The dreaded labour notes.....

How much labor-notes would you get for doing a job of work, or spending a given amount of time doing work? Would you be able to save up labor-notes? How would you stop there being a black market, where labor-notes can be exchanged for rare resources or items, thus being elements of exchange, thus being money? How would you be able to prevent people from offering the service of storing your labor-notes, with a promised return if you let them invest them in enterprises of a profitable nature? So you would work for wages, which are given to you for an exchange currency, although this exchange is unofficial, maybe even illegal. This currency can be used to invest in enterprises, reaping profits for the investors. Life for you is no different than that of the working class in a somewhat unusual capitalist society, though I think we've seen such societies before.

a good introductory critique of labour notes is Kropotkin's classic 'The Wage System'. if you haven't read it yet, please do.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/kropotkin/wages/wages.html

"In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate." (Das Kapital, Volume II)

What you've described above is something more akin to Proudhon's labour money than to Marx's labour voucher, in spite of the latter's physical flaws (better to have an electronic labour credit system than a paper one with circulation "under the table").

Read the Anti-Duhring chapter titled "Socialism: Distribution." What you've said resembles the "socialitarian" society of one Eugen Duhring. Excessive decentralization would enable one commune to hoard surpluses at the expense of another.

It's all very well saying "they do not circulate", but this is not saying much more than "they should not circulate". So, what does happen to them? Cancelled after being handed over in exchange for some good or service, I assume.

I took Tree's point to be how would you stop them circulating (or, for that matter, stop them from being counterfeited). This, quite apart from Kropotkin's point about the impossibility of calculating a person's individual labour output. You can calculate the time they spend at work, but that's not at all the same and would be a very rough and ready way of calculating labour-input .

A huge bureaucracy would be required to calculate everybody's hours at work, to calculate the labour-time "price" of goods and services, to balance the number of vouchers issued with the labour-time "prices" of the goods and services for which they would be handed over, and to stop them being circulated, lent or counterfeited. That's why I would think that any labour-time voucher system, if it lasted for any length of time, would break down and there'd be a return to a circulating currency. Maybe, in fact, Marx ("for all it matters") understood this and why he saw such a scheme being only a temporary stop-gap measure till there was enough to go over to free distribution. But it's not the only possible stop-gap measure. Kropotkin's alternative of equal shares for all would be much simpler to calculate and understand. But, in either case, we're talking about a temporary, emergency system which couldn't last for long today in view of the huge increases in the capacity to produce useful things since the days of Marx and Kropotkin. This being so, it wouldn't take long to be able to implement a system of free distribution and access to goods and services.

"how would you stop them circulating"

Unless I don't know what I'm talking about, one way to stop them circulating would be for every exchange to be between an individual (or private group) and the collective (at whatever scale). So e.g. I do some work, and the local assembly 'pays' me some labour notes, according to how long, how useful, how much they need to get more people in that job, etc. I then take those notes to the 'shop' where there's a beautiful make-up set for precisely that amount of labour notes, so I 'buy' them.

BUT in buying them I don't give them to the person selling them (i.e. the person working in the shop), I just put those notes in their hand, and they pass them back to the local assembly that gave them to me (or, more realistically, it's done by swipe cards or somesuch). But since the collective doesn't buy anything from itself, the notes they 'claim back' essentially disappear. I think it would be possible to make this individual-with-collective element be a physical necessity of how they work - like how when using a swipe card, you have a token, but its value depends on records kept by the company that issued it.

To counterfeit would then require hacking into the collective's "accounts", which it seems to me would be possible with or without labour notes, but which equally would become a lot harder the more publically available were the accounts.

So the notes can't circulate, they just pass out of the collective and then back to it. It's then even easier to put a limited lifespan on them, so that if you don't spend them after a week they disappear.

This may be obvious or something.

