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Title: Abolish Money! Author: Shūsui Kōtoku Date: 1900 Language: en Topics: money Source: Retrieved on 10 July 2011 from http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/s4mxdq Notes: From: Yorozu Choho (Morning News), 9 February 1900.
When bacteria enter a person’s bloodstream, so that person’s health is
gradually undermined.
It is the same with money as with bacteria. Since money has unlimited
power in the world, the ways of the world are bound to be increasingly
debased. Step by step, morality is bound to be ruined and human nature
faced with corruption. In the end, society is driven to destruction.
There are people calling for the abolition of prostitution, waxing
indignant over the depravity of the gentry, advocating the reform of
popular customs urging that morality be improved ... and so on. Yet, it
seems to me that at times like these, when money is needed even to get
hold of a volume dealing with the subject of morality or to gain
admission to a half-day course of lectures, all the endless chatter of
their sermonising is utterly futile.
Nobody willingly becomes a prostitute. Nobody willingly sells their
honour. There is nobody who does not want popular customs to be reformed
or who does not want morality to be improved. Yet the reason why things
work out differently is simply because of money.
Instead of people putting so much effort into overworking their tongues
and wearing out their pens it would be better for them to give priority
to demonstrating the omnipotent power of money. If one does not get rid
of money, then one cannot destroy the omnipotent power which money
exercises in other spheres. To put it another way, unless one abolishes
the necessity for money in this world, it is quite impossible to improve
the ways of the world or human nature.
Someone who has no money cannot live. This is the way the world is at
present. Yet even in today’s corrupt society, no-one could say that this
is right and proper. Truly, a person lives by other things than money.
Over and above money, there is strength and there is honour. There is
right and there is duty. There is bread and there are clothes. Yet
nowadays, when money has unlimited power, is there any room for truth in
the world? Can what is right be done?
If one fine morning it were put to the test, if money were abolished and
the need for it completely eradicated, what a noble place the world
would be! How peaceful! How happy!
Bribery, corruption, people selling their principles — all these would
completely disappear. Murder, robbery and adultery would be greatly
reduced too. There would be no need to call for the abolition of
prostitution, nor to advocate the reform of popular customs. All at once
it would be just like the Buddhists’ pure land and the Christians’
heaven.
It is natural that there should be any number of rises and falls in
history but, if money had not existed in the civilisations of ancient
India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, I believe that it would have been
possible for them to have lasted several thousand years more.
But in days like these when money has such power, if we utter the words
‘Abolition of Money’, people look at us as though we are mad. Is it
madness, though? Are you prepared to say that the modern European
socialists who are spreading everywhere throughout the world (sic) are
all mad, then? — because the socialists have the abolition of money and
the suppression of the private ownership of capital as their ideals.
They take this position because they want to see the individual — and
society as a whole — live by other things than money. In other words,
they want to replace money by strength and honour, by right and duty.
Indeed, truth and righteousness lie in doing just this. So if you agree
that truth and righteousness really should be put into practice, then
why should you think of socialism as being difficult to realise in
actual life? Socialism is far from being an impossibility. Rather it is
just that it has not been put into effect up till now.
Why don’t people who want to improve human nature and the ways of the
world stop their petty squabbles and put their efforts into achieving
socialism? If they did this, it would be the quickest way for them to
achieve their objectives.
The nineteenth century was the age of liberalism but the twentieth
century is about to become the age of socialism. All capable people need
to wake up to this new trend in the world — and to this alone.