money is the cause of poverty… poverty consists in being short of the necessaries of life: the necessaries of life are all produced by labour applied to the raw materials: the raw materials exist in abundance and there are plenty of people able and willing to work; but under present conditions no work can be done without money; and so we have the spectacle of a great army of people compelled to stand idle and starve by the side of the raw materials from which their labour could produce abundance of all the things they need — they are rendered helpless by the power of Money! Those who possess all the money say that the necessaries of life shall not be produced except for their profit.

— Robert Tressell,

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists