theory of an anarchist finance

The link wasn't as bad I as thought it was going to be, but I don't think you have the full grasp of what libertarian communism is - there can't be "exchange" in communism and neither will the unit of production be separate and competing enterprises.

Try this:

http://www.theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/how-socialism-can-organise-production-without-money-adam-buick-pieter-lawrence-1984

There is more choice in free communism, both collective and individual, without money or any other medium of 'exchange' as in capitalism and all market based societies

Under communism, the products of labor will be freely available or it won't be communism.

Instead of exchange, we'll have democratically controlled distribution networks. They'll exist, as I see it, on local, regional, and international scales. All products will be turned over to these distribution networks who will then see that they're distributed according to need.

With most products, the goal will be to peg production to expected need. With some products and services, this could mean basically unlimited access. With others, they'll have to be rationing, based on a democratically decided and controlled rationing system.

That's not exchange, though. That's the abolition of markets and the implementation of a planned and rational distribution system. I don't see any room (and, indeed, any need) for money or trade within such a system.

Not an expert, but does it really matter if some fringe decides decides to use their own currency? Why would we need to prevent that? What's important is that it's not being enforced as some standard means of exchange and that production is oriented around meeting people's needs and not earning a profit.

What are the ''fringe'' and what are the ''margins''?? We are talking here about replacing an integrated global capitalism based on value production with an equally integrated global communist society of free access. No body is bothered about Joe 'exchanging' an old cd for their friends hand woven gloves based on their personal and individual qualitative assessment of their personal possessions without their being any equivalent quantitative measure. 'Alternative ' currencies are still money reflecting equivalent exchange between private owners which if developed at a social level would begin to undermine the common 'ownership' of both the system of production and distribution of goods and services that we would all be benefiting from. Why would any group of people wish to remove themselves from these benefits by separating themselves out within a smaller self-contained system of exchanging private property?

maltesto

Thanks zugzwang, because you explained better than me the point I wanted to highlight.

It is weird that we would want to prevent people to use their own currency.

So, I don't necessarily think Zug (and correct me if I'm wrong here, Zug) is backing up you're point as strongly as you think. I think he's saying that if it's a fringe thing - like some historical reenactment shit - whatever. But, that's there's no reason for us, as anarchists, the promote alternative currencies or try to fit into our post-capitalist worldview. I image Zug would be just as concerned as anyone on here if a group tried to consciously reintroduce money into their local economy in any meaningful or sustained way.

There could be multiple reasons why. The issue is not why they would do that but what would you if they did?

Just on this, people wanting do something doesn't make it a good decision. So if after a successful revolution (in which money has successfully been abolished), some group wants to reintroduce money, I'm quite okay basically cutting them off from the benefits of the revolution. They can't tap into our communist distribution networks, get support and assistance from surrounding collective enterprises, etc. I suspect at that point, their little monetary experiment will come to an end.

In any case, I'm with Spikymike on this one as I don't think playing at capitalist social relations would be desirable or workable within a functioning communist society. Just like we can't go back to feudalism now, once we've abolished commodity production and exchange, money would cease to function as money. There'd be very little point to it.

It's useful to distinguish between exchange in the everyday sense, which would also include such activities as swapping possessions (e.g. irrespective of how much the objects in question are worth), which

IS NOT

the same thing as 'exchange' in the Marxian sense.

Maltesto, I think that you should try to understand what money is in capitalism. It is not merely a technology for exchange, but the naked face of our domination. That is, without capitalist relations of production in which the vast majority of people are divorced from the means of survival and therefore have to work for a living, money is simply not needed.

While I don't think that this is what you mean by saying we'd have money, the reaction you're getting is that money is really only needed in a system where things of social need are produced as commodities rather than directly for other people. If production is directly for consumption, there is really no need to have anything "equivalent" to exchange. In a communist society you'd go to a "store" (as in the old understanding of a store where things are stored rather than sold) and just take what you need.

Now for scarce commodities, I could see an argument for something similar to money, although not having the function of money today (interestingly, though as an aside, I think that the blockchain could be used to improve so-called labour notes/chits solutions). Then again, for scarce goods (like tickets to popular sporting events--sorry Nization there will be sports--or staying in a hotel room with incredible view etc.), I think a lottery would be the best solution.

The only place I could actually see money being used as something representing useful things is in computer games (then again, culture reflects society, so maybe there will be another system for digital loot in a communist society).

Craftwork

It's useful to distinguish between exchange in the everyday sense, which would also include such activities as swapping possessions (e.g. irrespective of how much the objects in question are worth), which
IS NOT
the same thing as 'exchange' in the Marxian sense.

This is correct, but also not anal-retentive enough. Technically, what Marx is referring to is circulation, which is a form determination of pre-capitalist exchange/buying and selling. Exchange is technically swapping possessions as you say (materially, a changing of hands, as Marx describes it), buying and selling with money being a further determination (and a necessary historical and logical precondition), which when subsumed by capital becomes circulation, where the activity of products of labour changing hands occurring only to transform value from the commodity form into money and back again.

So based on this, yes we'd still have exchange in communist society, but the necessity of value appearing in its form would not be driving these exchanges. It would be driven by the human economy of need, desire, want.

Maltesto, I think that you should try to understand what money is in capitalism.

And what coercion is, for that matter...

Spikymike

What are the ''fringe'' and what are the ''margins''?? We are talking here about replacing an integrated global capitalism based on value production with an equally integrated global communist society of free access. No body is bothered about Joe 'exchanging' an old cd for their friends hand woven gloves based on their personal and individual qualitative assessment of their personal possessions without their being any equivalent quantitative measure. 'Alternative ' currencies are still money reflecting equivalent exchange between private owners which if developed at a social level would begin to undermine the common 'ownership' of both the system of production and distribution of goods and services that we would all be benefiting from. Why would any group of people wish to remove themselves from these benefits by separating themselves out within a smaller self-contained system of exchanging private property?

Sorry, I'm not much of a Marxist scholar/intellectual, yet at least (still getting through Capital), so bear with me. How would it undermine our economics? There could still be free access to the products of labor alongside some exchanging, if people really felt the need for that. If it's just on the fringe and has no relation to production and consumption then I don't see what the problem is.

Also, I know I'm talking about Communism (which is what I'm in favor of), but what about room for experimentation? What if some people want to try out some Market Socialist ideas or use remuneration/Collectivism like they did in Spain in some areas?

This passage by Guerin on Spain might be relevant:

'It appears that the units which applied the collectivist principle of day wages were more solid than the comparatively few which tried to establish complete communism too quickly, taking no account of the egoism still deeply rooted in human nature [...] In some villages where currency had been suppressed and the population helped itself from the common pool, production and consuming within the narrow limits of the collectives, the disadvantages of this paralyzing self-sufficiency made themselves felt, and individualism soon returned to the fore, causing the breakup of the community by the withdrawal of many former small farmers who had joined but did not have a really communist way of thinking.'

zugzwang

There could still be free access to the products of labor alongside some exchanging, if people really felt the need for that. If it's just on the fringe and has no relation to production and consumption then I don't see what the problem is.

The question is, why should such a need arise in the first place? The way some people on this thread approach this issue seems to imply that they view markets as "opportunities" and exchange as the result of people taking those opportunities. This is also the standard bourgeois view (and I mean this in a descriptive way): people discover that they have different needs and that they can help each other out by catering to those needs. So someone who is better at making arrows than at hunting starts making arrows for a hunter, who, in turn, gives this person some meat. Everyone is better off now.

However, this has not been the case, historically, with how systematic exchange came about (i.e., the regular, everyday exchange that involves all kinds of products, including basic needs – what we call the circulation of commodities and money). The market in basic needs presupposes the separation of direct producers from the means of production – the exact opposite of what communist relations are about. Under such conditions, exchange is not merely the result of people "taking the opportunity", but the result of an imperative. You can't satisfy your needs unless you take part in circulation. So the person making arrows is in fact faced with the following alternative: either I die of hunger (in the extreme case), or I make myself useful for the people in the market and start making arrows for this fellow who's offering to give me something to eat.

So this separation involves impersonal coercion; the market here is an imperative, not an opportunity. And it is always based on the exclusion of people from satisfying their needs: unless you take part in the market (unless you produce for exchange), you can't satisfy your needs. The juridicial expression of this exclusion is private property.

If systematic exchange would somehow arise under communism, it would be a sure sign that things have taken a wrong turn.

Now, of course systematic exchange is not just any old exchange. On the most general level, some sort of exchange relations (where products of labor change hands) exist in all societies, including communism. Unless everyone is self-subsistent, there has to be some process of "exchange" in general. The circulation of commodities and money is a very specific historical form of this "general" exchange which is only fully developed in capitalism. But there can be cases of random exchange in other societies, which may have no relation to the underlying mode of production. For example, two primitive tribes randomly meet and exchange stuff (this often has a more symbolic than economic significance). Even if this is done repeatedly, it need not influence their way of life in any important way (although it could!).

Something like this could occur in a communist society without jeopardizing communist relations of production in any way. If upon visiting a friend I decide I like their handmade rug and offer them a picture I have drawn of them in exchange, it's not the counterrevolution.

But once we start talking about currency and finance (i.e., credit) – this presupposes a very different and much higher stage of development of exchange, namely commodity circulation. Credit, for example, arises out of the need of commodity producers to account for variations in production and circulation times of their products. Wheat takes time to grow, but the producer of wheat needs to eat (see?) in the meantime. So they buy their necessities not with currency, but with a promissory note. After they have processed and sold their wheat, they repay the debt and the note is destroyed. But depending on other conditions, like the extent of market relations, the promissory note itself can circulate, becoming, in fact, credit money. You can see here how a system of relations that are completely out of control of individual producers (and extremely crisis-prone, resulting in famines and more, as history has shown) develops spontaneously. We wouldn't want that in communism and I don't see why it should develop under such conditions unless something is already very wrong with the underlying relations of production. Of course people could still do it for fun, in a role-playing, "historical reenactment" kind of way.

So I think we would have to be extremely careful about these things. If commodity relations start to appear, something is going wrong, and the community would have to take steps (including repression) to abolish the conditions that have led to their appearance. So this is not about forbidding people to exchange, but about watching out for changes in social relations (for whichever reason, including, for example, natural catastrophes) that could lead to systematic exchange and acting against those conditions. In fact, this (in my view) is the number one task of workers' power from day one.

I've only skimmed the document linked to by the OP. To be frank, I think it is extremely brief for what it sets out to achieve, and full of unacknowledged presuppositions and confusions. But it seems like the author presupposes the continued existence of commodity production in a post-capitalist society, with separate "companies" run by their "communities" where "The only legitimate people are those who work directly with the assets or those who live in the accommodation". So it's more like a mutalist vision rather than communism, even though the author seems critical of mutualism.

