Why We Need to End Our Dependence on Money

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“Let’s see… do I have enough here to get my furnace fixed and pay off the city property tax bill that’s due this month, and have enough left over to pay the county property tax bill that will be due next month? Well, maybe if I cut my food budget in half for about 6 months and not take any vacation this year… I’m sure the fam will understand that we need food and heat more than a trip to Disney World…” (Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash)

To my fellow people in the working class — you know, the 99% of us who do all the useful work to produce everything but get an increasingly tiny amount of access to the vast wealth we can now mass produce while being saddled with dozens of bills per month? I have a serious request for all of you as we gradually wake up to the fact that we need to dispense with capitalism and move onto a better economic system:

We need to get over our reliance on money to “purchase” everything. Yes, I get it, we’re used to using money. To the point where we’ve come to think of it as something that is “fixed” into the nature of society because human civilizations have been using some variation of currency since class-divided societies began over 8,000 years ago.

That is the excuse many, even some socialists among the Classical Left, use to justify keeping some variation of it (e.g., “public” money; labor credits) around forever. It must be a very useful tool if we’ve been using it for that long, right? Hence, we should keep the idea of relying on “funds” in exchange for needed resources and services and to assess the value of goods blah blah blah forever, amirite?

No. Money was a tool that was useful and even necessary during a very long era of human history when production advanced to the point where a small surplus could be produced, but the capacity for mass production of items capable of producing an abundance for everyone in society was not yet possible. In other words, the pre-industrial era beginning with the first class-divided system (see below), when human existence revolved around real scarcity, a situation that affected all but a privileged few.

For by far the longest era of human history we existed in small tribes of hunter-gatherers and lived under a system often referred to as primitive communism. No money or currency was used, there was no ruling class as we would come to know it later, but everyone had to deal with a constant state of scarcity and endured an equality of poverty.

Regarding the progression of civilization that most modern historians accept, that point changed roughly between eight and ten thousand years ago when agriculture and animal husbandry were established. This improved production methods, enabling a small surplus to be produced. That was appropriated by a few “enterprising” (read: ruthless and domineering) individuals, and thus the first class-divided society emerged, which was ancient chattel slavery.

Human life changed from free-roving bands of hunter-gatherers to organized villages and city-states in a stable location, controlled by a few and often with a three-or-four-tiered class hierarchy who appropriated various amounts of this small surplus. But the largest number by far comprising these civilizations were slaves, who received just enough to sustain their lives so they could reproduce a new generation of labor fodder for the ruling classes.

And this is where currency similar to what we use today was established. It started with physical, living livestock very necessary at the time like oxen, then moved on to various forms of trade, and finally to a physical medium (originally all metal, not paper) that represented “value” for exchange that was not represented by the items or services we wanted. Again, since real scarcity pervaded the lives of most people at the time, this made currency/money into a very useful tool… then.

The Times Were Ever Changin’

The system of ancient chattel slavery started, as far as we know, with the first known major civilization, Mesopotamia, and continued until the fall of the Roman Empire.

At that point production had advanced enough for society to move onto the next economic world order, feudalism, that proliferated throughout the Middle Ages. That system was characterized largely by a hierarchy of privileged nobles, with a king and queen at the top, and the clergy of the Catholic Church having a powerful role as well. The lowest on the class system were serfs, who were granted land by a high-tier noble which they toiled on, giving most of it to him (or him and her) as “rent.”

During that time more advances in production had occurred, specifically the gradual emergence of a mercantile class who were the equivalent of what we today call private entrepreneurs, offering self-made goods and services entirely independent of the ruling nobility and clergy. This emerging class made feudalism progressively unstable & obsolete, paving the way for the next most advanced economic system, which would be capitalism.

The economic world order of feudalism went down kicking and screaming, as such long-established orders are wont to do, but its final death knell was delivered via the one-two blows of the American Revolution and the French Revolution that occurred soon afterwards.

Thus, capitalism — along with America, and the basic world order we still know today — was established. And private ownership, production for profit, and entrepreneurship as we know them today began in earnest, albeit against the backdrop of a time period prior to the Industrial Revolution. Real scarcity still pervaded the world, however, and so class divisions were still an inevitable fact of life.

Capitalism was the best possible system at the time, and thus money was still a useful tool — but this was still before the Industrial Revolution. This new class-divided economic order rapidly made the industrialization of society possible, and at that point — roughly the final few decades of the 19th century when the factory system was firmly in place — we now for the first time in human history had the technological capacity to rapidly mass produce items.