You'd probably have a swipe card to keep a tab on what you were consuming for market research purposes and because there'd probably be waiting lists or at least a limited supply of certain ''luxury'' goods. (Eg a meal in a top notch restaurant, front row tickets to the big game, theatre tickets etc) but I don;t really see why you'd need to be issued with cash or labour notes in the future considering more and more exchanges are done electronically these days anyway.
You certainly wouldn't need a ''wage'' when it came to the majority of consumable goods, which is why labour notes get such a frosty reception, because your putting a price on something as basic as a loaf of bread which their is absolutely no shortage of and because your turning work into something you do in order to earn money to buy that bread rather than something you do for yourself and for society as a whole.

Marx made a critical analysis of the idea of labour vouchers in Grundisse beginning with;

at

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm

Dave B, it seems like you are trying to assert that Marx, despite what he said in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, revealed his true feelings in the Grundrisse, where he made some mythical critique of the sort of system he later recommended. This is simply not true. Marx's critique in the Grundrisse is specifically aimed at Proudhonist schemes for labour-money on the basis of commodity production, which, for Marx, was quite distinct from the vouchers of the sort that Owen or Marx himself advocated. If you are actually claiming this, I will be happy to make a more detailed case for the above.

According to Cockshott and Cottrell's profoundly true and important emphasis on computers (Towards a New Socialism, plus numerous other works of theirs - all available online), such labour can be measured. "The market" would be reduced to a short-term clearance mechanism in consumer goods and services (excess goods above a maximum "safety stock" -> lower prices; low supply of goods below a minimum "safety stock" -> higher prices).

I wouldn't have quoted from Volume II of Das Kapital or referred to Anti-Duhring if Marx himself didn't make more authoritative remarks on labour credits than in Gothakritik.

To address "popular" concerns with the loss of long-term savings, Chapter 7 of Towards A New Socialism suggests the following:

1) Current labour tokens may be freely exchanged for some kind of retirement
asset [...]
2) To permit a shorter-term flexibility, current labour tokens might also
be exchangeable for consumer saving deposits, from which labour tokens
may be withdrawn at a later date in order to purchase various consumer
durables, vacations etc. [...]
3) Aside from the above recognised forms of saving, individuals are not able
simply to hoard labour tokens [...]

- A huge, controlling bureaucracy would be required to calculate everybody's hours at work
- A huge, controlling bureaucracy would be required to make sure the notes did not circulate.
- A huge, controlling bureaucracy would be required to make sure that production decisions were shaped by the notes or that the notes would be shaped by the production decisions
- The entire enterprise would involve return to scarcity rather its overcoming
- All the *simple* schemes have clear flaws but any complex scheme would require experts to interpret and thus give these experts key power in society.
- This system is generally advocated by those who see a communist society as merely a differently administered capitalist society - everyone gets a more equal credit card balance and gets to self-manage whatever hellish thing they currently do. Qualitative change comes with elimination of scarcity.

* A transition to communism might conceivably involve some rationing of survival goods depending on circumstance. Since this would extremely temporary, the best thing approach would be the simplest, followed by no rationing when survival good became available. "Luxury" would be produced and consumed socially rather than individually - in festivals, orgies, nature walks or whatever.
* Capricorn's points are good.

* Stalinism might not have been perfectly fair but it maintained a system that was much more fair than western Capitalism for quite a while. My point is that this, by itself, does not recommend Stalinism.

* While I am not otherwise a fan of Bob Black, I think did a good job of skewering the labor-notes-vouchers-self-management people. In your minds, you might imagine that everyone would become anal bureaucratic bastards. But the reality is that your system would just the dictatorship of the few anal bureaucratic bastards, whether it was fair or democratic or not.

* I think that this debate is useful in the sense that I think it characterizes what is or isn't communism but I indeed do not consider anyone who advocates labor vouchers as an organizing scheme of their "communism" to be a comrade. Sorry.

If labour-time vouchers are seen as anything more than an emergency stopgap measure to deal with a temporary shortage (like equal sharing would be) the scheme will break down and advocates of it as a permanent system lasting for decades become currency cranks. That's why I think Dave B is right to say that Marx's criticism of "labour-money" proposed by Gray, Proudhon and others also applies to labour-time vouchers as a permanent scheme.

