I'd like a moneyless system, but see a couple flaws that need fixing

In den hochentwickelten kapitalistischen Ländern, d.h. den Ländern, in denen sozialistische Revolutionen möglich sind, sind die gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräfte weit genug entwickelt, um einen Überfluss an Konsumtionsmitteln zu produzieren. Wenn man bedenkt, dass sicherlich mehr als die Hälfte aller kapitalistischen Produktion und der mit ihr verbundenen unproduktiven Tätigkeiten (ganz abgesehen von den vorhandenen unangewandten Produktionsmöglichkeiten) nichts mit dem menschlichen Konsum zu tun haben, sondern einem ”Sinn” nur innerhalb der irrationalen kapitalistischen Gesellschaft finden können, dann wird ersichtlich, dass unter den Bedingungen kommunistischer Wirtschaft ein Überfluss an Konsumtionsmitteln erzeugt werden kann, der eine Berechnung individueller Anteile überflüssig macht. Die Aktualisiemung des schon haute potentieli gegebenen Überflusses setzt allerdings eine völlige Umstallung der gesellschaftlichen Produktion auf die reelen Bedürfnisse dem Produzenten voraus.

In the advanced capitalist countries, that is, in the countries where a socialist revolution is possible, the social forces of production are sufficiently developed to produce means of consumption in overabundance. More than half of all capitalist production as well as the unproductive activities associated with it (totally disregarding the productive forces which are not exploited) surely have nothing to do with real human consumption, but only make sense in the irrational economy of capitalist society. It is clear, then, that under the conditions of a communist economy, so many consumption goods could be produced that any calculation of their individual shares of average socially necessary labor time would be superfluous. The attainment of a state of abundance, already potentially realizable, presupposes, however, a complete transformation of social production, based on the real needs of the producers.

At this point, however, we encounter a difficulty and a weakness in calculating labor time, a difficulty which Marx had also taken into consideration, and, not discovering any other answer besides the abolition of calculation based on labor time for distribution, he put forth the communist principle “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

In his Critique of the Gotha Program of the German Social Democratic Party, Marx highlighted the fact that distribution in proportion to labor time would imply a new inequality, since the producers are characterized by different capacities for labor and by different personal situations. Some work more intensely in a given time period; some have families to maintain, while others do not; therefore, equality of distribution in accordance with labor time would cause inequality in the conditions of consumption. Marx writes that “In effect, with an equal amount of work contributed and therefore with equal access to the social consumption fund, one obtains more than another, one is wealthier than another, etc. . . . To prevent this unjust situation from arising, the law must be unequal rather than equal.” While he considered this inconvenience to be inevitable in the first phase of communist society, he did not consider it to be a communist principle. When the authors of the Fundamental Principles say that their presentation is “only the consistent application of Marxian thought”, this is true only insofar as that thought is applied to a phase of socialist development within which the principle of the exchange of equivalents still prevails, a principle which will come to an end in socialism.

you have to admit that you can't jump right into communism, so do you agree with Kautsky and Bukharin that money will still exists in the first phase?

Much better, should the situation arise, to directly ration those goods in short supply. But, in any event, the ration-cards wouldn't be money

So you don't pay people for the work they do.

The Teutons are all still very muddled about the practicability of communism; to dispose of this absurdity I intend to write a short pamphlet showing that communism has already been put into practice and describing in popular terms how this is at present being done in England and America. [12] The thing will take me three days or so, and should prove very enlightening for these fellows. I’ve already observed this when talking to people here.

Amongst these people no one is obliged to work against his will, and no one seeks work in vain. They have no poor-houses and infirmaries, having not a single person poor and destitute, nor any abandoned widows and orphans; all their needs are met and they need fear no want. In their ten towns there is not a single gendarme or police officer, no judge, lawyer or soldier, no prison or penitentiary; and yet there is proper order in all their affairs. The laws of the land are not for them and as far as they are concerned could just as well be abolished and nobody would notice any difference for they are the most peaceable citizens and have never yielded a single criminal for the prisons. They enjoy, as we said, the most absolute community of goods and have no trade and no money among themselves.

Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas;

it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.

It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.

But the very fact that this question has been raised, and raised both by the whole of the advanced proletariat (the Communist Party and the trade unions) and by the state authorities, is a step in this direction.

The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family or “decent” boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective “utopian.”

]The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in reality they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is to this, in the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences.

Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable.

Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it

Besides this rigid allocation of an equal measure of the necessaries and enjoyments of life to each individual, another form of Socialism without money is conceivable, the Leninite interpretation of what Marx described as the second phase of communism: each to produce of his own accord as much as he can, the productivity of labour being so high and the quantity and variety of products so immense that everyone may be trusted to take what he needs. For this purpose money would not be needed.

We have not yet progressed so far as this. At present we are unable to divine whether we shall ever reach this state. But that Socialism with which we are alone concerned to-day, whose features we can discern with some precision from the indications that already exist, will unfortunately not have this enviable freedom and abundance at its disposal, and will therefore not be able to do without money.

“A much more serious objection to Kropotkin and other Anarchists is their wholly unscrupulous habit of reiterating statements that have been repeatedly proved to be incorrect, and even outrageous, by the men and women to whom they are attributed. Time after time I have told Kropotkin, time after time has he read it in print, that Social-Democrats work for the complete overthrow of the wages system. He has admitted this to be so. But a month or so afterwards the same old oft-refuted misrepresentation appears in the same old authoritative fashion, as if no refutation of the calumny, that we wish to maintain wage-slavery, had ever been made.”

Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers.

Future society will be socialist society. This means, lastly, that in that society the abolition of wage-labour will be accompanied by the complete abolition of the private ownership of the instruments and means of production; there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists -- there will be only workers who collectively own all the land and minerals, all the forests, all the factories and mills, all the railways, etc.

As you see, the main purpose of production in the future will be to satisfy the needs of society and not to produce goods for sale in order to increase the profits of the capitalists. Where there will be no room for commodity production, struggle for profits, etc.

It is also clear that future production will be socialistically organised, highly developed production, which will take into account the needs of society and will produce as much as society needs. Here there will be no room whether for scattered production, competition, crises, or unemployment.
Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no
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need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.

That is why Karl Marx said as far back as 1846:

"The working class in the course of its development Will substitute for the old bourgeois society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called . . . " (see The Poverty of Philosophy).[89]

That is why Engels said in 1884:

"The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no conception of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity. . . . We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. The society that will organise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe"

(see The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State).[

At the same time, it is self-evident that for the purpose of administering public affairs there will have to be in socialist society, in addition to local offices which

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will collect all sorts of information, a central statistical bureau, which will collect information about the needs of the whole of society, and then distribute the various kinds of work among the working people accordingly. It will also be necessary to hold conferences, and particularly congresses, the decisions of which will certainly be binding upon the comrades in the minority until the next congress is held.

Lastly, it is obvious that free and comradely labour should result in an equally comradely, and complete, satisfaction of all needs in the future socialist society This means that if future society demands from each of its members as much labour as he can perform, it, in its turn, must provide each member with all the products he needs. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! -- such is the basis upon which the future collectivist system must be created. It goes without saying that in the first stage of socialism, when elements who have not yet grown accustomed to work are being drawn into the new way of life, when the productive forces also will not yet have been sufficiently developed and there will still be "dirty" and "clean" work to do, the application of the principle: "to each according to his needs," will undoubtelly be greatly hindered and, as a consequence, society will be obliged temporarily to take some other path, a middle path. But it is also clear that when future society runs into its groove, when the survivals of capitalism will have been eradicated, the only principle that will conform to socialist society will be the one pointed out above.
That is why Marx said in 1875:
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"In a higher phase of communist (i.e., socialist) society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of livelihood but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual . . . only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois law be crossed in iis entirety and society inscribe on its banners: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'" (see Critique of the Gotha Programme).[91].

Such, in general, is the picture of future socialist society according to the theory of Marx.

This is all very well. But is the achievement of socialism conceivable? Can we assume that man will rid himself of his "savage habits"?

Or again: if everybody receives according to his needs, can we assume that the level of the productive forces of socialist society will be adequate for this?
Socialist society presupposes an adequate development of productive forces and socialist consciousness among men, their socialist enlightenment. At the present time the development of productive forces is hindered by the existence of capitalist property, but if we bear in mind that this capitalist property will not exist in future society, it is self-evident that the productive forces will increase tenfold. Nor must it be forgotten that in future society the hundreds of thousands of present-day parasites, and also the unemployed, will set to work and augment the ranks of the working people; and this will greatly stimulate the development of the

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productive forces. As regards men's "savage" sentiments and opinions, these are not as eternal as some people imagine; there was a time, under primitive communism, when man did not recognise private property; there came a time, the time of individualistic production, when private property dominated the hearts and minds of men; a new time is coming, the time of socialist production -- will it be surprising if the hearts and minds of men become imbued with socialist strivings? Does not being determine the "sentiments" and opinions of men?

