There is no finer way to destroy bourgeois society, said Lenin, than to debauch the currency, a policy that he therefore favoured. A great deal of debauchery has gone on since Lenin’s day, not necessarily with revolutionary intentions. Whether it was at all avoidable, at least at an acceptable price, is a question I do not enter into; but that it has had an effect on people’s conduct, and even on their character, seems to me to be very likely. When I was growing up (and I am not yet an ancient man), many of the coins we used were...