It has been suggested by an ingenious thinker that it is possible to use as a standard of monetary value no substance whatever, but instead, force, and that value might be measured in units of energy. An excellent development this, in theory, at any rate, of the general idea of the modern State as kinetic18 and not static; it throws the old idea of the social order and the new into the sharpest antithesis19. The old order is presented as a system of institutions and classes ruled by men of substance; the new, of enterprises and interests led by men of power.
Now I glance at this matter in the most incidental manner, as a man may skim through a specialist’s exposition in a popular magazine. You must figure me, therefore, finding from a casual periodical paper in our inn, with a certain surprise at not having anticipated as much, the Utopian self of that same ingenious person quite conspicuously20 a leader of thought, and engaged in organising the discussion of the currency changes Utopia has under consideration. The article, as it presents itself to me, contains a complete and lucid21, though occasionally rather technical, explanation of his newest proposals. They have been published, it seems, for general criticism, and one gathers that in the modern Utopia the administration presents the most elaborately detailed22 schemes of any proposed alteration23 in law or custom, some time before any measure is taken to carry it into effect, and the possibilities of every detail are acutely criticised, flaws anticipated, side issues raised, and the whole minutely tested and fined down by a planetful of critics, before the actual process of legislation begins.
The explanation of these proposals involves an anticipatory24 glance at the local administration of a Modern Utopia. To anyone who has watched the development of technical science during the last decade or so, there will be no shock in the idea that a general consolidation25 of a great number of common public services over areas of considerable size is now not only practicable, but very desirable. In a little while heating and lighting26 and the supply of power for domestic and industrial purposes and for urban and inter-urban communications will all be managed electrically from common generating stations. And the trend of political and social speculation27 points decidedly to the conclusion that so soon as it passes out of the experimental stage, the supply of electrical energy, just like drainage and the supply of water, will fall to the local authority. Moreover, the local authority will be the universal landowner. Upon that point so extreme an individualist as Herbert Spencer was in agreement with the Socialist28. In Utopia we conclude that, whatever other types of property may exist, all natural sources of force, and indeed all strictly29 natural products, coal, water power, and the like, are inalienably vested in the local authorities (which, in order to secure the maximum of convenience and administrative30 efficiency, will probably control areas as large sometimes as half England), they will generate electricity by water power, by combustion31, by wind or tide or whatever other natural force is available, and this electricity will be devoted32, some of it to the authority’s lighting and other public works, some of it, as a subsidy33, to the World-State authority which controls the high roads, the great railways, the inns and other apparatus34 of world communication, and the rest will pass on to private individuals or to distributing companies at a uniform fixed35 rate for private lighting and heating, for machinery36 and industrial applications of all sorts. Such an arrangement of affairs will necessarily involve a vast amount of book-keeping between the various authorities, the World-State government and the customers, and this book-keeping will naturally be done most conveniently in units of physical energy.
It is not incredible that the assessment37 of the various local administrations for the central world government would be already calculated upon the estimated total of energy, periodically available in each locality, and booked and spoken of in these physical units. Accounts between central and local governments could be kept in these terms. Moreover, one may imagine Utopian local authorities making contracts in which payment would be no longer in coinage upon the gold basis, but in notes good for so many thousands or millions of units of energy at one or other of the generating stations.
Now the problems of economic theory will have undergone an enormous clarification if, instead of measuring in fluctuating money values, the same scale of energy units can be extended to their discussion, if, in fact, the idea of trading could be entirely38 eliminated. In my Utopia, at any rate, this has been done, the production and distribution of common commodities have been expressed as a problem in the conversion39 of energy, and the scheme that Utopia was now discussing was the application of this idea of energy as the standard of value to the entire Utopian coinage. Every one of those giant local authorities was to be free to issue energy notes against the security of its surplus of saleable available energy, and to make all its contracts for payment in those notes up to a certain maximum defined by the amount of energy produced and disposed of in that locality in the previous year. This power of issue was to be renewed just as rapidly as the notes came in for redemption. In a world without boundaries, with a population largely migratory40 and emancipated41 from locality, the price of the energy notes of these various local bodies would constantly tend to be uniform, because employment would constantly shift into the areas where energy was cheap. Accordingly, the price of so many millions of units of energy at any particular moment in coins of the gold currency would be approximately the same throughout the world. It was proposed to select some particular day when the economic atmosphere was distinctly equable, and to declare a fixed ratio between the gold coinage and the energy notes; each gold Lion and each Lion of credit representing exactly the number of energy units it could buy on that day. The old gold coinage was at once to cease to be legal tender beyond certain defined limits, except to the central government, which would not reissue it as it came in. It was, in fact, to become a temporary token coinage, a token coinage of full value for the day of conversion at any rate, if not afterwards, under the new standard of energy, and to be replaceable by an ordinary token coinage as time went on. The old computation by Lions and the values of the small change of daily life were therefore to suffer no disturbance42 whatever.