OP then writes that "It is very hard to forbid commodity markets because cooperative companies and people will need to exchange goods". Well, duh! If you presuppose the conditions of commodity production, then it would indeed be hard to forbid commodity markets because they are the necessary result of those conditions.

By the way, a good critique of the "opportunity"-view of market is E. M. Wood's The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View.

As regards Spain, the experiments with labor notes and various forms of money and credit were all part of a "transition period" to communism, not of communism itself. It wasn't that people living under communism decided to experiment with money. The idea, rather, was that we want to get to communism, somehow, but the conditions of civil war and capitalist underdevelopment in our country, as well as the international situation don't allow us to do that immediately. Diego Abad de Santillán, the leading economist of the CNT, was quite clear about the need of such a period of transition (contrary to what other anarchists before him may have said about that). As a marxist I have no problem with that. Obviously one can't have free access to everything from day one and there will have to be all sorts of arrangements to cope with that. The important thing is that wherever possible, conditions of commodity production are strangled by the working class in power and communist relations of free production and access are gradually extended. (I think GIK's Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution is still the best attempt to discuss this, regardless of the various confused interpretations about "self-managed capitalism", which it most definitely is not, that surround it.)

maltesto

However, I think you make a mistake by considering that people can help themselves in store. Resources are limited. Therefore, someone can take all the commodities in the store and selling them in an underground market. If it would happen, the communist society would be threatened definitely.

They couldn't sell them because no one would buy them. Also they would have no state power to defend these things. And what could you buy with them, we couldn't be producing luxury yachts or whatever and what we didn't produce wouldn't be put onto the market. You presuppose, as far as I can see, that what is produced is automatically private property.

In a capitalist market the boat that a few hundred dockworkers produce belongs to whichever capitalist ordered it or can afford it, the workers don't have a say. In communism the workers would not won the boat but they would have probably thought of why they were bulilding it first, for example to transport people or useful things, or for pleasure or exploration. They wouldn't simply hand it over to some capitalist guy and if he tried to take it they would laugh him out of the room and there would be no cops, bailiffs, security guards to help him. He could get himself a gun but then the community would deal with that too.

maltesto

jura, I would like to clarify two things:
- My thinking is in the common-property framework. Therefore, there is no separation of the direct producers from ownership of the means of production.

Well, you say that "The only legitimate people are those who work directly with the assets or those who live in the accommodation." This seems to imply that the people involved in (i.e., working in) an enterprise have special rights over that enterprise vis-a-vis other people who work elsewhere or don't work anywhere. So regardless of the "common-property framework", this really would be a system of a division of labor based on private producers (these being the companies), which is the basis of commodity production.

You also say that "Cooperative companies are based on workers equality. They are all associates which share equally their margin. Thus, they can decide to set higher wages ex ante or to distribute margins ex post." Basically, what you're proposing is a commodity-money economy with wages and ownership titles (where workers of a compony all share in the profits of that company).

Or are these typos?

maltesto

Finance is not credit, it is about investment.

Well, given that you presuppose ("unofficial") money, credit (and banking) would sooner or later develop unless there are active measures against it. I would very much recommend reading this: https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/en/bitcoin-finally-fair-money/

maltesto

The issue I want to tackle with is "how do communities invest in a communist libertarian economy?"

They collectively decide on a general plan that is continually readjusted. If we find out we need to extend the production of a good or start the production of a new good, the plan simply allocates more resources and labor time to that project. All of this can be done without money and "finance" (unless you think "finance" already existed in the Stone Age and that cavemen were deciding on how to "finance" the production of stone axes).

BTW, you seem to accept a lot of the standard bourgeois "wisdom". You say things like (I'm paraphrasing):

"People naturally want to exchange stuff, so there will have to be some sort of commodity exchange",

"People naturally make bets, hence there will have to be derivatives".

All of this is pretty facile, I'm sorry to say. And I don't really see the problem that you are trying to solve. "Investment" in the sense of allocating resources is perfectly possible without markets, money or "finance" . People have been doing that for thousands of years. At the end of your paper, you admit that markets and trading would only exist at the margins of a communist society. What role would they play, if (obviously) most of the investment decisions (apart from those at the margins) are done without them?

maltesto

An no, it is not a mutualist project because the assets are not the property of the people who use it but of every one. I am also very clear on this point.

I don't think you are. See my first point in this post.

maltesto

To be clear about the cooperatives, I think we should consider the subsidiarity principle. Imagine a library, a factory, whatever you want. How people organize themselves to work together is an issue that they have to deal with together. It is not a community issue first except if there is a conflict that has to be solved.

See, again you presuppose a division of labor based on private producers, where individual producers decide what, for whom and how much they will produce. This isn't communism. There are many reasons why the community (i.e., everyone) would want to be involved in deciding how work is organized in a particular workplace, and what is produced there.

maltesto

Therefore, someone can take all the commodities in the store and selling them in an underground market. If it would happen, the communist society would be threatened definitely.

Should that happen, that person would be dealt with in an exemplary way.

I should add that if someone did that,

a) as jef said, they would have trouble finding any buyers, since the society can just produce more of the same and distribute it according to need, thus circumventing this mean person's plan,

b) even if they found any buyers, what could they ask in exchange? Everything is already freely available, so what could they want? Well, perhaps they would want some "special favors" from the others, or have the others working for them as personal slaves or whatever,

c) This basically amounts to wanting to reinstitute exploitative relations, in which case I wouldn't mind if the perpetrator was treated in a very harsh way, so as to make an example out of them.

