“Abolish Money” – Sinead O`Connor

Published on The Socialist Party of Great Britain (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb)
“Abolish Money” – Sinead O’Connor
The music business certainly contains some odd contrasts. On 5 November, the world's biggest
music publishing company, Time Warner, handed a cheque for £26 million to Elton John and Bernie
Taupin for the future marketing rights to all their songs from 1974 onwards, including the next six
future albums. This was the largest advance ever paid in music history. It reflected the safety of
investing in the popular material involved.
Around the same time, a fairly successful but somewhat more controversial singer hit
the headlines, not just of the music press, but also in the tabloids and elsewhere. Sinead O'Connor
had torn up a picture of the Pope, live on camera on the "Saturday Night live" American network
comedy show. This only added to an already radical reputation, which had polarised opinion between
the "moral majority", particularly in the States, who see her as a public enemy and figure of hate,
and the few who have been intrigued by the passionate protests she has pursued.
On an earlier occasion, she had refused to participate in a concert which was to have ended with a
rendition of the Stars And Stripes, and for this Frank Sinatra was quoted as eloquently saying that he
would like to "kick her butt". The Sun did an excited expose about her alleged support for the IRA,
which later turned out to be unfounded. She horrified the music industry by refusing to collect her
"Brits" and US "Grammy" awards in 1991 as she disagreed with the acquisitive and competitive
ethos it represented. Then, at the time of the Gulf War, this popular singing star again distinguished
herself from her musical colleagues by nailing her colours to the mast and going on record as being
emphatically opposed to the war.
Ugly scenes
In the USA, ugly scenes ensued in which piles of her records have been destroyed in public (no
doubt in the name of freedom of expression). In Britain, she has been ridiculed instead, through the
somewhat limp wit of radio DJs, attempting pathetically to stray into the vocal exposition of their
insipid conservatism.
Matters came to a head last October, when she was violently shouted off the stage at a special New
York concert held to commemorate thirty years of records produced by Bob Dylan. How ironic that
this smug party held for the protest singer of a previous generation should have displayed such
brutal intolerance for someone who had spoken out with views which had protested against certain
sacred cows in the 1990s. Did they think that the sixties had been so successful in liberating
humanity that "protest" could be quietly laid to rest?
It was in the aftermath of that concert that she announced her resignation from her singing career,
stating that she had striven to achieve fame only in order to obtain a platform for certain stronglyheld views. She then explained these views in some detail through various press interviews. It was
subsequently announced that her record company had then persuaded her to reconsider her
decision, and she was therefore included in the bill for an Amnesty International concert.
So what were the ideas which lay beneath this wave of controversy?
The opposition to Sinead O'Connor's pronouncements about the need to abolish money had a
tiresomely familiar ring to socialists. In supposedly radical journals like New Musical Express and
supposedly liberal organs like the Guardian the tired old arguments in defence of the money system
were trotted out with religious devotion, as if kept permanently ready, to use at the first signs of any
heretical statements made against the money god:
"Take away money, then you take away the pillars of society...Money may well be the root of all evil.
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but what choice do we have? Right now. no money equals no power. No power equals a voice in the
wilderness. Sad, but that's the real world. (NME. 14 November).
So you don't accept that human nature is essentially competitive and that money is just part of this?
... But what about you, Sinead? You must have a few quid stacked away somewhere? (NME. 31
October).
"Mad Woman in the Artic, Part II"; "I'm not a raving loony". Sinead O'Connor told the Sun last week.
"My biggest aim is to get rid of money", she continued. "If everyone agreed to do it at the same
time, it could happen". Unsold piles of the last Sinead CD could be the new currency."(Guardian, 31
October).
Revolutionary socialists, who have been working for many years for the creation of a moneyless
system of society, have grown used to these inane defences of the money system. They confuse the
notion of a fixed "human nature" with the wide variety of human behaviours which have evolved
through the conditions of various social systems.
It was of note that in the main NME interview involved, O'Connor made no
fewer than fifteen separate references to the urgent need to abolish the money system. Whilst
socialists will want to question some of the religious commentaries which were woven in with this, it
was very heartening nevertheless to see this proposal receiving this unexpected platform:
"So the only solution to all of the problems in the world - starvation, homelessness, joblessness, etc is to get rid of money… A survey has to be conducted. Let's have a vote and see..."If everyone else
was going to do it, would you be prepared to live without money?" Let's see how people feel about it
- -supposedly we live in a democracy. I bet you that people will be able to do it...as long as there
exists the system of money, there will always be people who have some and those who haven't...
Ninety-five per cent of the world's wealth is owned by five per cent of the world's population. That's
the whole problem...We can do it, but there's no point unless everyone's gonna do it, it just can't
work... Look at our lives, how they're run by money... get rid of money. In one foul swoop, you get rid
of the whole thing. With love, and our supposed belief in God...Have the faith to go through the rocky
part and believe that God's gonna help us out. (NME, 31October).
Child abuse
She holds the view that most modern social problems had their origin in the rise of the Catholic
Church and "Roman Empire" based in the Vatican, with its sanctioning of various invasions and
imperialisms, and its imposition of repressive moral codes over millions of people. In her own country
of origin, Ireland, she describes how alcoholism, drug-abuse and, in particular, child abuse have in
her view been the inevitable legacy of that historical process. She makes no secret of the fact that
her own childhood there was plagued by persistent sexual abuse. It might readily be seen that her
theorising about the key historical role of the Vatican in the rise of a globally
exploitative system is a reflection of her own experiences and is too narrowly based on one
interpretation of the development of certain, mainly European countries and in particular of Ireland.
She fails to take a broader world view of the ruling class which in fact encompasses all religions, and
in many cases none. On the other hand, these arguments are soon tied in with sounder lines of
economic criticism:
"We're all trapped in a society that has been very, very carefully orchestrated and structured to
control us by people who want power over us, for money...they took us away from the truth,
brutalised us and then only offered us one God, a God outside and above us, unattainable. They
made our God into money." (NME, 31 October).
She goes on to explain that the people who did all this were the Catholic Church, especially with
reference to their role in Irish history. Again, this is a peculiarly narrow definition of the minority
class enemy which exploits us, and leaves out of account the quite separate evolution of ruling
groups in other ways in other parts of the world. Her proposed solution, however, of abolishing the
social system which is based on money, is both universally applicable and urgently needed. There is
an international ruling class which certainly does impose moral codes and supervise institutionalised
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Published on The Socialist Party of Great Britain (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb)
poverty and abuse.
Regardless of the reservations referred to above. Sinead O'Connor is to be applauded for these
specific proclamations which she has pursued so single-mindedly. The profusion of panic,
misunderstanding and venom with which her comments were greeted is in fact testimony to the
refreshingly different and viable ideas involved.
Friday, 1 January 1993
Source URL: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1993/no-1061-january-19
93/%E2%80%9Cabolish-money%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-sinead-o%E2%80%99connor
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