In all his writings, Marx only gave the sketchiest outlines. Following a successful revolution then labour time vouchers are a possible means of eliminating the effects of direct exploitation but could only be a tempory measure. Basics such as housing, power and other basics could easily be provided free. All this of course would depend on the forward developement of the class struggle because even if the bourgoeisie was physically defeated then the reappearance of exploitation and commodity relations would still be a danger.
Society Without Money
You could try the SPGB Web Site for this kind of stuff:
There was also a lengthy discission thread on this a while back. Try Robo?
Ilan Shalif's semi-fictional account here and here is good on this, especially since he spent much of his life in Kibbutzim so has first hand experience of that at local level.
However he still gives people a personal "quota" for luxuries which, like "labour time vouchers", seems an awful lot like money by a different name.
Parecon is another moneyless system, although again has a basket of consumer goods which could become a lot like money in some interpretations.
There are major technical issues in operating an economy without money, to such an extent that I do not belive it feasible except at community neighbourhood level.
Lazy Riser wrote:
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I can imagine oppressive structuresIt’s not the structures that oppress, it’s people handing responsibility over to the middle classes on a plate. “Oppression” and “exploitation” are things we offer up, not things done to us.
yes but they must solidify themselves in structures, infact the idea of the middle class relies on a structural understanding. There is a dialetical relationship with capitalism producing the highest point of abstraction, the structures themselves dominate and shape the ruling classes.
I think money is the Achilles Heal of capitalism. Getting rid of it is the way to end power. Money requires cedibility, so removing it's value is a state of mind. There is an alternative to the structure of money. The problem with money is it is possible to make money out of money, without actually contributing to society. The way to avoid this is to make the reward for contribution to society, non-transferable.
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Getting rid of it is the way to end power.
Way to re-introduce barter more like. Get rid of money on Monday, use people as currency on Tuesday.
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The way to avoid this is to make the reward for contribution to society, non-transferable.
Ha ha. If the reward can’t be transferred, what good is it? You’re going to reward every one with prizes, like in “Bulls Eye”, and then make it against the law to swap it for something else. Great idea, it’ll really take off.
AliceC wrote:
Money requires cedibility, so removing it's value is a state of mind.
AliceC wrote:
There is an alternative to the structure of money. The problem with money is it is possible to make money out of money, without actually contributing to society.
without wanting to sound like a patronising cybercommunist, you really should read at least the first few chapters of a book you may have heard of ...
Hey, been away for a bit, but feels good to see that libcom has been going strong over da summah.
I read this thread, and would like to add the much maligned PLP's document on communist economics to a general understanding of what a moneyless society would function like.
http://www.plp.org/pl_magazine/commecon.html
I also think Kropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops and The Conquest of Bread are also great sources to look. Any mediator of exchange will eventually become a state, so parecon and labor vouchers are absolute bullshit. Marx actually goes into a lengthy reason why labor vouchers are counter-revolutionary in The Grundrisse, so a moneyless soiety is just that. A society without any mediator of exchange, the negation of the primacy of exchange value and exchange based exclusively on necessity. Contingent upon the necessities of the whole of the working class being met, the surplus value then generated will be used to advance the working class in the best direction of the working class.
No money, no vouchers, no credits, no energy tabs, no bartering, no collectivist hoarding, nothing but "from each according to ablity and to each according to need".
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"from each according to ability and to each according to need".
That’s what we’ve got now, abilities and needs are a question of values not a matter of fact. Taking advantage of others’ weakness is not some kind of sin.
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Contingent upon the necessities of the whole of the working class being met
Including the thrill of the punt? Looks like you intend to obviate our last pleasure comrade.
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advance the working class in the best direction of the working class
Ha ha ha ha. Magically surrounded by lap dancers and cocaine? That's some promise.
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http://www.plp.org/pl_magazine/commecon.html
The correct way to discuss this is "communist, collective, material, moral and political incentives" versus "capitalist, selfish, individualistic material incentives."
Ha ha ha ha. I love it, I really do. Ho ho ho ho. Yeah, it's obviously correct. I mean, it's working really well.