Thus, for the first time in history, it was technologically possible to produce not just a small surplus for a few but an abundance for all.

This was a huge game-changer for human civilization of incredible magnitude that proponents of retaining capitalism and the use of/reliance upon money, i.e., the continued commodification of everything, continuously downplay and attempt to rationalize away.

I’m here to tell you that we need to stop doing that. And to explain why money has become an archaic tool that was once useful but is now utterly regressive, is an obstacle towards advancing to a much better system, and imposes extraordinary burdens and restrictions on our lives that are no longer materially justified.

This is not to mention its ever-continuing accumulation into smaller and smaller hands that allow a few people to live in obscene privilege while the vast majority of us have to struggle to earn enough money just to keep a single roof over our heads, keep our families fed, keep our heat & electricity on, and to have any hope of affording recreation to ease the psychological stresses.

And this during a point in time where automation is advanced enough that we no longer have to live like this. And where not only is money obsolete as a useful tool, but so is class rule and production for profit. These latter two things, of course, go hand-in-hand with a system reliant upon money.

The Common Excuses to Keep Money Around Indefinitely

First, let’s address all of the rationalizations to keep money around forever.

“We’ve used it for so many millennia! Why give up a tool that has been so useful to humanity for a few thousand years?!”

Yes, I get that… we’re used to it.

Just like we’re used to being lorded over by a ruling class instead of worker self-governance.

And how we had once gotten used to using horses for transportation instead of cars.

And plowing fields with oxen instead of modern automation.

And preserving food with salt instead of refrigeration units. (Imagine Nancy Pelosi having to live back then and be deprived of her two 10k-each refrigerators that store her boatloads of ice cream!)

And communication via physical mail through the post office rather than email.

And using steam power instead of electrical.

And communicating long distance via land lines & pay phones restricted to a single location instead of mobile cell phones that go wherever we do.

And cable television instead of streaming.

I think you get the gist. All of the above were once useful tools that we relied on for a long period of time… before technology progressed to the point where we no longer needed them. And continued use of them would have held us back rather than allowing us to move forward.

During the long era of human history — including several generations after capitalism was established — when productive technology was still not advanced enough to produce an abundance for all and every item had to be crafted by hand, it made sense to put a price tag on these items and services. Thus, the establishment of currency, commerce, and business-related trade during these bygone eras was both logical and even necessary.

But the Industrial Revolution changed all of that to a vast degree. Modern automation can mass produce items in a manner unimaginable to pre-industrial civilizations. And we can do it without forcing human labor into brutal toil, either as chattel slaves or as “employees” of the wealthy few who still privately own & control this automation (i.e., as wage slaves).

Ultimately, we do not need money, we need stuff. And we need services to maintain important items, like the physical integrity of our homes, the furnaces that heat them, the circuitry that provides us with electricity, and the plumbing systems that provide us with water.

“I once lived on a small communal project with barely over 1,000 people and we tried to operate without money. It failed! This proves that you can’t live without money!”

I am well aware of the many attempts to establish small “utopian” communes that tried to practice a sort of “socialism on a small scale.” They were not only popular during the hippy era of the late 1960s and ’70s, but experiments of that sort go back to the 19th century.

Yes, they failed. But they did not prove that money is necessary in a universal context regardless of the technological nature of the civilization we’re talking about. What it actually proves is my point and that of Marxists in general, not the pro-money point they were trying to make.

Please read the following sentence carefully, and never let it slip from your mind:

A moneyless society where items & services do not have to be commodified depends on having access to advanced industrialization. And we have that today, at least in the “First World” nations!

People in pre-industrial eras, prior to the establishment of the factory system in the mid-to-late 19th century “First World” countries, did not have access to this type of technology.

If it’s one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer tribes left in the remote spaces of the world, they continue to use a form of primitive communism. If only a small surplus is capable of being produced, then they will have a class-divided society where life for all but a few revolves around actual scarcity, as opposed to the artificial scarcity that continued reliance on money within this technological context imposes on us.

That also counts for “Third World” or “developing” nations of today who lack access to this level of industrial technology, including those who claim to be “socialist”.

And it most certainly accounts for these small communal units attempting to make their way outside of the mainstream capitalist society sans any access to advanced technology. If they do not want to have a fully primitive style of existence and live off the land but want to keep acquiring items & services from the outside capitalist world, they are going to continue needing money. It’s that simple.

