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There are 6 billion opinions on the rights and wrongs of society.
Most of these are the shallow progeny of casual conversation.
Some are more firmly founded on serious academic thought.
This one was forged upon the anvil of personal circumstance.
About twelve billion years ago, so science would currently have us believe, Time began with a Big Bang. As for me, time began in the middle of the Second World War - also with a big bang. It was the sharp hollow crack of a German bomb - a sound which no recording device could ever reproduce with adequate realism - the sound of malevolence dancing on the window sill behind the thick blackout curtain as I stood bolt upright in my cot.
These two great events: the beginning of the universe, and the beginning of my conscious experience within it, evoke an important contrast. The first reminds me that the universe is of immense size and unimaginable age, and that it existed before me and will continue to exist after me. The second reminds me that my life is a fleeting window in time and space through which I may play some small role within it for a season.
Nature and conscience both decree that part of that role has to be to fulfil my natural obligation to provide myself - and those for whom I am responsible - with the basic needs of life. To this end I am able and willing to work. And I have worked. I have worked very long and hard. Yet I have never been rich. In fact I am now very poor. This persuades me that though it be a necessary ingredient, work by itself cannot make wealth. Labour alone cannot synthesise food. Neither can it create the materials for clothing and shelter. To survive and prosper on this planet, each human being needs some external means to transform his labour into his needs of life.
I arrived on this earth with nothing. I owned no means of transforming my labour into my needs of life. Neither did I own anything which I could exchange for such means. The only way I could have gained them was for them to have been given to me as a free and undeserved birthright. But like the overwhelming majority of mankind, I never received any such inheritance. In order to survive, I am therefore forced to sell my labour to those few who did. Yet they have no obligation to buy my labour, and they will do so only if, and for as long as, they perceive themselves to have a use for it.
Why, unlike them, did I not inherit a fair share of those means? Was my inheritance stolen from me before I was born? If so, who stole it? Where is it now? How may it be restored to those who will follow after me? Why is there such a vast and seemingly unfair disparity in wealth and well-being among the human inhabitants of this planet?
This book is my quest for the answers to these questions. It is therefore of necessity a book about the human society in which I find myself as seen from the place where its resident forces have positioned me within it. Although the book practically assassinates human society as it exists, it does have a happy ending. The early chapters may seem depressing, but they are merely a prelude to my vision of what might be better way.
I do not consider the views I have expressed herein to be in any way omnipotent or absolute. All of that which follows in this book is purely my opinion, based upon my own observations and analyses of my experiences. I am profoundly aware of the fallibility of my human perception. The contrast between the two Great Events above convinces me that the way I see the world cannot be the way it appears to everybody. Like everybody else, I can see the world only from one point of view, and only through my restricted human senses. I can interpret it only in terms of my own narrow vista of experience which also unavoidably limits my ability to understand what others say and write about it.
Science recognises that observation can never be perfect, even in theory. Nothing can be seen from every angle at every instant, and the very act of observing does itself alter that which is observed. On the other hand, society behaves towards and hence affects each individual differently according to that individual's position and status within it. It therefore not only appears different to each of us, but in fact is different. Hence every different view is equally true. Therefore, if to some my view is credible, I rejoice. If to others I appear a crank, then so be it. If I cause offence, I cannot apologise because what I have written is an honest and considered analysis.
This book is not for the closed implacable minds of contemporary mainstream Britain, imprisoned as they are within the callous opinions of capitalist journalism as it soothingly appeases the social conscience in the face of the unjustifiable disparity and poverty in its midst. This book is for open minds elsewhere in the world and elsewhen in the future - but perhaps even now still for a precious remnant of thinking people within Britain itself.