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Way to re-introduce barter more like. Get rid of money on Monday, use people as currency on Tuesday.
Right on. Abolishing money doesn't eliminate the commodity form or instrumentalist exchange relations...it just makes them terribly inefficient, increases waste--meaning people work more and cause more environmental degradation--enterprise grinds to a halt and everyone suffers.
If we really wish to cling to such an idiotic vision of socialist economics we'll inevitably see the reemergence of the state not to mediate exchange but to repress the new forms of 'money' that people will create on their own. The real problem with money as it exists isn't that it mediates exchange (read: allows for more efficient exchange and less restriction on free economic exchange) but rather that the state holds a monopoly on the money supply. A stateless society will see multiple forms of currency emerge.
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I found Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" to be quite inspiring as a picture of a world without either money or hierarchical authority.
"Woman On The Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy is also a very inspiring account, with a bit more detail, and in my view, more feasible.
Antieverything wrote:
A stateless society will see multiple forms of currency emerge.
pardon, i can sometimes be thick on all sorts of things, but how does this make things particularly different than today? we live in a state society which has multiple forms of currency. that is, there are all sorts of currency all across the world, and there are even occasionally multiple forms of currency within one country (such as food stamps, and there's this thing that i presume is still going on in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, i never learned much about it, but there's apparently a specific currency called "Calgary Dollars" made for that city which is, i think, semi-officially recognized - though ask almost any Calgaryian about it and they wont have a clue what you're talking about).
anyway, what's the benefit in a communist society of having multiple currencies, over just one currency? particularly when we'd be talking about a *libertarian* communist society, where the currency would, presumably, be controlled (or tried to be controlled) by the community members to make sure that hoarding of money - and the accompanying result of class division - wouldnt happen. i'm phrasing myself poorly, but... wouldnt the existence of multiple currencies at least imply competing economic forces within a broad communistic federation (which would likely result in class division)? at the best, if multiple currencies just existed for the purpose of plurality, and were generally superfluous, wouldnt it just make exchange rather less efficient than if there were only one currency? i must ask this specifically, as your post obviously seems very concerned with efficiency of exchange (very understandably).
i'm generally interested in economic matters such as this, as it's difficult for me to envision a good balance of a communistic economy, where money and exchange are controlled well enough so that things stay classless, but where people still have some degree of economic freedom, freedom of enterprise to try to go forth and do things individually once in a while (a good way for any society to force itself into stagnation is if it hinders the ability of its individuals to sometimes go at things in their own way. while the economy could be very libertarian, in the sense that society would broadly be ruled by the populace, there is the danger that *all* forms of political/economic action could ONLY be done in the collective arena).
anyway, if i dont shut up now, i'm going to keep rambling incoherently.
Well, there are certain, limited exceptions but it is important to note that, historically, one of the fundamental characteristics of a state (even before the nation-state) has been the ability to monopolize the money supply...generally by using a precious metal with an image of the head o' state along with "I own you motherfuckers!" or something to that effect written on it. Not only does this tie into the ability to tax more effectively but arguably it imparts a psychological impression that all economic activity is possible because of the state.
Recently we've begun to see some small-scale local currencies that can escape taxation but this is only temporary and explicitly due to the IRS's observation that such currencies promote "community building". If such a movement began to include large-scale production and exchange, we would soon see the meaning of a state monopoly on the money supply.
One work-around are LETS systems (I don't know what it stands for...look it up) which are basically currencies without cash...so its 'abstract' credit, often using labor-hours as a standard. When you put goods or services into the system you are able to withdraw and equal value of goods or services from anyone else in the system. This sort of a set-up kinda corresponds to 19th and 20th century ideas of labor vouchers and stuff only allows people leeway to decide which system they want to participate in. While the old timey socialist labor voucher ideas accounted for inflation and hoarding by reducing their value after a period of time, in a stateless society we could expect to see some people opt for the ability to save up credit in order to buy something nice...reemerging inequality shouldn't be too much of an issue considering that without a state nobody can possibly 'own' more property (in the productive sense) than they can personally occupy and use. Some folks might choose to work super hard and save credit in order to buy nice stuff but nobody could save up to buy a plantation and start exploiting others.