We have seen, on the other hand, that when production and distribution are thoroughly organised, money will play no part whatever, and as a matter of course no kind of money dues will be demanded from anyone. Money will have generally become unnecessary. finance will become extinct.

We repeat that that time is a long way off yet. There can be no talk of it in the near future. For the present we must find means for public finance. But we are already taking steps leading to the abolition of the money system. Society is being transformed into one huge labour organisation or company to produce and distribute what is already produced without the agency of gold coinage or paper money. The end of the power of money is imminent.

But then, if sudden credit upheavals should interrupt the mutual settlement of payments and upset the payments mechanism, it is money that is suddenly in demand as the real universal means of payment, with the requirement that the whole volume of wealth should have a two-fold existence: once as commodity and again as money, so that these two modes of existence are identical to each other. At such moments of crisis, money appears as exclusive wealth, which is manifested as such not in some merely imaginary depreciation, as it does in, say, the monetary system, but in the active depreciation of all real wealth. With respect to the world of commodities, value then continues to exist only in its adequate exclusive form – as money.

The further elaboration of this point is here irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is that moments of monetary crises proper bring out a contradiction that is immanent to the development of money as the universal means of payment. It is not as a measure that money is demanded in such crises, since as such its corporeal presence is a matter of indifference; nor is it as coin, for it does not figure as such in payments; but it is demanded as exchange value become independent, as a materially present universal equivalent, as the embodiment of abstract wealth; in the form, that is, in which it is the object of hoarding in the strict sense of the term, as money. Its development as the universal means of payment shrouds the contradiction that exchange value has assumed forms independent of its mode of existence as money; and on the other hand, its mode of existence as money is posited precisely as the definitive and solely adequate one.

In consequence of the balancing out of payments and their cancellation of each other as positive and negative amounts, money, as means of payment, can appear as a merely notional form of commodity, as in the case with its being the measure [of value], and in its functioning in the formation of prices. The collision occurs from the fact that – contrary to the arrangement, contrary to the general assumption of modern trade, and whenever the mechanism of these mutual cancellations and the credit system on which it partly rests are disrupted – it must instantly be present and to hand in its real form.

(I wonder though, why Dave B hasn't yet brought up his favorite story about the German gold to help Lenin )

The disruption of the Entente and the subsequent creation of political combinations agreeable to us constitute the most important war aim of our diplomacy. Russia appeared to be the weakest link in the enemy chain. The task therefore was gradually to loosen it, and, when possible, to remove it. This was the purpose of the subversive activity we caused to be carried out in Russia behind the front—in the first place promotion of separatist tendencies and support of the Bolsheviks.

It was not until the Bolsheviks had received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels that they were in a position to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda, to conduct energetic propaganda and appreciably to extend the originally narrow basis of their party. The Bolsheviks have now come to power; how long they will retain power cannot be yet foreseen. They need peace in order to strengthen their own position; on the other hand it is entirely in our interest that we should exploit the period while they are in power, which may be a short one, in order to attain firstly an armistice and then, if possible, peace. 1 The conclusion of a separate peace would

mean the achievement of the desired war aim, namely a breach between Russia and her Allies. The amount of tension necessarily caused by such a breach would determine the degree of Russia's dependence on Germany and her future relations with us. Once cast out and cast off by her former Allies, abandoned financially, Russia will be forced to seek our support.

We shall be able to provide help for Russia in various ways; firstly in the rehabilitation of the railways; (I have in mind a German Russian Commission, under our control, which would undertake the rational and co-ordinated exploitation of the railway lines so as to ensure speedy resumption of freight movement), then the provision of a substantial loan, which Russia requires to maintain her state machine. This could take the form of an advance on the security of grain, raw materials, &c, &c, to be provided by Russia and shipped under the control of the above-mentioned commission. Aid on such a basis—the scope to be increased as and when necessary—would in my opinion bring-about a growing rapprochement between the two countries.

