In this, I was fortunate. The disesteem of money, symbolized by inflation, existed alongside a new and exaggerated esteem for money. In Britain, Germany, the states of central Europe, Russia, Latin America–indeed, everywhere I went, but particularly in Britain–money was quickly displacing all other psychological goals. Duty, religion, public service, liberty, equality, justice or aristocracy, the cultural flesh that clothed the bones of money for those that possessed it, all became suspect: only money, it seemed, was to be trusted. In Britain, at least, this undoubtedly had to do with the frustrations of those dynamic social groups– young people, immigrants, women–who had had it up to here with the senile prattle of a society they thought ripe for the boneyard. In Russia and Eastern Europe, money took on the character of emancipation and modernity more comprehensively than even the early paper money of the United States or the first issues of assignats in revolutionary Paris: it was Dostoevsky, after all, who described money as ‘coined liberty’, and in the Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848, Marx and Engels showed a healthy respect for capitalism:

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.

Only money could measure success or failure, happiness or misery. Only money could reward or punish. States and governments must just stand back, and money–which contains all knowledge and reconciles all clashes of human will–would see us right. Money was good.