The two main problems are (a) to measure labour-input, other than by simple presence at a place of work and (b) to fix the labour-time "price" of goods and services (the one Marx's concentrates on). Under capitalism this is fixed by market forces establing the amount of socially-necessary labour embodied in them (or rather something linked to this). But this is not something that can be calculated beforehand. Nor is it something that a computer can calculate either. A computer could calculate an average of the labour-time spent in producing the total amount of a product and fix the price (let's not beat about the bush with inverted commas, as a price is what we're talking about) accordingly. But this would advantage slow or below average producers. I know Cockshott, etc have devised clever technical ways to get around this, by fixing the price below this average. But this would penalise the slower producers. But it's meant to. As a means of getting them to work harder. Sounds familiar? Speed-ups, etc -- just like under capitalism today.

Kropotkin's point about the impossibility of measuring individual labour input in what is a collective work effort is still valid. It just can't be done except in some arbitrary way. As I say, the simple solution would be simply to record presence at work. The implication of this of course is that the skilled worker gets paid the same as the less skilled worker. OK perhaps as a temporary stopgap measure to deal with a temporary shortage but full of problems if expected to last for decades.

So forget labour-time voucher schemes. Dread them. Dump them. And go for "from each according to ability, to each according to needs", which is perfectly feasible once the waste and restrictions of capitalism have been elininated.

So, are you saying that there would be luxury restaurants, mass sporting events and high-culture theater in a communist society? Do I remember correctly that you also imagine the police continuing to exist?

To be clear, he didn't actually say this. I am of course reading things into his brief post as well. I should explain myself a bit in that regard:

I happen to remember another thread where he brought up the same stuff in the Grundrisse. He wrote:

He then goes on to quote a passage from the Grundrisse, which one can only assume was his evidence that Karl "in secret hated the idea." Jura then presented a different interpretation of the passage, which actually makes sense in the context of Marx's work. Dave B subsequently decided it was time to take note of the "hazardous" nature of interpreting the Grundrisse, as they are only notes. (here: http://libcom.org/forums/thought/theories-value-06022008?page=1).

This may be of interest - an article by member of the World Socialist Party of United States.

http://www.wspus.org/in-depth/hypothetical-case-for-a-socialist-economic-model/

Hypothetical Case for a Socialist Economic Model. The calculation of labor-hour cost of producing treated drinking water.

How are mass sporting events incompatible with communism? Genuine question.

Why are you all so worried about labor-notes circulating?

There are things, even today, called "non-negotiable instruments." Like your paycheck. If it's at all like mine, it says your name on it, and in big letters, at the bottom, "NON-NEGOTIABLE." So if someone whose name is not on the check tries to deposit it or cash it, it doesn't work. I'm not aware of a huge black market in this or how it'd function if there were one. In fact I think it's impossible. There's fraud, but that's a different issue.

Why would this be so difficult in a socialist society? Labor-vouchers could have your name on it, perhaps "NON-NEGOTIABLE" to make this clear to Marxists who think they can circulate them, and then you are only allowed to receive goods from the common stores if you are using your own labor vouchers. Quite simple.

I think you guys are imagining that a labor-voucher would look just like modern-day cash, except it would say "1 hour" instead of "1 dollar." And then we'd have the obvious difficulty of knowing whose labor-voucher it was. But it's really a pretty simple issue.

Jesus some of this is ridiculous.

Have you ever filled out time sheets? Was there a huge controlling bureaucracy involved in calculating how many hours you worked? (You might say, "Yes, management." But I can guarantee your their bureaucratic functions involved much, much more than figuring out how many hours you worked.)

I showed why this was false in my previous post.

I don't know exactly what you're referring to but certainly any sort of planned production process will have this bureaucratic aspect to it. The key issue is not allowing a separate class of bureaucrats to emerge. Probably this would involve task rotation, a complete divorce of planning from executive powers, etc.

If I remember correctly from previous debates you think that production would have minimal planning in any case. If that's still true, then your argument is more against planning than labor-notes.

If you think that we'll suddenly have great abundance once capitalism is overthrown, you're in for quite a shock if we ever live to see the new society. Scarcity will exist whether or not there are labor-notes.

I don't see what's so complex about a labor-note system, although I admit that communists have a strange problem understanding it.