Austria-Hungary will regard the rapprochement with distrust and not without apprehension. I would interpret the excessive eagerness of Count Czernin to come to terms with the Russians as a desire to forestall us and to prevent Germany and Russia arriving at an intimate relationship inconvenient to the Danube Monarchy. There is no need for us to compete for Russia's good will. We are strong enough to wait with equanimity; we are in a far better position than Austria-Hungary to offer Russia what she needs for the reconstruction of her state. I view future developments in the East with confidence but I think it expedient for the time being to maintain a certain reserve in our attitude to the Austro-Hungarian government in all matters including the Polish question which concern both monarchies so as to preserve a free hand for all eventualities.

jThe above-mentioned considerations lie, I venture to believe, within the framework of the directives given me by His Majesty. I request you to report to His Majesty accordingly and to transmit to me by telegram the All-highest instructions.

"From absolutely reliable sources I have now ascertained that the sum was very large, an almost unbelievable amount, certainly more than fifty million goldmarks, a sum about the source of which Lenin and his comrades could be in no doubt. One result of all this was the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. General Hoffmann, who negotiated with Trotsky and other members of the Bolshevik delegation at Brest, held the Bolsheviks in his hand in two senses [that is, military and monetary], and he made sure they felt it."

………….. Finally, according to other reports, a Czechoslovak corps has passed through Chabarovsk. We insist that it be prevented from travelling on to Vladivostok, should such a move be intended. Report by telegram.

Please use larger sums, as it is greatly in our interests that Bolsheviks should survive. Riezler's funds at your disposal. If further money required, please telegraph how much. It is very difficult to say from here which trend to support if Bolsheviks fall. If

really hard-pressed, left-wing Social Revolutionaries would fall with Bolsheviks. These parties seem to be the only ones who base their position on peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk. As a party, Kadets are anti-German; Monarchists would also work for revision of Brest peace treaty. We have no interest in supporting Monarchists' ideas, which would reunite Russia. On the contrary, we must try to prevent Russian consolidation as far as possible and, from this point of view, we must therefore support the parties furthest to the left.

Judging by purely external signs, the power of the Bolsheviks seems to have secured itself to some extent during the last few days. Whether or how long this positive trend will last remains to be seen. Since political life here moves entirely in convulsive spasms, one must always be prepared to reckon with very brief stages.

For the moment, however, the big planned coups of the Smolny government have been successful. Since it depended on the support of the Red Guard and of marines—rather than on the army proper—and thus had control of the streets, it was not very difficult for the government to send the Constituent Assembly, whose opening looks more and more like a farce, home after little more than twenty-four hours and, in place of this unacceptable body, to summon the Convention, which supports the government unconditionally.

In all other fields, too, the government is following the well-tried formula: 'If you won't be my brother I'll beat your brains in.' The press could hardly be more completely gagged. With the exception of the party organs Pravda and Izvestia, all the newspapers are strictly censored and, if necessary, severely punished.* Political opponents, too, enjoy short shrift. Politicians, deputies, editors, and other such members of the opposition live under a continual threat to their liberty, if not worse. Those arrested last week include Shamanski, the president of the Red Cross. There is no means of knowing how many other people may have shared this fate, as only very few cases are admitted

publicly and the government presumably 'works' mainly in secret.

The great sensation of the last few days was the murder of the ex-Ministers Shingarev and Kokoshkin. Because of their poor state of health, these two men had been taken from the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul to a hospital, where they were shot by marines on the night after their admission. Kokoshkin was shot dead, but Shingarev only died after several hours suffering. At first sight, the crime bore all the marks of a simple political murder, but the governing clique denies any complicity, claiming that, on the contrary, the murder was contrived by the opposition in order to secure for themselves a weapon against the Bolsheviks.

1 The Kaiser's marginal remark: 'We shall have to do the same with our gutter-press.'

It is not as a measure that money is demanded in such crises, since as such its corporeal presence is a matter of indifference;
...
, money, as means of payment, can appear as a merely notional form of commodity, as in the case with its being the measure [of value], and in its functioning in the formation of prices.

Money is a measure only because it is labour time materialized in a specific substance, hence itself value, and, more particularly, because this specific materiality counts as its general objective one [allgemeingegenständliche], as the materiality of labour time as such, as distinct from its merely particular incarnations; hence because it is an equivalent. But since, in its function as measure, money is only an imagined point of comparison, only needs to exist ideally—only the ideal transposition of commodities into their general value-presence takes place --; since, further, in this quality as measure it figures first as accounting coin, and I say a commodity is worth so many shillings, francs etc., when I transpose it into money;

this has given rise to the confused notion of an ideal measure, developed by Steuart and refurbished at various periods, even recently, in England, as a profound discovery. Namely in this sense, that the names, pound, shillings, guinea, dollar etc., which count as accounting units are not specific names for specific quantities of gold, silver etc., but merely arbitrary points of comparison which do not themselves express value, no definite quantity of objectified labour time. Hence the whole nonsense about fixing the price of gold and silver—price understood here as the name by which fractional parts are called.