Just one little fact here: most resources are not limited, they appear as such because they are commodities. What is limited is the distribution of money, which is directly tied to capitalist social relations. Most important stuff like food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, medicine etc are produced in abundance today, heck food, clothing and housing are actually overproduced.

Your assumptions are incorrect because, and this is a problem all of us have to some degree, you are taking aspect of capitalist society as natural (as Jura also points out).

It is where there is a room for wages and margins alongside planning and common property.

That's not communism.

Also, the issue with money isn't state backing. It's what money represents and the way it obscures and distorts and transforms the relationships of the social production process.

maltesto

They can trade what they produce more.

Why would they want to do that if their needs (and the necessary funds for future investment) are already covered by the plan? Why spend extra time at work?You see, getting out of work was the reason we fought for communism in the first place. Again, you presuppose motivations and actions that don't make much sense outside of capitalism.

maltesto

I agree with your link about bitcoin which is very interesting. However, I do not understand why it would back your claim about banking which is a slippery slope.

If I remember correctly, the text also explains how credit relations spontaneously arise from monetary exchange. The point is that if you presuppose currency and circulation, credit relations are also implied (unless there are countermeasures to prevent their emergence).

maltesto

My point about crypto-money is that exists without a state intervention contrary to state money. Therefore, people can create their own currency if they desire to. It is a fact.

But this is possible even without crypto-money. Moreover, why would people want to create a currency in communism, other than for entertainment purposes (like when playing Monopoly)? What's the point of that? (Please don't say that it's natural or that it's because resources are scarce. I agree with Khawaga, above, on resources. In an absolute sense, resources have been scarce in some sense ever since there were humans – in the sense that there is a physical limit to the land and water available on this planet etc. But not all societies have used markets to deal with that. Resources are also scarce for animals and they don't seem to be involved in derivatives trading.)

maltesto

Let us be clear about the definition of finance:
"Finance is a field that deals with the study of investments. It includes the dynamics of assets and liabilities over time under conditions of different degrees of uncertainty and risk."

Continuing from wikipedia, "Finance can be broken into three different sub-categories: public finance, corporate finance and personal finance." So are you saying there will be "corporations" in your society? You see, this mode of arguing is quite childish. Wikipedia articles on these issues are usually informed by neoclassical economics which pretends that capital has always existed, that markets are natural etc. So obviously they have a definition of finance which is applicable even to primitive tribes. But that is a point of view completely alien to the one usually used here on libcom.

maltesto

Please, avoid ad hominem attacks. Bartering (I used the work "bargaining" instead, that was a mistake of mine), money and gambling used to exist in ancient civlizations. Date of evidences: 6000 BC for bartering, 3500 BC for gambling and 3000 BC for money.

I haven't used a single ad hominem attack. If I say that the person A is stupid and show that what they're saying is wrong, then that's not an ad hominem attack. If I say that something is stupid because person A is saying that, then that's an ad hominem attack.

Of course exchange predates capitalism. But look at the historical evidence on the extent of exchange – what was exchanged, who was involved, what was the role of exchange in societies – and you'll see that up to some pretty recent times, monetary exchange was mostly marginal in the functioning of societies and that usually only a fraction of the people were actually involved in any trading.

maltesto

You forgot one important fact: resources are limited. If a community endorses an investment decision, it will have to support the liability of it. For example, imagine an infrastructure that fails because it was badly built or because of a storm. That is typical finance issue.

No, it's not, not in my definition of finance. If I put a cake in the oven, forget about it, and the cake gets burnt, then I made a mistake and the cake is ruined, but I wouldn't say it's a finance issue.

maltesto

I don't understand why your assumption a) would hold. Non constant preferences are sufficient to make it invalid.

I don't see how changing preferences have anything to do with this.

1. Assume that a person A steals the entire bread supply and wants to blackmail others into exchanging whatever for the bread.

What happens next is:

a) Persons B, C, D... still want bread (constant preferences), so the society produces more bread. Problem solved.

b) Persons B, C, D... no longer want bread (changed preferences). Problem solved, A now has a useless load of bread.

c) Persons B, C, D... still want bread, but there are no more resources to produce it (for whichever reason – although this is highly implausible, because the plan would have made sure that we can produce more bread after the current supply of bread is eaten, whoever had eaten it). We move to the next point.

2. Persons B, C, D offer to exchange with A. But A could have already gone to the warehouse and taken whatever they want. If they could do it with bread, why not anything else? Even if we assume limited resources – if A had wanted milk, they could have stolen the entire supply of milk as well (or at least taken as much as they really need). So they would have both bread and milk. And so on for any other products. So it's probably neither milk nor anything else that's available at the warehouse that A wants.

3. So I guess A wants "special favors" from B, C, D, or have them working as their personal slaves, or to become some sort of a warlord disposing of the entire product. What happens next is that a special committee arrives in town and strings A up on a lamppost for all to see. The bread, the milk, etc. are put back into the warehouse. Problem solved. And there was even a teachable moment, so I guess that's a Pareto improvement for everyone.

maltesto

You acknowledge in you point c) the necessity of repression. It is a typical situation of underground market which would need huge means to crush.

This is just too much...