This is just ridiculous. Do you not see any difference between, you know, having free access to abundant goods and equal access to scarce goods in accordance with how much you've worked, compared to having to produce surplus-value for a capitalist in order to survive, and if you are unable to do so you are left to starve? If you think that labor-notes would just be a "self-managed" version of the same society then your understanding of our current society is lacking.

And one of the simplest ways would be... labor-notes.

Yeah man, sports won't exist, personal items won't exist, we'll just bone and walk in the park all day. All we need to produce is a minimal amount of food and some natural condoms. Maybe not even those, because AIDS isn't caused by HIV. (Is that still your opinion?)

Sorry I'm fine with labor-notes, I guess we can't be friends... I mean.. comrades.

Re post 10 Apr 9 2009

Well first of all in the Grundisse quote Karl didn’t mention Proudhon and I don’t think what he was talking about referred to Proudhons system at all.

The system that I think Karl was talking about was one where the means of production was owned by society as a whole, or by the ‘Bank’. Which I think he is using as a metaphor for the body that would administer for everyone who got what in a system were;

In the system he describes in Grundrisse producers effectively hand over, exchange or sell their commodities to the ‘bank’, and ‘bank’ only, in exchange for chits, vouchers, tickets or whatever. Which they can use to obtain or buy other people’s product that have likewise been handed over, deposited or sold or whatever to the bank.

In this system the chits, vouchers do not circulate in as much as all exchange of products and labour etc is done through the medium of the ‘bank’.

As I understand Proudhon, and I don’t pretend to be an expert, under his system it was fundamentally different.

Under Proudhon’s system the users of the means of production or the ones that were working with it would be the defacto owners of it. The commodities they produced with it would belong to them and they would sell them on an open market at whatever price they thought fit. And the ‘exchange notes’ that were used for that would circulate as ‘money’.

I think that the system described in Grundrisse was where some kind of ‘central body’ or bank set the ‘labour voucher value’ of commodities and ‘labour’ itself, and the ‘bank’ was the only buyer and seller of commodities, as well as ‘directing production’.

That would have been an anathema to Proudhon. Whose system I think was one of essentially co-operatives producing, selling and buying commodities on a market with circulating labour vouchers, chits or whatever.

What Karl was referring to in Grundrisse was essentially the nationalisation of the means of production and what would look to me like ‘state capitalism’, that is indicated I think from the footnote 18 in Grundrisse;

And the following general criticism of that system of Gray’s elsewhere where (ignoring the more theoretical points) ;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02b.htm

That is not to say that there is nothing in common with the idea of paper ‘money’ and banks of the Proudhon system and that of others but I think what is being discussed is not ‘specifically aimed at Proudhonists’.

The criticism of the Proudhon system and the related Duhring system was made in Ante-Duhring for the fact that they operated just like capitalism without the capitalists.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm

As a Marxist who does not believe in the wages system, and therefore I suppose I am part ‘Kropotkinist’, this business of mulling over different remuneration systems doesn’t particularly interest me.

However if we go back to the ‘state capitalist’ kind of system that I think that Karl is talking about in Grundrisse. I think that if you were to live under it you could, depending on your own viewpoint, think of it in two different ways. In the sense that you are forced to work for a wage set by ‘others’ then in that sense it would be despotic, in a tyranny of the majority kind of way.

Alternatively you could just think of it as a fair system for the allocation of the products of society according to work done. That is what I think Karl is on about with his

I think he presuming or it goes without saying that there is no ‘state capitalist class’.

Incidentally I think I have never subsequently backtracked by saying that Karl’s opinions in Grundrisse were his own private thoughts and need to be considered in that light. I had thought that I had made that point several times whilst using that quote, and others, from Grundrisse.

It goes without saying I think that private notebooks written whilst working out ideas need to be read with caution. In fact in Grundrissse and volume IV in particular he can go on for pages writing stuff down and sometimes it is not obvious that the ideas aren’t necessarily his own but just an elaborated synopsis of somebody else’s.