Apart from this, has not Marx himself here embarked upon the search for an ideal standard of distribution?

By no means. This is clear from the next paragraphs.

Marx continues:

“I have dealt so fully with these matters, with ‘the whole product of labour’ on the one hand, and with ‘equal rights’ and with ‘just distribution’ on the other, in order to show how monstrous it is to endeavour: first of all to force upon our party as dogmas, conceptions which at one time had a certain meaning, but which have now become obsolete verbiage; and secondly, to endeavour to uproot the realistic conceptions which (after long labour) have been firmly implanted in the minds of our members, and to replace them by ideological fustian about rights and all the rest of it, concerning which the democrats and the French Socialists are so fond of prating.

“Apart from the considerations hitherto adduced, I may point out that it is a great mistake to make so much of this matter of distribution, and to stress that question above all others.

“The distribution of the means of consumption at any time is no more than a consequence of the extant distribution of the means of production. But this latter is characteristic of the prevailing mode of production. Capitalist production, for example, rests upon the fact that the material pre-requisites of production are in the hands of non-workers, the owners of capitalist property and landed property, whereas all that the masses possess is the personal pre-requisite of production, labour-power to wit. The elements of production being thus distributed, the extant distribution of the means of consumption follows spontaneously. But if the material pre-requisites of production be the co-operative property of the workers themselves, a method of distribution of the means of consumption differing from that now extant will ensue as a matter of course. Vulgar Socialism has accepted as gospel from the bourgeois economists (and a part even of the democracy has taken over the doctrine from the unreflecting Socialists) that the problem of distribution can be considered and treated independently of the mode of production, from which it is inferred that Socialism turns mainly upon the question of distribution. But the real nature of these relationships has long been made perfectly clear. Why should we retrace our steps?”

Now, it might be thought that the issue of time-chits overcomes all these difficulties. (The existence of the time-chit naturally already presupposes conditions which are not directly given in the examination of the relations of exchange value and money, and which can and do exist without the time-chit: public credit, bank etc.; but all this not to be touched on further here, since the timechit men of course regard it as the ultimate product of the ‘series,’ which, even if it corresponds most to the ‘pure’ concept of money, ‘appears’ last in reality.) To begin with: If the preconditions under which the price of commodities = their exchange value are fulfilled and given; balance of demand and supply; balance of production and consumption; and what this amounts to in the last analysis, proportionate production (the so-called relations of distribution are themselves relations of production), then the money question becomes entirely secondary, in particular the question whether the tickets should be blue or green, paper or tin, or whatever other form social accounting should take. In that case it is totally meaningless to keep up the pretence that an investigation is being made of the real relations of money.
The bank (any bank) issues the time-chits. [18]

A commodity, A = the exchange value x, i.e. = x hours of labour time, is exchanged for a quantity of money representing x labour time. The bank would at the same time have to purchase the commodity, i.e. exchange it for its representative in monetary form, just as e.g. the Bank of England today has to give notes for gold. The commodity, the substantial and therefore accidental existence of exchange value, is exchanged for the symbolic existence of exchange value as exchange value. There is then no difficulty in transposing it from the form of the commodity into the form of money.

The labour time contained in it only needs to be authentically verified (which, by the way, is not as easy as assaying the purity and weight of gold and silver) and thereby immediately creates its counter-value, its monetary existence. No matter how we may turn and twist the matter, in the last instance it amounts to this: the bank which issues the time-chits buys commodities at their costs of production, buys all commodities, and moreover this purchase costs the bank nothing more than the production of snippets of paper, and the bank gives the seller, in place of the exchange value which he possesses in a definite and substantial form, the symbolic exchange value of the commodity, in other words a draft on all other commodities to the amount of the same exchange value.