Do you realize we are talking about a communist society which was only possible after a world revolution, including a world civil war, had taken place? Do you realize how many "underground markets" already had to have been crushed by repression (by the organized working class) even before we had arrived at this hypothetical situation?

maltesto, honest question: do you have any knowledge of Marxist or non-neoclassical economics (even something like economic anthropology?). I strongly recommend that you dive into this rather than bopping the surface. Not that you have to agree, but you'd at least have an easier time understanding the critique you are getting here.

Polanyi is close to the economic anthropologists, but you appear to have taken few lessons from him about what embeddedness means; money, markets etc. is how the economy became disembedded from society in the first place, but you insist on keeping them not realizing that these things express set of social relations and thus determine behaviour of individuals. You seem to presuppose the existence of homo economicus.

With the bourgeois label, you just dismiss. You did not show anything. So that is ad hominem:
"argumentum ad hominem, is now usually understood as a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself"

Jura is a Marxist. Marxists, though not all, will refer to neo-classical economics as bourgeois because that type of economics is an expression of capitalist society. Given that you are adopting their theoretical framework as a given fact (objective forms of thought as Marx would say), your arguments are, in fact, bourgeois. It was not an ad hominem attack, but a mere adjective.

This is indeed how Jura used it. Very early on s/he wrote:

This is also the standard bourgeois view (and I mean this in a descriptive way):

And this is really bourgeois:

Your point a) and b) does not hold. You assume a very flexible production which is very delicate if it has to go through a voting process. Moreover b) is not efficient because it is wasted

"Not efficient" is the cry of all capitalists. Fact is that capitalism is wasteful; it produced too much, it produces crap that breaks and so on. That is the inefficiency, not that shit takes time, but that we are quite literally wasting the planted away to make money. What is efficient or not in a communist society would never ever be measured in terms of time (because that is how capitalism measures efficiency), but more on whether it meets people's needs, how much/little a particular production would harm the envirnment, affect a local community, people's health and so on.

Your main problem, unfortunately, is that you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. Or, more likely, your vision of an anarchist society is too influenced by what you experience in this society (which is a problem all of us have and especially in the "Western" world that has no social memory of a time prior to capital). In this sense, you've just re-imagined a capitalist world with a human face instead of anarchism.

Bourgeois is pejorative in your mouths.

I read "The Great Transformation" of Polanyi in whole. Moreover, I studied Marx. I appreciate that you worry about my knowledge. But do not worry dear comrade wink .

But, Jura explicityly said s/he used it in a descriptive sense. Jura is not one to use insults in any case (not that you would know), so when someone actually bothers to explain what they mean with the use of a word (in this case knowing it is a pejorative term), you should actually believe them and not just retort to accusing people of ad hominems.

While you mean have read that book and even studied Marx, you either (a) do not seem to actually have understood them in any depth given your arguments and compeltete misunderstanding of the very Marxist arguments people have been making (which is fine, it just means you have to study them a bit more or (b) have rejected their arguments in favour of neo-classical economics. I assume the former.

maltesto

jura, if their need is covered, there is no problem but they might want more.

That people's needs are covered is the whole point of production under communism. So if people really do need more of something, they adjust the plan to produce more of that. Or they decide it's not worth the effort and make do with what's available now.

If a person who works in the production of, e.g., software finds out she needs more food of a special kind (for whatever reason, for example, for medical reasons), the result should not be that that person now has to produce more software, either by spending more hours at work or by working faster. That is exactly the kind of situation that we're trying to get away from now! What happens is that she takes as much as she needs from the warehouse, and if there's not enough for everybody, the plan is adjusted to produce more. Of course, this may mean that some people have to move from one branch to the production of that special food, or that everyone's working time in the production of the special food is slightly prolonged, and research into more efficient ways of producing it is strengthened (compared to other lines of research).

If it can't be done because of natural reasons (say, the food requires a special resource that can't be reproduced and there is a low natural limit to how much of this resource we can mine – this is a very artificial example, by the way), then that's tough luck! We're gonna have to find a substitute for that kind of food. But this situation couldn't be solved by trade either. The natural limit is simply there and won't go away if our software developer starts working more and trading her excess product.

maltesto

Your comparison with animals is pointless. They are competing each other and merciless between each other.

That's a very simplified view of animal life, but I shall not go into that. Incidentally, in capitalism, humans are forced to compete for resources as well.

maltesto

Public finance will exist because the allocation of resources will always be an issue. People will debate about planning and community infrastructures. The distribution of income is an issue inside the planning even if it is egalitarian. I don't know but some people think that children can deserve more or less an amount for example.

You have a very strange understanding of what communism is. Communism is not egalitarian. Communism is distribution on the basis of need, and since needs necessarily vary between different people, it can't ever be egalitarian. There are people who have special needs. There are people who require constant care, or medication, or special kinds of food or whatever. Obviously a greater portion of total social labor has to be expended on their needs than on your average Joe who takes care of himself and only eats sandwiches.

maltesto

With the bourgeois label, you just dismiss. You did not show anything.

OK, I used that as a descriptive label. As others have pointed out, a lot of what you write is straight out of a neoclassical microeconomics textbook. If you read German, the first few chapters of this book cover some of the basic arguments (scarcity, human nature, needs, markets etc.). I really like how accessible that book is but, unfortunately, there's no English translation. Other than that, I'd recommend reading Marx's Capital.

maltesto

I am waiting your anthropological studies to back your claim. Maybe the issue is that we do not have the same technological advancement than these old tribes that you describe.

