.jpg)
I.
As is well-known, D. H. Lawrence regarded mankind's money-mania as a collective form of insanity: "Money is our madness, our vast collective madness." [1]
And his proposed solution to this madness (which he elsewhere describes as a perverted instinct which rots the brain and corrupts the soul) is to terminate the present financial system: "Kill money, put money out of existence." [2]
Society, he says, must establish itself upon a different (revolutionary) basis from the one we have now; for endlessly chasing a fistful of dollars results in vicious competition and turns us all into fiends [3].
Whilst these tiny snippets, taken from Lawrence's 1929 poetry collection Pansies, might not constitute a comprehensive political critique of capital - might, in fact, simply be the musings of a romantic poet dreaming of a socialist utopia in which food, housing, and heating would be free for everyone [4] - they do at least make it clear that Lawrence hated having to earn, save, and spend money.
II.
The question that arises, however, is this: would Lawrence have welcomed a cashless society of the type presently evolving and being promoted by many politicians and bankers?
I doubt it: for clearly the so-called cashless society only allows those who govern us and run the financial system to exercise still more power and control; to strangle us ever-tighter in their octopus arms [5]. It's not a return to the a world prior to notes and coins, where barter was the system of exchange, but a slide into a (dystopian) future where money has been digitalised (i.e., turned into a form of electronic information or data).
I know all the arguments made in favour of a cashless society - it's quick and convenient, it's safe and secure, it prevents crime, lowers business costs, and even reduces the transmission of disease [6] - but I'm also aware of the dangers that threaten from a society founded upon total surveillance of the individual and the complete control over their money (their savings and financial transactions).
It's not just a loss of privacy that concerns - but a loss of freedom. There's also the question of what happens to those who don't have (or might not want) bank accounts; will millions of people effectively become non-citizens and be despised and discriminated against as such?
In sum, I don't want to belong to a cashless economy and certainly don't welcome the idea of a central bank digital currency, allowing that coldest of all cold monsters, the State, to monopolise the cashless payment system. Thus, whilst I'm sympathetic with Lawrence's call to kill money, I'm (paradoxically) supportive of those, such as Nigel Farage, who are working to ensure the survival of cash [7].
Notes
[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Money-madness', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 421.
[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Kill money', The Poems, Vol. I, p. 422.
[3] See the poem 'Wages' in the above volume, p. 452.
[4] See the poems 'Money-madness' and 'Kill money' once more. In the latter, Lawrence writes: "We must have the courage of mutual trust. / We must have the modesty of simple living. / And the individual must have his house, food and fire all free like a bird."
[5] See the poem 'Why?' in The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 391-92.
[6] We should, I think, interrogate all of these alleged advantages of going cashless. Just to take the last of these claims, for example, whilst it's true that dirty old banknotes and grubby coins can carry disease-causing organisms (such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Covid-19), cash has been found to be less likely to transmit disease than commonly touched items such as card terminals and PIN pads.
[7] Readers who also wish to protest the move towards a cashless society in the UK may like to support the GB News campaign - 'Don't Kill Cash' - which Farage is spearheading: click here.
This post was inspired by a remark made by David Brock in a recent email, for which I am grateful.