No, We Do Not Need Money to “Assess Value” of Items et al.

Here are other things I keep hearing to justify the continued existence of money.

“It’s a useful tool to assess value of items or services.”

You do not need to do that by putting a financial price tag on something. You can easily assess something’s intrinsic worth — i.e., how much it’s wanted and needed — in the modern post-industrial era via software that measures levels of consumption and reports of aesthetic tastes when it comes to our reasonable wants.

“But some people like to be able to say they own something of value.”

Your personal family heirloom, or something you made yourself, will have a lot of sentimental value. This need not translate into financial value. I’m sorry, but if you want to be able to say you own something of financial value, that is purely for status within a capitalist system, or at least a class-divided society that runs on money.

It’s purely to establish “bragging rights” for yourself, which is to stroke your ego. And that is hardly a legit justification for maintaining our reliance on money.

In a classless & moneyless society, you can easily have “bragging rights” for something you own in a different context — because you made it yourself, it’s of your own personal design, and you find it beautiful and fulfilling as a result. Or simply because it was passed on to you by a cherished relative, friend, or mentor. And I think that would elicit a better type of admiration from others whom you show it off to.

“But I’m an entrepreneur and I like the idea of people buying my stuff! And running a business is fun!”

That is more stroking of the ego. I’m an entrepreneur who writes and sells books, and who edits and publishes books written by others. I certainly do receive gratification when people buy them.

But I would also receive gratification if people wanted to read them in a non-transactional manner, and went out of their way to take the time to seek them out and do so. That is a different type of investment, and one that is equally important. And I certainly will not argue for the continuation of a money-based system for an ego-centric reason like the above.

And yes, running a business can be fun for some. Just like being a debt collector can be fun for some. But neither are materially necessary any longer. We do these things to make money because we have to make money to survive in this system; there is no realistic way of opting out. We have to make do and struggle against compromising our personal ethics as much as we can to do so.

Entrepreneurship is interesting and even fun at times, but we can also acquire fun and fulfillment from providing useful services to people in a non-transactional environment where we do not have to rely on money.

How About “Public” Money That Does Not Create Debt?

I know and respect many in the Left who propose this. And these are always individuals who refuse to acknowledge that money was a useful tool only in pre-industrial or low-industrial societies. They seem to be willfully blind to the material consequences of technology changing as much as it has over just the past 150 years compared to the entirety of human civilization before it.

And they act as if what may have worked well for a knight or artisan operating in 6th century Europe can necessarily be applicable to those of us living in today’s technologically advanced age.

In short, they refuse to acknowledge the level of technology now operating across many nations in the current global system and how it can be rapidly provided to the “less developed” nations if only we lived in a classless and moneyless society.

Yes, it’s good that such individuals recognize the hardship of debt that we’re currently being crushed by. But if you want to eliminate all the problems that come with the commodification of everything, why keep money around? Why continue to require its use?

Consider this scenario. Money is now “public.” It’s administered by a nationalized banking system.

Our current level of technology enables us to produce enough pianos to provide one for everyone who wants to use one and contribute new vocal scores to society. Only one problem: they lack the “funds” to purchase it.

A big city wants to acquire several new fire trucks to deal with encroaching forest fires, and these life-saving vehicles can easily be quickly manufactured or moved into the area in large numbers. But here’s the problem: there isn’t enough of a “budget” in the local or federal public bank to allow for it. “How are we supposed to ‘pay’ for these trucks?” a local representative of the people’s council laments in a state of solemn concern.

Envision that travel all over the world for research or a vacation will soon be easier than ever due to the public availability of space shuttles that can take you anywhere on the globe in 30 minutes. However, you can’t take your dream vacation in record time because you lack the “funds” to pay for it. Not only that, but there isn’t a “budget” to provide that service for people in your city.

So, why continue to rely on having enough money to “pay” for needed items and services when we can now provide an abundance of almost everything for everyone? And the few things we still may not be able to mass produce quickly can be reasonably and ethically rationed on the basis of individual need, not on the basis of ability to pay. Money gets in the way of all that.

The Consequences of Relying on Money in the Post-Industrial Era

I am going to share a personal anecdote of something that happened to me within the past two weeks.

I am not a person of means. I own two houses that I was lucky enough to inherit, and I rent out the apartments in them besides the one I reside in. But if you do not have a job that is lucrative, home ownership and renting for profit is a mixed bag due to… yes, the need for money to maintain them. And to pay the city and county property taxes, the sewer tax, and the water bills, all of which are exorbitant these days.