I think that there is a general misconception that labour vouchers were a central part of Marx’s theory, pushed by Trotskyists in defence of the Bolshevik revolution . Whilst in fact he only went into it in any kind of detail in Grundrisse, unpublished, and the Gotha programme that was also not published in his lifetime.

The Gotha programme was a critical appraisal of a labour voucher type system that was being put forward by others, and it was a common idea around at the time.

Aside from the point that he made in it that in communism or whatever there may be a cultural hangover from capitalism of an ‘each for himself’ kind of thing or ‘bourgeois limitations’.

I think it is clear from the Gotha Programme that an important consideration in the ‘distribution of products in future society’ depends on ‘how much there is to distribute’ and the general level of productivity and whether or not some kind of rationing system would be necessary.

Something that you would expect to require some kind of re-consideration or ‘debate’ after 150 years of ‘progress of production and social organization’. Or as Engels put it later re labour vouchers or remuneration according to the amount of work done ;

Engels to C. Schmidt, In Berlin, 1890

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm

The fact that some ‘Marxists’ were advocating the complete overthrow of the wages system along with Kropotkin is, indicated below I think by of all people Hyndman, Engels English ‘enemy’.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1911/adventure/chap15.html

If anarchists or anybody else want labour vouchers or their equivalents then they are going to require an anarchist state to enforce it. Along with Anarchist store detectives, anarchist police, anarchist courts and anarchists prisons. No doubt for bourgeois shoplifters with dogs on the end of a piece of string and a big letter B in a circle on the back of their coats.

And that will be one part of the state that will have to remain and un-lopped off;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm

I'm actually a little confused that no one's concerned by freeloading. Probably most of us have known freeloaders. Probably many of them were communists or anarchists. Probably a lot of people on this board are freeloaders.

I don't like the idea of people living off my labor, not making any contribution in return. It reminds me too much of capitalism.

Don;'t be such a trot obviously all of those things will exist. Why would we not want to watch football or go to eat a nice meal in restaurant with a nice romantic view? As it happens I didn;t even mention high culture theatre i was thinking of the way in which new musicals sell out for months on end, but since we're on the subject obviously different types of theatre will exist. Some people want to take their kids to see the lion king and other might want to go and see the new version of waiting for godot. The problem isn;t that people have different tastes its that people see an intrinsic cultural value in one thing and not another.

I don;t agree with ''labour notes'' because most goods and services don;t need to paid for because there is no shortage of them and being a communist I don't advocate wages and monetay value. However i do recognise that with certain luxury goods there is a shortage of demand and so perhaps you'd need a quick way to try and make sure everyone had a reasonably fair level of access to those goods rather than just a first come first served basis.
.

Yeah kinda agree I'd imagine people who literally refused to work at all for no good reason would have reduced access to some things. In my opinion they should get no acess to aformentioned luxury goods whatsoever, that on top of the general shunning they would get from the rest of society would probably be enough to keep freeloading down to a minimal number of anti-social individuals.

Oh that's been obvious for while

Dave B, to clarify: you are quite right that Marx is talking about Gray in the section you cite. I was thinking of Marx's critique of the time-chitters as a unified critique, even though it is broken up in the Grundrisse, and called it a critique of Proudhonist schemes because he begins with Darimon, a Proudhonist. But that is not an entirely accurate label. What I think did unify these various ideas (whether of Darimon or Gray) in Marx's mind was their focus on the monetary sphere as the root of economic troubles. As John Gray wrote in The Social System:

Marx, by contrast, repeatedly stated that money represents a social relation of production. Marx saw the distinction between value and price not as a defect of the monetary system, but as a necessity for the capitalist social system. Thus his lengthy focus on this theme in the Grundrisse. Saad-Filho puts it well:

In order for this scheme to work, the bank would have to direct production itself. But in this case, it would not be the "time-chits" themselves that solved any problems, contradicting the premises of the time-chitters. This is the "utopianism" Marx criticized.

I would be the first to concede that Marx's comments in the Grundrisse are not a clear, final presentation of his views. But there is a simple solution! Marx criticized the very same ideas of Gray in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

I would not advocate labor notes to deal with scarce resources, for the simple reason that I don't think this is the best way of doing so. Even supposing one could measure the creative results of an individual's activity in isolation, which you can't when all activity is social, I just don't see why you should give them resources according to these results. Why should it be a question of them exchanging their labor for scarce resources held by 'society'?