Exchange value as such can of course exist only symbolically, although in order for it to be employed as a thing and not merely as a formal notion, this symbol must possess an objective existence; it is not merely an ideal notion, but is actually presented to the mind in an objective mode. (A measure can be held in the hand; exchange value measures, but it exchanges only when the measure passes from one hand to the other.) So the bank gives money for the commodity; money which is an exact draft on the exchange value of the commodity, i.e. of all commodities of the same value; the bank buys. The bank is the general buyer, the buyer of not only this or that commodity, but all commodities. For its purpose is to bring about the transposition of every commodity into its symbolic existence as exchange value. But if it is the general buyer, then it also has to be the general seller; not only the dock where all wares are deposited, not only the general warehouse, but also the owner of the commodities, in the same sense as every merchant.

I have exchanged my commodity A for the time-chit B, which represents the commodity’s exchange value; but I have done this only so that I can then further metamorphose this B into any real commodity C, D, E etc., as it suits me. Now, can this money circulate outside the bank? Can it take any other route than that between the owner of the chit and the bank? How is the convertibility of this chit secured? Only two cases are possible. Either all owners of commodities (be these products or labour) desire to sell their commodities at their exchange value, or some want to and some do not.

If they all want to sell at their exchange value, then they will not await the chance arrival or non-arrival of a buyer, but go immediately to the bank, unload their commodities on to it, and obtain their exchange value symbol, money, for them: they redeem them for its money. In this case the bank is simultaneously the general buyer and the general seller in one person. Or the opposite takes place. In this case, the bank chit is mere paper which claims to be the generally recognized symbol of exchange value, but has in fact no value. For this symbol has to have the property of not merely representing, but being, exchange value in actual exchange. In the latter case the bank chit would not be money, or it would be money only by convention between the bank and its clients, but not on the open market. It would be the same as a meal ticket good for a dozen meals which I obtain from a restaurant, or a theatre pass good for a dozen evenings, both of which represent money, but only in this particular restaurant or this particular theatre. The bank chit would have ceased to meet the qualifications of money, since it would not circulate among the general public, but only between the bank and its clients. We thus have to drop the latter supposition.

The bank would thus be the general buyer and seller. Instead of notes it could also issue cheques, and instead of that it could also keep simple bank accounts. Depending on the sum of commodity values which X had deposited with the bank, X would have that sum in the form of other commodities to his credit. A second attribute of the bank would be necessary: it would need the power to establish the exchange value of all commodities, i.e. the labour time materialized in them, in an authentic manner. But its functions could not end there. It would have to determine the labour time in which commodities could be produced, with the average means of production available in a given industry, i.e. the time in which they would have to be produced. But that also would not be sufficient.

It would not only have to determine the time in which a certain quantity of products had to be produced, and place the producers in conditions which made their labour equally productive (i.e. it would have to balance and to arrange the distribution of the means of labour), but it would also have to determine the amounts of labour time to be employed in the different branches of production. The latter would be necessary because, in order to realize exchange value and make the bank’s currency really convertible, social production in general would have to be stabilized and arranged so that the needs of the partners in exchange were always satisfied.

Nor is this all. The biggest exchange process is not that between commodities, but that between commodities and labour. (More on this presently.) The workers would not be selling their labour to the bank, but they would receive the exchange value for the entire product of their labour, etc. Precisely seen, then, the bank would be not only the general buyer and seller, but also the general producer. In fact either it would be a despotic ruler of production and trustee of distribution, or it would indeed be nothing more than a board which keeps the books and accounts for a society producing in common. The common ownership of the means of production is presupposed, etc., etc. The Saint-Simonians made their bank into the papacy of production.

It doesn’t hurt that much to provide a link does it, so I don’t have to remember where it is?

and no I don’t support the idea of a first phases of communism and labour chits, I don’t think Karl was that keen on it either,

You know, Ayn Rand was right: Money is the strongest means or instrument for freedom. She means this: We exchange only if both parties want it. At least formally, both sides of the exchange get something. Without money, direct means of domination will need to be restored. Of course, I don’t accept her premise: either the rule of money, or direct domination. Nonetheless, isn’t there a correct point? One can criticize money as an alienated form. But how can we actually organize complex social interaction outside money without direct domination?

Well you can consider a first phase inevitable but without labour chits. If there's not a first phase, then why speak of withering away of the state and such. Clearly you also agree with a first phase of communism (or dictatorship of the proletariat) where the transition is made from capitalist mode of production to full communism, but for some reason you think it's a taboo to say so here. It's similar to how you as a Marxist believe the state will continue to exist in that period, so likewise you believe money will continue to exist (and your numerous links show that apparently all Marxists across the board believed this as well).

