The relevant economic principles are not new. They date back to the first part of the 19th century, to the early days of socialism. In a certain sense their ancestry can be traced back further, to the classical economists of early capitalism: Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The basic idea is that a just society can only be established on the principle that those who work are entitled to the full proceeds of their labour. This was for a long time the most distinctive and popular of socialist principles. It sought a remedy for the exploitation of the workers by according them the right to get back out of each day’s work, in terms of wages, as much as they had put in during the day, in terms of time and effort. Along with this went a second principle: only work is a legitimate source of income.

This excluded all sources of income such as rent, dividends or interest which derive from the ownership of property rather than the personal efforts of their recipients. The exclusion of unearned incomes is obviously a necessary consequence of the first principle, since in a society where the producers were entitled to the full proceeds of their labour there would be nothing left over to supply unearned incomes…

The great merit of these original principles is that they provide a coherent foundation for an entire system, not just of economic organisation, but also a whole new legal, moral and social order. They imply a monetary system based upon time rather than upon arbitrary and meaningless currency units like Pounds, Dollars or Ecu. People would be credited with hours worked rather than money at the end of the week. Payments for goods and services would also be in terms of time. You would pay for a garment that took two hours to produce with two hours of your own time. An economy based upon time-prices would have built into it the democratic presumption of human equality.