxes, no devaluations, no theft, no robbery, no muggings, no strikes, no riots, no blackmail, no corruption, no alimony, no poverty, no wars. But in case his paranoia gets worse, let's leave the last word to poor old Bertie Lomas, on the back cover of his book: "If money is the root of all evil why not abolish it and give mankind a new deal?"

Adam Buick