5. Money

A MORAL PRIMER SIMON RAVEN

This is the concluding extract from Simon Raven's 'substantial primer of moral and social instruction for the adolescent young.'

"Do you ever think what money is?"

'The Duke paused so long . . . that Lord Gerald was obliged to answer.

' "Cheques, and sovereigns, and bank notes," he replied with much hesitation.

"Money is the reward of labour," said the Duke. ". . . It is a commodity of which you are bound to see that the source is not only clean but noble." ' Thus spake the Duke of Omnium and Gatherum, and we can be pretty sure that his opinion was that of his creator, honest Anthony Trollope, who was much concerned with money and spent much of his time and talent in writing about it. But, of course, when one is young one tends to take Lord Gerald's view. Money, one thinks then, is cheques and sovereigns and bank notes, and so long as there is plenty of them there is no call to trouble further. Such, at least, was my own attitude. I was not interested in monetary theory, still less in any moral doctrine which might attach to it, only in having enough in my pocket for my immediate extravagant purposes.

Money, I thought, was somehow valid in itself; no matter how I came by it, a pound note represented something absolute; and to have pound notes in abundance was therefore the same as having a personal attribute, like charm or intelligence, which could only en- hance my value in my own eyes and those of all about me. In short, the mere state of having money was, without any qualification, both desirable and creditable; never mind where it came from or whither it went so long as a substantial supply was maintained.

My only defence for having taken so naif and mindless a view must be that this view has always been widespread, and at no time more widespread than it is today. Up and down this country, there is a ludicrous and pathetic belief that more money is to be had simply for the asking and that money so obtained will make a better person of him who obtains it. We all, the argument runs, have a right to a full life; money can provide everything needed for a full life: ergo we all have a right to money.

Just how foolish and indeed ignoble this syllogism is, both in its premises and in its conclusion, can be seen as soon as we revert to Trollope's simple and incontrovertible state- ment, 'Money is the reward of labour.' Money, that is to say, is given to a man in ex- change for work done, goods produced or ser- vices rendered in order that he may be able, as a fair recompense, to purchase the equiva- lent in work, goods or services for his own benefit. If a man decides to work or produce or serve less, yet continues to receive the same money or more, then clearly the value of money will decay, because there will be larger quan- tities of it around the place and less on which it can be spent.

This elementary proposition at once de- molishes, on purely arithmetical grounds, the notion that money has any value in, of or for itself, and I am glad to say that this was fairly early brought home to me. If the system was to be upheld, I realised, one must join in the spirit of the thing and make an effort in return for one's cash. So much was quite easy to grasp, even for someone as greedy and cor7 rupt as I already was. But that was only the beginning; for the really vital question was this : granted that a sufficiency of effort would be rewarded with a sufficiency of money, was it worth making an additional or even spec- tacular effort in order to pile up additional or even spectacular sums of wealth?

Plainly, some sort of calculus was needed, a calculus of values other than merely monetary ones. So I decided to approach the problem from the far end, so to speak, and asked myself first of all what, if anything, wealth could buy that would be worth the bother of amassing it. After some reflection, it seemed to me that, apart from such obvious things as luxury and pleasure, there was indeed one commodity that wealth could buy which in human terms was very valuable from any possible point of view, and that this commodity was independence. I did not, you notice, think of power, in which I have never been interested, but of its inverse. For independence is the denial of, or freedom from, the power of others; and in an age when people were becoming ever more anxious to interfere with each other, were developing ever more efficient techniques with which to do so, and were justifying themselves by an ever more rancorous profession of moral motives, it occurred to me that my personal indepen- dence must be procured at any cost.

At any cost? Here, as I worked back from the desired end, was the next question. Granted wealth could purchase independence, how much wealth was needed? Although there was no hard-and-fast answer, it did appear that one must establish (as soon as possible) a secure capital sum (preferably invested in some reliable foreign currency) sufficient to meet the needs of a lifetime This was what indepen- dence meant : one must be able to snap one's fingers under anybody's nose because one knew that one need be beholden to nobody. All right; but, once again, how large was the sum re- quired? Finally, I decided that I would settle for anything over £50,000, though £100,000 was probably the lowest safe figure.

The next question was how to get it. I had long since tried gambling and failed disas- trously, and in any case I firmly believed, by now, in the Duke of Omnium's maxim, that money must be had from labour and that its source must be clean. While I do not wish to sound smug, I must tell you that I could see no possible satisfaction in an independence which bad been gained by luck or by low cun- ning at the expense of my fellows. Indepen- dence, to be of true value, must be based on work in which I could take pride. The money by which independence was conferred must be fully and honestly earned, so that my moral position would be unassailable. For the rest, I saw no rational objection to living off the in- terest from capital, provided that the capital was of my own making, fair and square, and represented a just return for the services or the product which I had to offer. So back to the practical problem : what service or product could I offer that would enable me to get together f50,000?

Well, I could write my own language. If honest Trollope could get a fortune by writing novels, why shouldn't I have a crack? The work was honourable, for people must be entertained if their lives are to be worth living; and if the public was prepared, without any coercion other than the quality of my fiction, to pay me money from which I might save £50,000, who could dare to say I hadn't earned it?

Since the day when I made this resolution, over ten years have gone by. Although I have accumulated no capital at all apart from some life policies, I have won a certain freedom both of body and of spirit, and even if I ceased to be able to work tomorrow I should be in some sort provided for, such are my dis- positions with insurance companies, during the remainder of my life. Meanwhile, I come and go very much as I please, I live where I like, and I speak as I find. I am beholden to no government and I can snap my fingers under any man's nose, should I be so ill-bred as to wish to do so. You may think, then, that I have in good measure achieved the indepen- dence which I promised as my prize and that in my case personal effort has met with a fair financial reward. Very possibly; yet out of this modest little story of success there must come a warning.

You see, while I was so busy establishing myself in my position of independence, I forgot that my youth was passing. One morn- ing I woke up to find, not indeed that I was old, but that I was no longer young enough to do many of the things that were to have Made my independence so pleasant. I can travel where I wish, which is much; but already the really grand expeditions—to the sources of rivers or the summits of mountains—are beyond my physical powers. I can now eat and drink whatever I fancy—at the cost of crackling arteries and crucifying heartburn at 3 a.m. I can furnish fine and private chambers for love; but my performance is not what it was under the hedgerows. I can still get a run or two at cricket; but the ball would have flown far sweeter off the bat ten years ago, when I was too preoccupied to play.

So has it, one wonders, been worth it after all? This honest independence—has it been worth all the joys I missed while I was struggling for it? Perhaps Lord Gerald Palliser was right; perhaps money is just cheques and sovereigns and bank notes, which one should grab at any way one can and enjoy while one still may. Perhaps the Duke of Omnium was wrong; what does it matter where it comes from or how, so long as one sees the great sights and fondles the lovely bodies before it is too late? I leave it to you, my dear young readers, to decide. On the one hand, remember Judas, who hanged himself for misery before he could spend his fee; but, on the other hand, remember this: In Youth is Pleasure, in Youth is Pleasure . . .