Yes, it’s good to have that extra income. That’s one of the positives. However, that is only a good thing when items within the house do not break, requiring you to pay huge sums of money to repair or replace them, let alone keeping up the infrastructure of the house itself.

Please allow me to share with you what happened to me over the past week and a half to illustrate this.

Then you decide how lucky I am to inherit those two houses. Then tell me how a reliance on money in a post-industrial era is a good thing. Then tell me if you have not experienced similar issues on a routine basis that seriously interfere with your ability to live a comfortable life, let alone one relatively free of psychologically draining stress.

Here is what happened. One of my tenants’ clothing dryers broke. I had to drop $550.00 for a new one and go into debt to pay it off.

Then just a few days later my own furnace broke. I had to drop another $1,000.00 as a down payment, which wiped me the fuck out. And I was only able to get the heating company to accept that and replace it because I managed to get Affirm to finance a chunk of the rest, thus putting me in huge debt to them. And I still owe another $1,700.00 to the heating company. I can’t use their regular financing option because I have terrible credit largely due to outstanding student loans*.

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*Yes, those damn curses from legal loan sharks that the government thinks is okay to suck up so much of what little money most of us have, all because we were bamboozled into thinking a college education would benefit us financially. And which Biden lied about taking care of (no, he didn’t actually want to do it; no billionaire does!).

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How is that for living under a system that forces your life to revolve around having enough money to do just about anything you want or need to do? And how this affects you negatively on numerous levels if you’re not lucky enough to be one of the few to be born into an affluent family; or, one of the fewer still who are lucky enough to “strike it big” by a combination of having a lucrative skill set, being in the right place at the right time, and knowing the right people.

But it gets even better, so please take heed.

When checking my old furnace, the workmen discovered that it malfunctioned due to age. It was working extra hard to (poorly) heat the house, so the metal casing cracked. That meant carbon monoxide gases were being slowly introduced into my apartment. If I hadn’t have gotten tired of enduring poor heating and deciding to bear the cost of repairs when I did (I was strongly contemplating letting it go for now), I could have been dead within a few weeks to a few months.

During a discussion with the project manager of the heating company as I was struggling to find a way to finance the damn furnace, I happened to ask him how many other working class people are in exactly this situation… and are unable to replace a faltering furnace because they cannot afford it.

How many of them are freezing during the cold months as a result? And how many of them may be slowly being killed by carbon monoxide emissions due to a similar issue they cannot afford to repair? All because they lack the money to buy a new furnace, do not have credit good enough for financing, and are not able to pull off what I did to obtain it (my desperation incited me to try Affirm, and I’m damn lucky they approved it; we shouldn’t have to rely on luck to survive in this world!).

He lamentedly told me that he doesn’t know what to tell such people. That’s how it is in a system that relies on money. If you can’t pay for something, and can’t get a legal loan shark to help you “finance” it, then you have to go without.

Very scary, people.

Please consider this, because if you’re a working class homeowner, or renting from a working class homeowner, these are the types of things you will be constantly facing due to the fact that we commodify every goddamned thing, no matter how essential it may be.

And we consider non-essentials-for-living that nevertheless contribute to our psychological health to be “non-issues” we’re repeatedly told to “do without.” Imagine doing without that vacation you want and need for relaxation and the sake of your psychological health, including an inability to do the simplest things like going to the movies or the local comedy club for some entertainment, after dealing with all of the above.

But it still didn’t end there for me! Nope.

A few days after that, the plumbing in the cellar of the other house I owned started backing up, and I had to call a plumbing company. It turned out that the pipes were rotting and chips of metal were flowing into the cellar tub sink and causing the kitchen sink upstairs to back up.

I also needed to replace the cast iron tub sink in the cellar. I pay for a home warranty service for that (another big monthly expense!), but guess what? They do not cover those cellar tub sinks! Soooo, it’s going to cost me another $1,800.00 to get one, and I had to go into debt with the plumbing company for that because I’m wiped out. And this on top of everything else I just mentioned that happened mere days earlier!

And it still gets better! When a close friend saw how stressed I was, he told me, “I think you really need a good vacation. When was the last time you even had a vacation?” I told him what I’m now passing on to you: I have not had a vacation for several years, because I couldn’t afford it. And I sure as hell can’t afford one this year! Because I do not have enough money to pay for one.