On the role of markets and money in precapitalist societies, see Graeber's Debt. I don't agree with the analysis, but he's assembled a lot of anthropological evidence.

Also, see The Invention of Enterprise by Landes, Mokyr, and Baumol (eds.). This is written from a perspective that's very sympathetic to capitalism and markets, but either way it succeeds in showing the historical specificity of capitalist "entrepreneurship". The papers in this collecition deal with evidence going as far as ancient Mesopotamia and basically show that even though trade was present in all kinds of societies in one form or another, it was usually very limited (for example, only to luxury goods, or only to long-distance trading, or only to specific strata of the society in question, etc.) and didn't play a central role in satisfying most needs. So there you go.

maltesto

Your point a) and b) does not hold. You assume a very flexible production which is very delicate if it has to go through a voting process. Moreover b) is not efficient because it is wasted. And people in the b) situation might be tempted to trade because they know that others could need.

Well, of course production and planning in communism would have to be very flexible. But looking at how, for example, the car industry is run today (lean production, the pull model?), I think it's safe to assume that it would be pretty easy to coordinate the production of a new batch of bread! I guess the "signals" about the needs of consumers would simply be electronically transmitted to the producers.

But in this particular case, there wouldn't even have to be a vote or any signalling. The need for bread is already established in the plan; the fact that it was stolen has the same result as if there had been some accident in the transport of bread (i.e., if the truck crashed and fell into a river) – the end result is that the bread never made it to the consumers, so according to the same old plan, the same batch still has to be produced unless preferences have changed (i.e., unless there are new signals from consumers saying "we've changed our mind, cease all production of bread, start making cookies"). Unless you're in some crazy model where preferences change randomly (which they really don't), I don't see why this wouldn't work.

Precapitalist, non-market societies, like the one in India, already had pretty sophisticated mechanisms of coping with crop failure (incidentally, these mechanisms were destroyed by the pro-market colonists which resulted in several famines in the 19th century with a death toll in the millions). The idea that we can't do better with today's technology is just preposterous!

As regards your point that b) is not efficient, well, yes, the bread would be wasted in this case, but only because we assume that everyone's preferences have suddenly changed. Remember, I only brought this up because you said that changing preferences are a counterexample to what I said (they aren't). It's also funny you should mention waste, because I don't think there's a more wasteful mode of production than through markets. According to the FAO, about one third of food produced globally each year goes to waste – even without an evil person stealing all the bread.

maltesto

Your last point about your word civil war does not answer to my point. You told that you wanted a strong coercion to make an example. From this point, you will need a strong coercion tool.

The coercive tool is the organized community of producers. I mean, do you take these people whose entire bread supply was just stolen for sheep? Do you think they will have their way of life just stolen from them? The same councils that are used to coordinate production would have to decide what to do, and then they would do it (i.e., punish the person responsible and redistribute the stolen goods). End of story.

And by the way, even if there was money, so that access to goods is controlled and nobody is allowed to just take the bread from the warehouse, you could still have thieves. Just like, uh, today! So I don't really see how all this is an argument against free access. If people misbehave, the community responds in an organized way. The difference between communism and capitalism is that people would be much less likely to misbehave if their needs are covered and everyone has a say in how economic life is organized. The evil person who steals all the bread is probably some psychopath craving for control, and such they would be hospitalized rather than hanged (I suggested that for dramatic effect, and also to allude to a letter once written by Lenin).

maltesto

Your last point confirmed what I said before: you make irrealistic assumption because you think people will behave as you wish. Your theoretical is not elastic to face unexpected issues. And above all, you admit the coercive nature of your political system.

You make assumptions about how people will act too. And you have been trying to argue that anarchism is coercive from the beginning, if people act in a harmful way then there will be a need for coercion, but it is not the basis of the system, unlike capitalism.

I win the lottery tomorrow I'm not going in to work on Monday. I am coerced.

If some idiot starts taking more of something than they need to try to force us to buy it then we will either laugh at them, just walk over and take back whatever we need or, if provoked, use force.

Imagine someone does walk off with the whole bread supply for a city, we could just go without bread for a day, where is he planning to store it? Two days later when all he has is a pile of mouldy bread what will he do? Will he come back and take all of the bread the next day, and the next? Does he think that people will continue to make bread just so he can take it?

I can see how in the case of scarce goods it might be possible but unlikely. For example I win tickets to a football match but decide not to go. If there is no money then I can't exchange them unless someone else happens to have some scarce luxury, and in any case I would know that I go them by chance and would probably just give them back for a new lottery.

Let's say a friend comes roundand admires my rug. If there ar emore available she can have one straight away, if not we'll put her on the waiting list or we'll order some supplies in to make one. Theoretically we might swap things but that isn't currency exchange but without pressure there is no hurry. She can have A rug even if it isn't th one she wants immefiately, it's not like capitalism where owning that rug is a necessity because the houses aren't insulated or because it symbolises weakth power or whatever. The person admiring my rug would admire the artistry, the craftsmanship and the utility, but they wouldn't attach any value to me because it's in my house and as such wouldn't put any value towards obtaining it (and wouldn't have anything themselves).

Khawaga, I understood well so don't worry for me. I am not rejecting anything.

You may think so, but what you've written here clearly shows that you lack the proper comprehension otherwise you would not be making such arguments unless you've rejected Marxism (which, is ok).