The simplest way of handling the problem of scarcity is to democratically decide the most effective way of using the resources in question, and then just fucking do it. No calculations of labor time or effort, no pseudo-money, just the pursuit of pleasure. Whichever way is most pleasurable, let resources be used thus.

~J.

Hi Dave C

Thanks for your contribution.

Although I think I would like to mention that I did actually supply the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: reference to Gray. And I had read it all before and have also used it several times before on this subject. You could argue that the ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ thing of 1859 is more important than the Grrundrisse thing of 1857 just because the former was a published work and an official opinion.

However, I think, for what it matters, that the Grundrisse tract goes into more detail, and deals with the subject more generally, it is longer at least. I don’t think that there is any point in the shorter ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ that isn’t in the Grundtrisse tract. Also I think in Grundrisse he is attempting to take on board Grays basic ideas and stress testing them in thought experiment to see what the practical problems would be. Something he doesn’t do really in ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ which is more of a theory bashing exercise.

That is my opinion and I do not intend to give the impression of arrogating that to a statement of fact.

Also I think the ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ which is a specific criticism of Gray assumes some familiarity with the details of Gray’s book, which I haven’t read. Whereas I think the Grundrisse thing just stands on its own, he only mentions Gray in Grundrisse in the footnote.

Although we are in danger of disappearing up our own arseholes getting tangled up with what Karl really meant. I find it useful only so far as Karl and Fred provide a useful starting point for discussion and it is not a good idea to get too far away from that towards just historical investigators of political theory.

I think the points Karl makes in Grundrisse are good ones. I think they, the limitations or reservations, are all present in the Gotha programme, but in the Gotha programme they are in a more subtle and less antagonistic and grating form.

I think he goes into far more detail of the nitty grtitty or practicality of labour vouchers in Grundrisse than anywhere else.

One of the major arguments for labour vouchers in 1870 or whatever, the development of productivity etc, must now be at least in part an anachronistic one.

I don’t know whether or not there is a connection between the letter of Engels to C. Schmidt in August 1890 and the publication of the Gotha Programme in 1890-91 but it would seem likely therefore I think that letter is quite important.

I think it is rare piece just for the fact that it refers to labour vouchers, although there is still much of their later stuff that is not up yet on MIA.

Given the fact that they discussed everything under the sun in detail I can’t help thinking that ‘labour vouchers’ are conspicuous by their comparative absence.

Anyway, in revenge for 1911, as a Marxist I intend to issue as many vile calumnies about statist-anarchists wishing to retain the wages system as I can get away with.

Hi Dave C

Thanks for your contribution.

Although I think I would like to mention that I did actually supply the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: reference to Gray. And I had read it all before and have also used it several times before on this subject. You could argue that the ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ thing of 1859 is more important than the Grrundrisse thing of 1857 just because the former was a published work and an official opinion.

However, I think, for what it matters, that the Grundrisse tract goes into more detail, and deals with the subject more generally, it is longer at least. I don’t think that there is any point in the shorter ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ that isn’t in the Grundtrisse tract. Also I think in Grundrisse he is attempting to take on board Grays basic ideas and stress testing them in thought experiment to see what the practical problems would be. Something he doesn’t do really in ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ which is more of a theory bashing exercise.

That is my opinion and I do not intend to give the impression of arrogating that to a statement of fact.

Also I think the ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ which is a specific criticism of Gray assumes some familiarity with the details of Gray’s book, which I haven’t read. Whereas I think the Grundrisse thing just stands on its own, he only mentions Gray in Grundrisse in the footnote.

Although we are in danger of disappearing up our own arseholes getting tangled up with what Karl really meant. I find it useful only so far as Karl and Fred provide a useful starting point for discussion and it is not a good idea to get too far away from that towards just historical investigators of political theory.

I think the points Karl makes in Grundrisse are good ones. I think they, the limitations or reservations, are all present in the Gotha programme, but in the Gotha programme they are in a more subtle and less antagonistic and grating form.