But it gets better still! I am now unable to pay the property taxes for both houses in the city on time, and they are sky-high in the city where I live.

And in case you’re wondering — I live in a “blue” state in a big city run entirely by Democrats and they have done jack shit for the working class here. They have continuously raised our property taxes and imposed numerous financial burdens on us that make it exceedingly difficult to own houses, maintain them if you do, or even to afford rent if you still want to eat.

And you Dem supporters say these scumbags are supposed to be on our side? Not when they, like the Republicans, are controlled by those few who have lots of money. And money is so pivotal to effective campaigns so that a politician has a chance of winning. Nice to rely on money, huh?

This is What we Get for Not Giving Up Our Emotional Connection to Money

The above are all consequences of continuing to rely on money for all our essential needs and reasonable wants in a post-industrial civilization that can easily provide all of this on a non-transactional basis. Instead, these can all be provided for us in great abundance directly in exchange for a reasonable contribution of our labor. And that contribution no longer requires toil over long hours per week due to these advances in automation.

How many of the rest of you are in this situation? You know, struggling and under severe stress and psychological duress that often makes simply being alive a huge chore. All because you cannot acquire enough money to pay for anything, especially during times when you’re hit with one financial crisis after another.

What does that do to your physical and mental health? What does that do for the well-being of your family? Does it strain your most cherished personal relationships? Does it make you unable to even sustain a romantic partnership for many obvious reasons? (And please don’t tell me that love is all you need for that in a capitalist system!)

Ultimately, does living like this make you the best version of yourself? What trouble has desperation to have enough money gotten you into? What ethical breaches have you conducted while on the job (including the malicious use of office politics against others) or even in your personal life just to stay afloat?

If you have had these ethical lapses, should you blame yourself or the system? You can blame both. Yes, you are ethically responsible for your actions. However, a system that puts these types of pressures on people, especially during an era where it is no longer necessary from a material standpoint, is also to blame.

The Bottom Line of the Bottom Line

The main point here is that the only “reason” so many want to continue our reliance on money, the commodification of items, the competitive buying and selling characteristic of a market-based system, or use of non-debt “public” funds to move resources are the following two.

1: They think capitalism was intended to exist forever, much as they think money itself should, just because both have existed for a long time and/or because capitalism was established alongside the creation of America, so they think supporting capitalism is somehow patriotic. And that therefore being against its indefinite continuation is somehow shitting on the American experiment.

Yes, conservatives and Libertarians feel that way. We know that. But remember those examples I made above explaining how one newly established economic system that was the best possible system for its time eventually provided the technical foundation to move on to the next.

Much as primitive communism paved the way for ancient chattel slavery when agriculture & animal husbandry were developed under it. And how ancient chattel slavery eventually paved the way for feudalism due to certain advances made in the former.

And how feudalism eventually paved the way for capitalism once the productive advances made during the course of the former allowed the development of individual mercantile entrepreneurs who ultimately shattered the old system of serfs reliant on a hierarchy of royalty who provided them land in exchange for “rent.”

And much as capitalism paved the way for Industrial Democracy (i.e., Classical Socialism) as a result of making the Industrial Revolution possible. Moving onto the next system is not somehow shitting on or ungrateful to the Founders of America and the mission they established but rather continuing it to its next logical step. That may be considered patriotic in the purest sense possible.

2: We are so used to using money that many of us on the Left simply cannot envision a system operating without it. They even envision a post-capitalist world to still be using money.

That is one of the many forms of psychological revolution that we have to achieve before a viable political revolution dedicated to actual fundamental change can happen. We have to move past what we are familiar with and move into uncharted territory that modern technology makes possible for the first time in human history.

This means abolishing our reliance on a ruling class to make our decisions for us (which amounts to them only making decisions to benefit themselves).

It means abolishing the idea that toil, as opposed to meaningful work, must always be done by human labor instead of automation.

It means abolishing the deeply ingrained idea that humanity is inherently corrupt and instead accept that our economic environment largely dictates our behavior towards each other and the environment around us.

And it also means abolishing our emotional connection with money and the idea that because it was a useful tool under pre-industrial or low-industrial conditions means that it was also intended to exist forever. It needs to go the way of the steam engine because technology has made the former as obsolete and therefore regressive as the latter.

Otherwise, our “post-capitalist” society is going to be another mere variation of what we have now. And a continuation of most, or all, of the problems we have today beyond the point where most of them are still materially justified.