Proudhon suggests certificates for labour performed ('time chits', 'labour money', etc.) enabling the eradication of money and the equivalence of all commodities. Marx suggests (Critique of the Gotha Programme) a "certificate from society that [the labourer] has furnished such and such an amount of labour", which can be used to draw "from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour."
Does anyone know of any good (and preferably short) articles on the distinction between the two?
It seems, from a very cursory look, that the difference may be as follows:
Marx states that within "the co-operative society based on common ownership" the "producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on these products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them." Marx is after a direct relation in which the labour time I perform is returned to me in the form of goods. Proudhon, on the other hand, wants to retain exchange. He also wants to retain private ownership of the means of production, and to avoid centralisation. Consequently, Proudhon's certificates - although intended to do away with money - simply replicate it. This is because the social labour expressed in Proudhon's certificates constitutes a form of exchange value.
Value only becomes exchange value when in an exchange relation; and exchange allows the purchase, and thereby the exploitation of labour, and thus the capacity for capital to grow. Marx on the other hand, by refusing exchange, circumvents this.
What however are the implications for the role and status of money within communist economies? It seems fairly obvious that if one retains wage labour and exchange relations within a 'communist' social structure nothing will have changed at all. If one cannot abolish money without abolishing the commodity form (which Proudhon's error seems to indicate), then it presumably follows that abolishing the commodity form entails the abolition of money. Most communist societies seem to have retained money (information on the history of this issue would be of interest); and on this logic, if it holds, any alternative to capitalism that retains exchange, wage etc. will not have altered capitalist social relations (at least not to the desired extent). ...yet a whole host of practical issues would seem to arise from Marx's 'certificates' and the distribution of goods that this entails
Which communist societies are you referring to?