I think he goes into far more detail of the nitty grtitty or practicality of labour vouchers in Grundrisse than anywhere else.

One of the major arguments for labour vouchers in 1870 or whatever, the development of productivity etc, must now be at least in part an anachronistic one.

I don’t know whether or not there is a connection between the letter of Engels to C. Schmidt in August 1890 and the publication of the Gotha Programme in 1890-91 but it would seem likely therefore I think that letter is quite important.

I think it is rare piece just for the fact that it refers to labour vouchers, although there is still much of their later stuff that is not up yet on MIA.

Given the fact that they discussed everything under the sun in detail I can’t help thinking that ‘labour vouchers’ are conspicuous by their comparative absence.

Anyway, in revenge for 1911, as a Marxist I intend to issue as many vile calumnies about statist-anarchists wishing to retain the wages system as I can get away with.

OK, let's assume that the problem of stopping the labour-notes or labour-time credit accounts circulating can be successfully solved. In Robert Owen's day (and conception) this wouldn't have been a problem. A cobbler would bring his shoes to the "labour bazaar" and get a certificate stating how much labour-time had gone into producing them, which he could then to use to acquire goods produced by other artisans which had taken the same labour-time to produce. Once the cobbler had handed over the certificate to acquire, say, a chair, it would be cancelled, possibly stamped "cancelled" or maybe simply torn up and thrown away just as used theatre tickets were and are. That would be the end of it, as Marx pointed out. Such experiments were tried in Marx's day and all failed, usually because the price of the products offered was higher than what they could be obtained for on the ordinary market. Anyway, nobody is suggesting this today (except perhaps a few back-to-nature Green anarchists and overenthusiastic LETS schemers).

Others, in Marx's day, tried to give this simple "labour bazaar" proposition a more general, theoretical underpinning by proposing a complete economic system based on "labour-money". Marx went for them in The Poverty of Philosopht, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and The Grundrisse. I think it's quite legitimate to see his criticism of these proposals as being equally applicable to the non-circulating labour-voucher scheme he mentioned and unwisely gave some backing to in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, probably because labour-money was a popular idea amongst the artisans who formed the bulk of the supporters of German Social Democracy at the time (1870s). In fact, the main differences between "labour-money" and "labour-voucher" schemes would seem to be that, in the second, the labour-notes don't circulate. Which is not all that of a difference in that others have proposed that conventional money shouldn't circulate either. It could even be argued (as for instance by the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel) that circulating labour-notes would be more convenient (it probably would, actually, if you want to go for such a scheme).

The big problem which Marx identified with labour-money schemes was pricing the products which the labour-notes would be used to exchange for (buy). With increasing productivity, the price of these products would be falling. But labour-money paid to the producers would reflect a past, lower productivity,ie more labour-time. On the face of it, this would seem to benefit the producers since they would be able to purchase more products. But only on the face of it since of course this would mean that effective demand would exceed real supply. Which would lead to the equivalent of what today is called inflation, ie to the labour-money depreciating. This would apply whether not the labour-notes circulate or not. In fact, with non-circulating notes, the outcome would be angry queues of producers at the distribution centres unable to redeem all their vouchers. Marx explains this in the passages Dave B is always quoting from the Grundrisse. For instance:

No doubt Cockshott and Cottrell and Michael Albert and his equally dreaded "parecom" have, or will be able to think up some technical solution to this problem, the most obvious being to require the labour-notes to be spent within a given period of time or have their value reduced. As was in fact proposed for ordinary money by the German monetary reformer (currency crank) [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)]Silvio Gesell[/url].

So the scheme becomes complicater and complicater and further and further removed from anything that has to do with what Marx mentioned his marginal notes on the Gotha programme (let alone "the communistic abolition of buying and selling" mentioned in the Communist Manifesto) and nearer and nearer to common-or-garden currency crankism.

There are two separate issues here:

1. What is actually the case.
2. What Marx thought.

As regards to the first issue, I don't think his criticisms apply. All of his criticisms of the labor-note schemes are directed at the notion that the basis of commodity production can continue (individual commodity producers) while regulating the prices at which commodities exchange directly in accordance with labor-time. But that condition doesn't exist in the sort of labor note system Marx mentions in the Critique of the Gotha Programme.

