Common Pence: or, What the Capitalists Gain by Abolishing a Symbol of the Poor (On the Penny)

4 May 2025.

'If it is impossible to liquidate the social existence of the lesser criminals, then to be sought for is the containment of their sociality [social culture], beginning with material symbols, which may serve as a reminder, rally point, and promise to the past and future'.

— Constitution of the

Global Union of Free Commerce;

Lesser Criminal Code

(called by loungescum 'Freestate')

So the abolition of further minted pence is slated to occur. I should propose that the coin with the face of Lincoln confronts us with the truth. Whilst there is an economic/production argument for this action, there is also a fundamentally ideological reason under the surface. The capitalists are concerned with the former, indeed, but that should not be enough at the polarised moment to seek such an act. It is the small-burghers of a social-liberal (Progressive) persuasion who will ensure that the penny is abolished.

First, let us look at the capitalist argument for the abolition of the Emancipator. The gross-burghers and their expencive media pieces are quite publicly spewing the heft of cost in price and material value for the creation of these so asserted 'unused' coins. It is interesting to note that the nickel is not much better faring in this regard, at a cost of fourteen cents to produce. Whilst the penny, at four cents of production, should cost twenty cents (six more) to match the centage of one nickel in five pence, one must naturally wonder for such a fiatified currency, why the penny may not just be decreed a higher centage? Or why the penny is the only coin to be retired from minting, when the nickel is, appropriate to its name, also a little goblin for its 'value'? Making the penny two or three cents, I believe, should prove ultimately less disruptive than 'pennifying' the nickel. Call it the pence tricent and be done. Notice the zinc industry is not the one concerned.

But as we said earlier, this base economic concern, though the true catalyst and the public reason, is not the cause for the issue's success. Under this ploy by capitalists outside the zinc industry to under-mine its profitable claim on the resource, there is an ideological motivation for the small-burghers to pledge their support. This question, in my view, is the more interesting and more important one for the Left to engage.

To quote the Associated Press, themselves quoting the Farmers' Almanac of 1989 (the year highly cultured, tradition-valuing Marxist-Leninist and Reform-Leninist states were toppled, it might coincidentally be mentioned), 'only tradition explains our stubborn attachment to the penny. But sometimes traditions get ridiculous'. The Liberal burghers openly admit what their stake in this contest is, but why still might such be their stake? In good Marxist fashion should I respond— ideology! The penny represents a promise and reminder, a burgher and Liberal/Progressive failure on both counts.

First, let us remark upon the promise, for it is the originative stirring up of the reminder. What does a penny predominantly conjure in the ideological purview of the mind? I should posit three related things to be thought of, that being valuelessness, poverty, and perhaps, deep within the mental realm of the sub-conscious, the ideal of Lincoln, including promises kept and broken. The Progressive small-burgher could not manage to elect Sanders, and even more dismally, could not apprehend the nomination of the reviled Left and Right Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, Trump has (partially through a knowledge of propaganda) portrayed his victories as indomitably totalising, sweeping away the corrupt Clintocrats with the same level of adoration which Comrade Lenin with his People's Broom enjoyed in 1917. Clearly, the Progressive small-burghers have not made good on their promise to the impoverished masses, leaving only their patronising, prolet-shaming complex in their hand. Feeling guilty, or feeling fearful?

This leads us, both through guilt and fear, to the reminder which the penny serves as a medallion for: it is the reminder (and promise of the invisible stranglehold) that the small-burgher himself is not too far as he prays from dealing in mere pence on the dirty streets. He well knows, especially if he is but remotely educated in matters of economy or society, that to-day's spare change may at any time become to-morrow's meal— or his death. Indeed, I am arguing that the penny, whilst not in revolutionary motion right now, possesses in itself potential radicalism as a symbol of inevitable proletarianisation. The penny has hitherto proved a monument to lament for the small-burgher; the point, however, is to change this.

Now we move to the ever-present problem, what is to be done? And for the first time, I may affirm that the answer is just common pence. It must be clarified once more, that what exactly is expected is the cessation of minting more pence, not the termination of the penny's circulation, and therein attains my strategy. There are two plans I should suggest, the first practical if minor, and the second impactful if complicated, even utopian.

The first thing all socialists ought to do is add this ambivalent change into their propaganda arsenals as a conservative (the generic, not political, sense) and ideologically underpinned flash-point for tension. I imagine that the 'patriotic socialists' should be eager to take up this propaganda work, defending and upholding Honest Abe's faith in a fair day's wage for Free Man, represented symbolically by the penny.

At the other end, in the waters of socialitive [social cultural] conspiracy, the Left could use the penny as a shadow currency. Re-fashioned into a promissory note of some kind, one might ask their local businessman 'do you honour the lowest value?', and hopefully be responded to with ' 'tis the love of common pence'. The Western Left has never been comfortable emulating the manner of hidden orders, or plain, popular religions for that matter, but it is perhaps time that this dogma be retired as well. Further, the Left ought to take the opportunity to shuffle Progressives and social-democrats, most of whom have atrocious political-historical educations, into new 'common pence clubs' focused on both activism at their level of consciousness, and increasing said level of consciousness through proper, historical materialist education (but on the Enlightenment and social-liberalism/social-democracy, obviously).

Of course, either of these two plans actually requires that the Left become organised, and become friendly again, which I do not, perhaps unduly pessimistically, foresee happening any moment punctually. It will likely turn into yet another missed chance. And it may be this reason, most of all, why the Left rather day-dream about the inevitable nearness of the distant revolution, than organise something around a seemingly insignificant issue.

At the very least, the Left ought to oppose this executive order for two reasons:

I. It will cause nearly every commodity to (nay matter how minutely) increase in price.

II. With this contention, we can simultaneously split the zinc industry from the other capitalists and potentially may extract concessions from either bloc, in exchange for support, or by holding the penny's zinc supply hostage, or by boycotting all coins except the penny.