The economists43 of Utopia, as I apprehended44 them, had a different method and a very different system of theories from those I have read on earth, and this makes my exposition considerably45 more difficult. This article upon which I base my account floated before me in an unfamiliar46, perplexing, and dream-like phraseology. Yet I brought away an impression that here was a rightness that earthly economists have failed to grasp. Few earthly economists have been able to disentangle themselves from patriotisms and politics, and their obsession47 has always been international trade. Here in Utopia the World State cuts that away from beneath their feet; there are no imports but meteorites48, and no exports at all. Trading is the earthly economists’ initial notion, and they start from perplexing and insoluble riddles49 about exchange value, insoluble because all trading finally involves individual preferences which are incalculable and unique. Nowhere do they seem to be handling really defined standards, every economic dissertation50 and discussion reminds one more strongly than the last of the game of croquet Alice played in Wonderland, when the mallets were flamingoes and the balls were hedgehogs and crawled away, and the hoops51 were soldiers and kept getting up and walking about. But economics in Utopia must be, it seems to me, not a theory of trading based on bad psychology52, but physics applied to problems in the theory of sociology. The general problem of Utopian economics is to state the conditions of the most efficient application of the steadily53 increasing quantities of material energy the progress of science makes available for human service, to the general needs of mankind. Human labour and existing material are dealt with in relation to that. Trading and relative wealth are merely episodical in such a scheme. The trend of the article I read, as I understood it, was that a monetary system based upon a relatively54 small amount of gold, upon which the business of the whole world had hitherto been done, fluctuated unreasonably55 and supplied no real criterion of well-being56, that the nominal57 values of things and enterprises had no clear and simple relation to the real physical prosperity of the community, that the nominal wealth of a community in millions of pounds or dollars or Lions, measured nothing but the quantity of hope in the air, and an increase of confidence meant an inflation of credit and a pessimistic phase a collapse58 of this hallucination of possessions. The new standards, this advocate reasoned, were to alter all that, and it seemed to me they would.
I have tried to indicate the drift of these remarkable59 proposals, but about them clustered an elaborate mass of keen and temperate60 discussion. Into the details of that discussion I will not enter now, nor am I sure I am qualified61 to render the multitudinous aspect of this complicated question at all precisely62. I read the whole thing in the course of an hour or two of rest after lunch — it was either the second or third day of my stay in Utopia — and we were sitting in a little inn at the end of the Lake of Uri. We had loitered there, and I had fallen reading because of a shower of rain. . . . But certainly as I read it the proposition struck me as a singularly simple and attractive one, and its exposition opened out to me for the first time clearly, in a comprehensive outline, the general conception of the economic nature of the Utopian State.
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1
monetary
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| adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的 | |
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2
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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depreciation
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| n.价值低落，贬值，蔑视，贬低 | |
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transmuting
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| v.使变形，使变质，把…变成…( transmute的现在分词 ) | |
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undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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7
debtor
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| n.借方，债务人 | |
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creditor
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| n.债仅人，债主，贷方 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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impede
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止 | |
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necessitate
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| v.使成为必要，需要 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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14
impoverishment
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| n.贫穷，穷困；贫化 | |
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bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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spate
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| n.泛滥，洪水，突然的一阵 | |
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17
debtors
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| n.债务人，借方( debtor的名词复数 ) | |
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18
kinetic
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| adj.运动的；动力学的 | |
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antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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21
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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anticipatory
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| adj.预想的，预期的 | |
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consolidation
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| n.合并,巩固 | |
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26
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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combustion
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| n.燃烧；氧化；骚动 | |
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32
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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33
subsidy
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| n.补助金，津贴 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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35
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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37
assessment
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| n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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39
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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40
migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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41
emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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43
economists
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| n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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44
apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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45
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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46
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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47
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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48
meteorites
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| n.陨星( meteorite的名词复数 ) | |
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49
riddles
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| n.谜（语）( riddle的名词复数 )；猜不透的难题，难解之谜 | |
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50
dissertation
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| n.（博士学位）论文，学术演讲，专题论文 | |
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51
hoops
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| n.箍( hoop的名词复数 )；（篮球）篮圈；（旧时儿童玩的）大环子；（两端埋在地里的）小铁弓 | |
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52
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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53
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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54
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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55
unreasonably
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| adv. 不合理地 | |
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56
well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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57
nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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58
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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59
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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60
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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61
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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62
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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