PERSONAL COLUMN

In praise of money

JOHN ROWAN WILSON

Somebody was asking me the other day what I thought was the most important single event in my life, the one which made me feel that I had at last grown up and could face the world on adult terms. Was it my first sex- ual experience, for instance, or exposure to physical danger? I answered without hesita- tion that it was neither of these. It was the day I became a capitalist.

Not a very important capitalist, I hasten to say. The sum I inherited in my middle twen- ties was modest. Yet it was mine to do with as I pleased. It was also too large to be reasonably directed towards any form of cur- rent expenditure. I was therefore compelled to invest it.

This was a completely new experience to me. Until that moment I had always been, as it were, on the receiving end of life. I had managed my small affairs on a pocket- money basis. The allowance I had received from my father had merged insensibly into my monthly payments (hardly larger than an allowance) from the national health service. I had spent my money as I had received it, without a thought of the future. Financially speaking, I lived as a child.

Now, in a stroke, I had become an adult. The possessor of capital can no longer, with safety, live in the present or confine his knowledge to his own small affairs. His interests are being constantly expanded, and his knowledge of the world increased, in the most compelling manner possible, by the necessity to preserve his money.

Like most small investors, my aim was not to make a fortune by gambling; I simply wanted to hold on to what I had got. My first great shock was to find this was impossible, by conventional means, since there was no such thing as a safe investment. The W- eaned `gilt-edged securities', I discovered, were merely a device by which the govern- ment robbed innocent people of their sav- ings. Later I found that big, respectable, 'blue chip' companies held no safety either, being often mere receptacles of inertia and inefficiency. It also became painfully ap- parent to me that solicitors, bank managers, and stockbrokers were, when it came down to it, no better guides to the preservation of my modest holdings than I was myself.

I began to learn that in matters so dear to a man's heart as money, logic holds only a minor place. Emotion is all, and value is a -strange, mystical thing built up not only out of achievements in the past and the present, but of personal confidence and expectation for the future. I discovered one of the great myths which dominate the human mind—the feeling that the trend we are in now must continue, that the market must go up because it is going up or go down because it is going down.

In the course of this I became, willy-nilly, that supposedly wicked thing, a speculator. I have never been able to see what is wrong with speculation as an activity. The specula- tor does not create additional value, all he does is to try to foretell the future by the use of logical analysis. In any other field this is regarded as a very high and praiseworthy form of intellectual activity. Why on earth should forethought be all right in Whitehall or the boardroom but somewhat nasty in the Stock Exchange? And why are people spoken of disparagingly as 'gnomes' when they sell British pounds and as farsighted in- ternational financial experts when they buy them?

"Nor is speculation an intrinsically pro- fitable exercise. For every speculator who wins, there is another who loses, and the net gains from the whole process are largely fictitious, being composed of the degree to which the government has chosen to inflate the currency. The main gain which accrues to the capitalist from the manipulation of his money is not financial but educational. The effort he expends is a small price to pay for a practical demonstration of the faithlessness of politicians, the unreliability of pro- fessional advice, and the emotional factors which govern all aspects of the so-called science of economics.

Yet, strangely enough, this educational ac- tivity is viewed with morbid suspicion. Shab- by devices have been introduced for ex- propriating the capitalist. It is pretended that his gains on paper due to the current infla- tion are genuine gains and should therefore be taxed. His property is compulsorily purchased at knock-down prices and crip- pling imposts are levied by the Land Com- mission on purely notional increases in value.

The attitude behind these actions, and the public acceptance of them, is not dissimilar to the Victorian attitude towards sexual rela- tions. Here we have a human instinct which everyone in his heart knows to be natural and ineradicable. Every normal human being has a desire for possession just as he has a desire for sex. Yet convention, allied to the deep puritan element in British life that distrusts all natural human instincts, declares it to be sinful.

Capitalism today, like sex yesterday, is claimed by its opponents to give rise to all kinds of nameless, crippling diseases.

Avarice, heartlessness, greed and cruelty—there is no limit to the awful effects that may ensue from having a few thousands tucked away in a unit trust. To read left-wing literature about the vices of the bourgeoisie is like listening to the thunderings of a Vic- torian schoolmaster on the dangers of

masturbation. And when the government runs into economic problems, the scapegoats are always to hand, devil figures every one of them—the City, the currency manipulators, the international bankers, the gnomes.

Capitalism is, in fact, the scarlet woman of our current ci■ ilisation. And like other scarlet women, she is not only wicked, but also, in a shameful way, deeply attractive. As a consequence of this the pornography of money is everywhere. Financial voyeurism is one of the most popular amusements of our egalitarian society. The newspapers are obsessed by the earnings of footballers, entertainers, criminals, and marriageable company directors. Endless awestruck features are written about the wealth of Mr Onassis, or the Beatles. or Paul Getty, or Peter Sellers. Celebrities on television are constantly asked vulgar and impertinent questions about their incomes. How much do they earn? Are they millionaires? Do they eat caviar every day for breakfast?

Amid this orgy of financial titillation, the socialist politicians sit shuffling in their seats like Nonconformist divines trapped in a strip club. Every now and then one of them steps out of his seat, smiling uneasily, and later emerges on stage, having exchanged his dogcollar for a jockstrap and his party card for a piece of stock in a television company. The rest of them spend their lives in a state of suppressed conflict.

I sympathise with them, as I do with all men unfortunate enough to hold principles which conflict with their basic human instincts. But.is it fair that they should try to exorcise their own natural acquisitiveness by condemning it in us? It sometimes seems to me that what they object to is not so much the possession of capital but the shameless fact of its enjoyment. They would be more at ease if we would all agree to feel as guilty as they do about it.

This is the explanation I prefer, since the alternative one is too depressing. I cannot conceal from myself that the most violent tirades against capitalism are from men who are most anxious to make us all subservient to the state. They detest the capitalist not for his vices but for his virtues. It is not his ac- quisitiveness that affronts them, so much as his independence. For while money may not make a man happier or better, what it does do is to open up more options. The possession of capital allows a man to in- crease his capacity for operating as an in- dividual rather than as a cog in a machine. It enables him to indulge his principles in a way that would be selfish and foolhardy if he had no financial resources.

It seems clear to me that a man who is in a position to give up his job in case of necessity is a more honest, independent in- dividual than one who is not. During the years I spent in industry I was constantly distressed by the timidity and subservience to authority shown at all levels, even by men carrying great responsibilities and earning high salaries. The trouble with them was that they were too dependent on their jobs; for a high salary does not confer financial in- dependence—quite the reverse. A man with a high salary tends to live up to it and get used to the comfort it brings.

This kind of affluent pauperism is one of the greatest threats to human dignity in a modern industrial society. To protect himself against it, a man has only his own moral courage, his skill at his profession or trade, and his capital. And not the least of these is capital.