We can conceive a time when science (…and what did that look like in 1892, could he have conceived our 2012 scientific and technological world as more likely than proper communism?…) shall have raised industry to such a high level of productivity that everything wanted by man will be produced in great abundance. In such a case, the formula, “To each according to his needs,” would be applied as a matter of course and without difficulty. On the other hand, not even the profoundest conviction of the justice of this formula would be able to put it into practice if the productivity of labor remained so low that the proceeds of the most excessive toil could produce only the bare necessities………..

I am not into the withering away of states and wage labour vouchers etc

But for the immediate abolition of both.

capricorn, what do you see as tendentious about the 3 stages?

In such a case, the formula, “To each according to his needs,” would be applied as a matter of course and without difficulty.

De chacun selon ses forces ", cela veut encore dire que si je puis produire dix, je dois produire dix, que si je suis capable de douze heures de travail, il me faudra travailler douze heures. Mais pourquoi, à quel titre, dans quel but, si la satisfaction des besoins de la collectivité tout entière peut être obtenue au prix minimum de cinq ou six heures de travail pour chacun, devrais-je dépenser toutes mes forces ? L'idéal n'est pas, ne doit pas être, d'extraire de l'homme le maximum d'efforts, mais bien au contraire de restreindre ces efforts et de lui laisser pour sa jouissance personnelle la plus libre disposition de ses forces ou facultés.

La deuxième partie de la formule : " à chacun selon ses besoins ", n'est ni plus égalitaire, ni plus socialiste. Si les objets nécessaires à la vie existent en quantité suffisante, pourquoi, en limiter l'usage à des besoins déterminés du dehors ? Et si, au contraire, malgré l'extra-productivité du capital socialisé, une partie seulement des besoins de tous peut être satisfaite, comment reconnaître à chacun le droit de consommer selon ses besoins par lui-même constatés ? Comment ne pas limiter, ne pas rationner cette consommation individuelle ?

Quant à la société communiste, qui ne deviendra une réalité vivante que lorsque les produits consommables existeront en quantité telle que la consommation des uns ne puisse ni entraver ni restreindre la consommation des autres, et qui sortira de l'ordre collectiviste avec des producteurs ou des hommes transformés par les conditions nouvelles du travail, elle n'aura pas d'autre devise que celle inscrite par Rabelais à la porte de son abbaye de Thélème : fais ce que vouldras.

Ni la production de chacun ne sera déterminée par ses forces, ni sa consommation par ses besoins.

De chacun et à chacun selon sa volonté, telle sera l'unique règle sociale – si règle on peut appeler cette absence de toute réglementation.

Et cette liberté dans la production et dans la consommation sera possible, je le répète, parce que la nourriture. le vêtement, etc., existeront alors pour tous dans la même proportion que l'air ou que la lumière aujourd'hui et parce que le travail considérablement restreint, harmonisé avec les goûts et accompli en commun ou en famille – la grande famille humaine réconciliée – sera devenu un attrait, un besoin auquel nul ne sera assez ennemi de lui-même pour vouloir se soustraire.

By the early 1880s, most of the European anarchist movement had adopted an anarchist communist position, advocating the abolition of wage labour and distribution according to need. Ironically, the "collectivist" label then became more commonly associated with Marxist state socialists who advocated the retention of some sort of wage system during the transition to full communism. The anarchist communist, Peter Kropotkin, attacked this position in his essay, "The Collectivist Wages System", which was reprinted in his book The Conquest of Bread in 1892.

So dave b is on the side of Kropotkin

they proposed that certain measures should be adopted to take industry out of the control of the capitalists after the workers had obtained control of political power. Even in this direction it is unthinkable that a section of the population, knowing it was doomed, would continue to play its part in industry, calmly awaiting the taking away of its privileges piecemeal.

This was one of the problems that forced Lenin and his associates to retreat. However, we are convinced that political and economic development since their day would have caused Marx and Engels to reconsider their attitude on the question.
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Industry cannot be wrested from capitalist ownership by degrees; this change must be fundamental, immediate and complete. Socialism means an immediate and fundamental revolution in the basis of society; the complete abolition of capitalist ownership of the means of production at one stroke, and its replacement by common ownership. This change will be catastrophic in the sense of a complete break and cannot be achieved gradually. When the mass of the workers understand and want Socialism, and it is impossible before then, the difficulties of organising production and distribution on the new basis will not present a great problem

I don't see a clear argument in the 1948 preface for calling the transition period superfluous.