I think industrial federations would end up using this type of credit system as well, backed by the principle of reciprocity and the fact of interdependence. I have no illusions of a single movement uniting all industry into one plannable unit. I do, however, have hopes for a general revolutionary principle of joint community-worker control allowing for a more just system of exchange between communities and 'firms'.
I'm not sure if I answered your questions satisfactorily (I'm pretty sure I didn't, actually) but I do sense that you have a pretty undogmatic, realistic approach to economic questions, which I respect immensely. I'd love to keep the discussion going.
very interesting post anti-e.
Antieverything wrote:
I have no illusions of a single movement uniting all industry into one plannable unit. I do, however, have hopes for a general revolutionary principle of joint community-worker control allowing for a more just system of exchange between communities and 'firms'.
i have no problem with the existence of 'firms', and while i can conceive of how worker control would operate, i can't easily conceive of how joint community-worker control would operate. can you outline?
newyawka wrote:
very interesting post anti-e.Antieverything wrote:
I have no illusions of a single movement uniting all industry into one plannable unit. I do, however, have hopes for a general revolutionary principle of joint community-worker control allowing for a more just system of exchange between communities and 'firms'.i have no problem with the existence of 'firms', and while i can conceive of how worker control would operate, i can't easily conceive of how joint community-worker control would operate. can you outline?
Gladly. I sense a certain tension between left-libertarian principles of 'collective' or 'community' control or 'ownership' and self-management. To be fair, anarchists generally don't deny this tension so much as they fail to satisfactorily resolve it.
On one hand we have worker-control and self-management which generally is conceived as extending to the sphere of production while community control/ownership is seen as encompassing the sphere of distribution. Obviously, production and distribution (especially in a socialist society) are not separate things since what the larger community decides needs to be distributed is what ends up being produced and in turn mediates the conditions of production (if that makes sense).
Even within Anarchism we see differing conceptions...some folks assert that the people who work in a factory ought to own it while others push the right of the community to democratic control over production (hence, the community ought to own it).
Without a market, this tension can only be resolved through constant negotiation which basically means that there's still a market just everyone denies it (like in precapitalist Europe where merchants would be ostracized for selling above the 'traditional' price). So either everyone is able to reach an agreement (which becomes more likely if we are able to solve the problem of scarcity once and for all...something I don't have much hope for) or one or the other group begins to feel as if they are being robbed (for example: the workers in a factory begin to feel that what they get from society in return for their time and effort (e.g. work) isn't worth their subjective valuation of this time and effort). When this happens, the tension becomes clear: either the workers truly own/control the factory and are able to hold out for better terms or the community uses force to assert their favored terms--possibly through the reemergence of the state, possibly through moralizing and nonphysical coercion (hopefully the latter) like in some precapitalist examples.
So here I've laid out (poorly) how whether or not you believe that their are markets at work, the same sort of tension will arise between individual 'firms' and larger communities (although I used the example of 'the community' it would probably be more proper to speak of a larger industrial federation). In doing so I've tried to make the point that neither extreme (worker vs community control) is suitable and that there needs to be some sort of institutionalized compromise to keep things operating efficiently and (most importantly) in accordance with people's conceptions of justice.
Luckily...as any socialist already knows...industrial society already has institutional checks and balances built into it, particularly in socialism: the workers in a factory might do all the work in terms of production...but they can't build the machines themselves and they sure as hell can't get the resources to build the facilities not to mention the infrastructure. I don't have much more time so I'll just use some quick example of how even if we have worker self-management and (nominally) worker ownership, larger communities will still be able to place limits on the autonomy of these workers:
Health and safety standards can be imposed by the communities or groups of workers who are responsible for 'insuring' the health of the workers in the factory in question. Production standards and even quotas can be put in place through industrial federations (just like they are within horizontally integrated corporations).
I wrote more about this somewhere else so I'll try to find it and paste the highlights...
Hi, was hoping someone could recommend any good books or pamphlets or whatever about how society would fuction without money.How would it work?I ask coz I don't know much about it and I would like to read about what an alternative would be, if there is one.