Mystery quote of the day

The quote below was written several decades ago by someone who was responding to claims that usury and greed are the root causes of societal problems. Professor [X] had just accused the author of the quote below, that the usury should be absolutely rejected, citing the then-Soviet Union as a 'one sixth of the world's landmass' as a sort of beacon of hope where money is not allowed to rule. Read the quote if you have a minute - you will be very surprised to see who wrote it.

The difference between us is that the Professor [X] sees the ‘World’ purely in terms of those threats and those allurements which depend on money. I do not.

The most ‘worldly’ society I have ever lived in is that of schoolboys: most worldly in the cruelty and arrogance of the strong, the toadyism and mutual treachery of the weak, and the unqualified snobbery of both. Nothing was so base that most members of the school proletariat would not do it, or suffer it, to win the favour of the school aristocracy: hardly any injustice too bad for the aristocracy to practise. But the class system did not in the least depend on the amount of pocket money.

Who needs to care about money if most of the things he wants will be offered by cringing servility and the remainder can be taken by force?

This lesson has remained with me all my life. That is one of the reasons why I cannot share [X's] exaltation at the banishment of Mammon from ‘a sixth of our planet’s surface’ [i.e. from the Soviet Union]. I have already lived in a world from which Mammon was banished: it was the most wicked and miserable I have yet known. If Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter. But where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his place?

As Aristotle said, ‘Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm’. All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety. But all men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being ‘in the know’ or the ‘inner ring’, of not being ‘outsiders’: a passion insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story. When the state of society is such that money is the passport to all these prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation. But when the passport changes, the desires will remain.

Who wrote this? I recommend forming some opinion about the words before looking to see who wrote them; if you are like me you will be shocked to see that it is this person who takes such a non-antagonistic view toward money.