Therefore, the critique doesn't apply.

As regards the second question, Marx himself most certainly did not think the criticisms he made of the Proudhonists were applicable to the sort of labor-notes proposed by Owen, or in his own Critique of the Gotha Programme . He addresses this issue explicitly in a few places. In Ch. 3 of Capital Marx says:

(my emphasis)

In other words, Owen's "labor-money" is not money.

Hi critique of Gray in The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is precisely that he does presuppose the production of commodities while trying to "evade the necessary conditions of that production":

(Marx's emphasis)

And in the section on commodity fetishism in Ch. 1 of Capital, when Marx contrasts a hypothetical communist society with capitalist society, he brings in labor notes as well (without using the name).

(My emphasis)

Yes, there is a parallel with the production of commodities, insofar as labor-time continues to play a role in the distribution of the social product, but no, he did not think that it was a form of value production. His argument is that it is not value production, since each individual's labor is directly social (i.e. counted as a part of social labor in accordance with a common plan).

So I see no reason to believe that Marx secretly hated or even disliked the labor-note idea (of the not-circulating variety) . In the few times he ever referred to it, he either said that it was distinct from commodity production (as in Capital and the Contribution), or else he proposed it himself (as in The Critique of the Gotha Programme). What he invariably attacked was the sort of labor-money advocated by John Gray, Darimon, etc.

Then it wouldn't be conventional money. In fact it wouldn't be money at all. This is Marx's point.

This holds true only if the labor note circulates, i.e. if it functions as money. In that case what you're saying is correct, the note depreciates. The reason for this is that production is determined by effective demand, and the labor note would be the effective demand. In that case, the real purchasing power of the labor note will be devalued relative to its nominal value.

But this isn't a problem if production is planned on a social level. Society itself decides what it will produce, and the portion of the social product going to each individual is determined by how much time s/he has devoted to production. How could the labor-note be devalued if there aren't separate commodity-producers which set their own prices, and goods are purchased from the common stores? Marx's argument applies only in the case of independent commodity producers.

I don't agree, but to show why I'll have to make a longer post which I don't have time for at the moment. I'll try to reply in the next few days.

I accept, Mikus, that Marx did draw a distinction between introducing "labour-money" under capitalism (as in effect proposed by Gray, Proudhon, etc) and the use of consumption vouchers based on labour-time in a communist society. I still say that some of his criticisms of labour-money also applied to the sort of consumption voucher scheme that he outlined in his Critique of the Gotha Programme

This gives evidence of being hastily written without thinking through the full implications of what is written (what you'd expect in "marginal notes"). For instance, if deductions are going to made (to provide labour to expand production, cover administrative costs and provide for those exempt from working), then the producer will not receive "exactly what he gives to" society, but only an amount proportional to this (even if exactly proportional). But this should also have an effect of the labour-time "price" of products the vouchers can be used to acquire. Otherwise a "given amount of labour in one form" would not be "exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form".

In fact, if the vouchers are to record mere hours of presence at work irrespective of the intensify or skill of the work involved (as seems to be the suggestion), if the "price" of products is to be also fixed merely by the total amount of time taken to produce it at the final stage of its production divided by the number of units (not that Marx suggests this; he doesn't go into this question) then all sorts of problems arise. It would mean that two-hours of time taken to finishing producing a hat would be the same as two hours taken to finish a washing-machine. Fair enough if that's to be the basis of "pricing", but then when the hat-maker used her labour-time voucher to acquire a washing-machine this would not be an exchange of an equal amount of labour in one form for an equal amount of labour in another. It would just be a conventional and perhaps defensible way of distributing washing-machines irrespective of the amount of labour incorporated in them.

If, on the other hand, "prices" are to reflect the amount of labour incorporated in producing products from start to finish, then the same sort of problem (due to increased productivity) would arise as Marx pointed out would with labour-money under capitalism.
Anyway, I'll wait to see how you think this problem could be dealt with.