Topic: Economics
Wealth, Illth, Money, and the Financial Crisis

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This column is an attempt to aid in the understanding of the current financial crisis, using classic texts by Robert Anton Wilson that explain the difference between wealth (real wealth or real capital), illth, and money (money wealth or money capital).

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by Dan Clore
(libertarian)

Wealth, Illth, Money, and the Financial Crisis

by Dan Clore

The current financial crisis has caused great perplexity as well as suffering across the globe. The following classic excerpt from The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson might help clarify how one should attempt to understand the problem (I highly advise readers to stop and attempt to think of further examples when asked to do so -- this will clarify the ideas involved far better than passively reading):

Dissociation of Ideas, 5

by Robert Anton Wilson

Distinguish between wealth, illth, and money.

Wealth is best conceived as all the changes in the "natural" (prehuman) environment that are to the benefit of humanity and/or other life forms. A bridge that gets you across the river without your having to stop and build a raft is wealth in this sense. So is an airport. So is the furniture in your house. Think of ten other examples.

Illth, a term coined by John Ruskin, can be conceived as all the changes in the environment that are detrimental to humanity and/or to life itself. Weaponry, then, should be classed as illth, not wealth. Think of ten other examples.

Money is neither wealth nor illth but merely tickets for the transfer of wealth or illth.

Proof: if all the money disappeared overnight, the national standard of living would not change (whatever happened to individuals in the interim); things would be back to normal as soon as the Treasury printed more tickets. But if all the real wealth and illths -- all the industrial plants, natural resources, roads, communications, and "real capital" generally -- were to disappear, we would be plunged back into the Stone Ages and no issue of currency would improve the situation.

Note also that for all the "real capital" to disappear, all the technical knowhow in human heads would have to vanish. No economist, to my knowledge, has tried to calculate how much of our "real capital" consists of ideas in human heads (brain power) and/or of canned ideas stored in libraries or on tape. A reasonable guess is that 90 per cent of our wealth and illth consists of such brain creations.

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An excerpt from another classic piece by Robert Anton Wilson, this time in Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati, should aid understanding of the point made above:

The distinction between Real Capital and Money Capital can be elucidated simply. If all the Real Capital (which includes things like maps and roads as well as factories) were to disappear overnight, we would be back in the Middle Ages. If all the Money Capital (cash, stocks, bonds, etc.) disappeared, there would be one hell of a fight over who "owned" what, but the world would be the same. All the hard, tangible, real wealth would still be there.

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Now, let us take the three in turn and see how they apply to the current financial woes:

(1) Real wealth (or real capital). The amount of real wealth, in the form of knowledge of the world, scientific research, and advances in technology, has continued to increase at an ever-accelerating rate. Experts such as Alfred Korzybski and Buckminster Fuller long since estimated that such real wealth approximately doubles every generation. There is no indication that it has slowed its pace. Indeed, the reader most likely would not have access to this column without some rather recent advances in real wealth in the form of technology.

So, while countless individuals now find themselves in control of less and less real wealth, this cannot be due to any decrease in the amount of real wealth.

(2) Illth. The overall amount of illth, in several forms, has displayed a noticeable increase in the period involved. This includes the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq (also, the  underreported Ethiopian proxy invasion/occupation of Somalia). It includes the large number of  egregious violations against civil liberties and human rights commited by governments  around the world in the name of the so-called "War on Terror", ranging from spying on their citizens to the notorious Guantánamo Gulag. It also includes environmental pollution, most notably that which causes global warming.

However, it is readily apparent that while these problems all need immediate attention to alleviate or end them, they are not responsible for the current financial crisis.

(3) Money wealth (or money capital). When one reads attempts to account for the financial ills, one encounters a bewildering labyrinth of material about housing bubbles, subprime lending, securities,  derivatives, Ponzi schemes, etc. etc. etc.

But at least one thing is clear from this mass of confusing and contradictory material: The current crisis derives from the very nature of our monetary and financial system.

And that financial system was created by human beings. It should certainly not be identified with a "free-market" system, despite the claims of figures ranging from  the "libertarian" Alan Greenspan to the progressive Naomi Klein. While this system does indeed include a market (as did that of the USSR), ruling elites use various  authoritarian institutions including governments, corporations, and IFIs (international financial institutions) to create and control it.

One need only compare this system of state-corporate capitalism -- replete with gargantuan, hierarchical, authoritarian institutions -- with the truly free-market models of anarcho-individualists, mutualists, and agorists to discern the open fraud of identifying the current system with a truly free market.

No, the current system of money wealth was created intentionally by human beings in order to gain power and control over real wealth, and not by just any human beings, but by the state-corporate elite -- or more precisely, by many competing state-corporate elites, notably including those advocating vast increases in their power in order to "solve" the crisis.

Such moves should be resisted.

If the financial crisis is to be truly solved, this will only come about by individuals organizing  from below to reduce or abolish altogether the power of governments, corporations, IFIs, etc., and shifting their own activity to voluntary,  self-organized, non-hierarchical institutions. These may include (to name just a few that already exist): worker-owned-and-controlled businesses such as workers cooperatives and collectives; credit unions and cooperative banks; consumer cooperatives and buyers clubs; alternative currencies; fair trade and ethical purchasing; the "free" movement (freeganism, freecycling, really really free markets, etc.); free skools; etc. etc. etc.

One should never forget that the possibilities for institutions that "build the structure of the new society in the shell of the old" is limited only by human ingenuity.

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2008 Dan Clore, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, December 28, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, March 4, 2009

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