Note 189 — Chapter VII

Herr Eugene Richter is so astonished at the dropping away of money in Socialist society—abolished money will not be: with the abolition of the merchandise character from the products of labor, money drops away of itself—that he devotes to the subject a special chapter in his "Irrelehren." What is particularly hard for him to understand is the idea that it is immaterial whether the voucher for labor performance be a piece of paper, gold or tin. On this head he says: "With gold, the devil of the modern social order would re-enter the Social Democratic State"—that there could then be only a Socialist society, and not a Social Democratic State, Herr Richter stubbornly overlooks: he must, else a good portion of his polemic would fall through—"seeing that gold has an independent metal value, can be easily saved, and thus the possession of gold pieces would enable the heaping up of values wherewith to purchase escape from the obligation to work, and wherewith even to lay out money on interest."

Herr Richter must take his readers for great blockheads to dare dish up such trash to them on the subject of our gold. Herr Richter, who can not rid himself of the concept of capital, can, of course, not understand that where there is no capital, neither is there any merchandise, nor can there be any "money"; and where there is no "capital" and no "money", neither could there be any "interest." Herr Richter is nailed so fast to the concept of capital that he is unable to conceive a world without "capital." We should like to know how a member of a Socialist society could "save up" his gold certificates of labor, or even loan them out to others and thereby rake in interest, when all other members possess what that one is offering them and—on which he lives.