And yes jura was in ad hominem, period. So are you now because you are directly attacking me personally. So, please top it.

No, not at all. I quoted the post where s/he explicitly said bourgeois was used as a descriptor. When people say bourgeois society, they are not attacking society, but describing it. Similarly, your views on economics are bourgeois because you're straight up arguing from a bourgeois point of view (mainly in your assumptions about what society is, what human nature is, and what the function of things like money and finance are). Incidentally, if you'd read and understand Marx, who uses bourgeois in the same way Jura does, well then you'd understand that that particular word does not need to be only pejorative in meaning.

Call me when animals will organize themselves in a communist system and there will be no predatory behavior among them

I thought Kropotkin did just that in Mutual Aid

Your draft could use some touching up, Maltesto (possibly because English is not your first language), to make the points you're arguing for clearer. I should say that the phrase 'anarchist finance' is a bit of a contradiction in terms because the main anarchist current, communism, seeks to abolish money and markets in favor of a decentralized, planned economy based on meeting people's needs. So whatever 'finance' you're talking about, it would have nothing to do with the main current of anarchism.

This for example does not reflect, in fact is opposed to, libertarian communist ideas:

Some socialists want to abolish money and they claim there will be no exchange. This position is supported by Adam Buick & Pieter Lawrence (1984). They say goods will have a usage value only and they will be distributed to individuals according to it. The allocation will not be an economic calculus anymore but a technical one. It is a gullible point of view for a simple reason: resources are scarce. Therefore, we can not disregard economy because we will have to answer to unlimited needs with limited resources by definition. The other objection is both philosophical and economical. Choosing the necessary allocation for an individual is an authoritarian process which risk to be unsatisfying. People will be tempted to agree between them to reallocate goods. Preventing them to trade would be to no avail.

You brought up Malatesta, but Malatesta also said this:

I am a communist (libertarian of course); I am for agreement and I believe through an intelligent decentralisation, and a continuous exchange of ideas, it would be possible arrive at the organisation of the necessary excahnge of goods and satisfy the needs of all without having recourse to the money symbol, which is certainly fraught with problems and dangers. As every good communist does, I aspire to the abolition of money; and, as every good revolutionary, I believe that it will be necessary to strip the bourgeoisie, invalidating all the symbols of wealth which permit people to live without working.

You said this:

The whole idea is to make a convincing system which can make plenty and innovation possible in a communist libertarian system. This is the aim of this draft.

There is no 'monetary incentive' under libertarian communism because there is no money and remuneration for work done; people work and contribute because they believe in cooperation/mutual aid and helping one another to survive. Scientists, for example, are to a large extent intrinsically motivated by what they do; a 'monetary incentive' is not a requirement for there to be innovation or for people to work/contribute, especially when they already have their needs satisfied.

jura

maltesto

I don't understand why your assumption a) would hold. Non constant preferences are sufficient to make it invalid.

I don't see how changing preferences have anything to do with this.

1. Assume that a person A steals the entire bread supply and wants to blackmail others into exchanging whatever for the bread.

this starting point is absurd (as i'm sure you know) like how could one person steal all the bread? why would the baker give it all to them? was no one else there? how did they transport it? where did they get the space to store all the bread?

I think the assumptions of the different sides in this debate is important. Whereas maltesto makes assumptions about human nature and individual behaviour (like anyone under the spell of bourgeois economics is wont to do), the anarchists and marxists makes assumptions based on the type of society that is being discussed. The distinction is important because someone like maltesto will then also believe in the liberal subject that is free to make decisions from any constraints; society is just the aggregate of individual decisions (hence maltesto's comments about coercion). On the other hand, if you take society as a starting point, you recognise that the behaviour of individuals is determined and that certain behaviours only appears as choice (for example, like selling yourself for a wage).

radicalgraffiti

this starting point is absurd (as i'm sure you know) like how could one person steal all the bread? why would the baker give it all to them? was no one else there? how did they transport it? where did they get the space to store all the bread?

Exactly. I imagine someone walking into a bakery "This is my bread, you need to pay me" and everyone looking around and wondering if this is a joke or not.

maltesto

I decline to answer to arrogant judgmental people. End of the discussion with you.

A rather arrogant and judgemental way to respond.

Jef Cosstello, I did not argue that anarchism was coercive since the beginning. I just said that jura had a very coercive vision. The rest is off-topic so I decline to answer to it.

You have been trying to claim that we have admitted that since the 14th post and it seems as if this was your goal.

I don't know why you bother to come here and asks for opinions if you are going to get upset when people point out basic tenets of anarchism and marxism as well as more complex and thought out responses.

Much of the argumentation against Maltesto above relies to much imho on mass produced industrial objects and ignores quality differences that are unavoidable. Under capitalism the wish for objects with cultural meaning is captured by advertising and brands. I do think this wish will continue to exist. Hopefully it will look very different than today.

If we assume the separatedness of art will end. Art will be more diffused in everyday life, objects and food. The quality of this art will continue to vary and will continue to be very attractive. It won't be possible for everyone to reach the same level.

The idea that these things will be peripheral to peoples lives and needs is probably naive? I find it likely that the importance of these cultural aspects will increase as the basics are superceded.

I'm not arguing in favour of Maltesto as I think there will always be work to prevent money, markets and the state from reappearing.

I decline to answer to arrogant judgmental people. End of the discussion with you

Judgemental, sure. Arrogant, no. I'm sorry that you do not like hearing that your knowledge of Marxism and polanyi is not as deep as you think. That is clear as day given that you're missing some of the basic points. Easy fix though, just reread, write more and edit. And tbh, there hasn't been much discussion on your part, so I won't be missing much.

Sure, I've been hard on you (like others), but would you not want us to point out critiques? You did ask for comments after all.

Your conclusion is very important because it sums up the ethical debate that appeared here. What is the answer to bring to people who would like to have a side activity to planning? Several people here want to crush them and even one wants to hang them on a lamppost. I do not agree with this coercive approach.

I think you're again misinterpreting what some people have said. Nobody has said that they want to crush anyone that is engaged in "side activity" (and few, if any of us, subscribe to some Soviet-style planning economy; the "signals" from the market that are prices today can be replaced by simple gathering of information about consumption and this is extremely easy to automate given that capitalist firms already do that (fun fact: they don't view "prices" as the most important signal)).

If Anarchist Joe want to produce art, raise chickens, program or whatever, nobody would care. Actually, people would encourage that sort of activity. And if individuals trade their shit; nobody would give a fuck.

The sort of activity people are saying should be punished was your hypothetical example of one individual stealing all the bread in a community. Or anyone that engages in such anti-social behaviour. Or people who want to re-institute wage-labour.

It is actually your approach that will be coercive (as in the impersonal domination of money) if left to its own devices.

Maltesto, could you stop misrepresenting what other people wrote? We were discussing an example in which someone steals other people's food to coerce them into something – not someone who wants to have "a side activity".

This example was something you yourself brought up:

maltesto

However, I think you make a mistake by considering that people can help themselves in store. Resources are limited. Therefore, someone can take all the commodities in the store and selling them in an underground market.

So, to repeat, if someone does this, i.e., steals something that was collectively produced in order to realize a profit (either in terms of goods, or in other people's activity), then that's something that would have to be taken very seriously by the society, because it's basically anti-social behavior (in the context of that society; today it's viewed as perfectly normal in many cases).

Cooked, I think your comments are off-topic, really. The discussion was not about craft products at all. And in one of my posts, I even wrote

jura

If upon visiting a friend I decide I like their handmade rug and offer them a picture I have drawn of them in exchange, it's not the counterrevolution.

And the comparisons with Soviet planning are misguided as well. Nobody here would advocate for that. Moreover, with the exception of a brief period of rationing in Soviet Russia during the civil war, the Soviet and Eastern bloc economies were partially monetary (the means of consumption were exchanged for wages on a market, although there was no market in the means of production); they were "planned" through prices; and some of them allowed for some measure of private enterprise (esp. Hungary, Yugoslavia). International trade was often (although not exclusively) conducted in monetary terms. These economies had absolutely nothing to do with communism, and also nothing to do with how a proper communist economy would be planned.

maltesto

Revised version posted:
- more precisions on the definition
- more insistance of the importance of the liabilities in itself. It means the aspect is non monetary.

have you explained how someone can steal all the bread?

Yes you did. You raised the issue of someone taking the entire bread supply. You may not have used the word theft, but that's what you were describing.

I won't talk about this issue anymore.

Are you always going to just withdraw from arguments that make you uncomfortable?

A Short Play

It is just before dawn in Libertario, a small city in the Northwestern Commune. The night's baking done, the bread distribution center opens its doors. The first customers to enter are Maltesto and two friends.

Maltesto and co. have wheelbarrows and begin frantically loading loaf after loaf into them.

After a moment, a Volunteer enters the scene.

Volunteer: Uh, can I help you guys?

Maltesto: If you'd like. We're taking all the bread.

Volunteer: Um, what?

Maltesto: Was I not clear? I said we're taking the bread. All of it.

Volunteer: ...why? There's thousands of loaves here.

Maltesto: We're uh, making a film. It'll be about, uh...a huge bread-spewing monster. You'll love it.

Volunteer: You do know that the Bakeries Council voted last year to impose a ten-loaf-per-person limit unless prior arrangements are made, you know, so there's enough for everyone. Did you guys make prior arrangements?

Maltesto: Stop repressing me!

Volunteer: Huh? Just submit your film plan, I'm sure we'll be able to arrange something, maybe as early as next week.

Maltesto: GET THE BREAD! resumes frantically grabbing loaves.

Volunteer: Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to take no more than ten loaves and then exit the facility, you're getting in other people's​ way.

Maltesto and co. ignore the request and continue.

Volunteer: Okay, that's it. Tony! C'mon, let's escort these guys out.

Maltesto: You're violating the NAP! Stop initiating force against me! Stop repressing me!

Exuent

Maltesto: You're violating the NAP! Stop initiating force against me! Stop repressing me!

Great reference ;)

Nope, you misinterpreted what I said because you are omitting the context voluntarily: a store where it is free to help yourself => you can take the amount you want.

I am not uncomfortable, I know what I said and I never talked about theft.

Sigh. As I said, you may not have used the word "theft", but, as several people have explained, in a society of free consumption, if someone takes the entire supply of a given product so that others can't consume it, well that is the equivalent to theft in a communist society. So yes, you talked about theft; everyone else understood you talked about theft. And that is the point: you are actually omitting the context or rather can't actually imagine what anti-social beheviour would be in an anarchist economy precisely because what you are imagining is, in essence, based on the assumption of capitalist economies where theft can only refer to stealing private property.