How are prices determined in anarcho collectivism?

[ContrarianLemming]

how are prices determinied in anarcho collecitivism? in that i mean, how are prices determined in a money based social anarchism? how do you think it should be done? (collecitivsm and syndicalism)

[Tablo]

That is something I have never understood either. It has always seemed uneccesary when you could just do away with currency all together.

I would very much so hear how this would be done. :)

[Kléber]

This is the primary reason why I believe some economic centralization is necessary to maintain working-class control over the economy. The barter system is, correct me if I'm wrong, the solution proposed by Nineteenth-Century anarchists. But I think that will just lead to regional inequalities, because exchange value is not necessarily the same as labor value. The same product can fetch a different price (in bartered goods or money) depending on where it's traded, so people can get ripped off without price controls. And it was little things like regional inequalities that led to the end of primitive communism and the beginning of social differentiation millennia ago.

A central currency, established and regulated by a democratic and recallable central economic authority accountable only to the working class, is going to be necessary to establish some economic stability and maintain a relative level of equality, thus ensuring that the economy can be developed and improved for the purpose of eventually abolishing currency altogether.

[Kallikrates]

A central currency, established and regulated by a democratic and recallable central economic authority accountable only to the working class, is going to be necessary to establish some economic stability and maintain a relative level of equality, thus ensuring that the economy can be developed and improved for the purpose of eventually abolishing currency altogether.

This is a problem that I think many people - both theoreticians and laymen - have tossed around, with very few appreciable results. One suggestion I came across that I thought came pretty close to the mark was to back currency by the total GNP of the nation in question, effectively making it possible to exchange labor value for labor value. Also, this method would theoretically provide incentive to work by binding money's subjective worth to the actual worth of labor itself.

Comments? Analyses?

[Robocommie]

This is a problem that I think many people - both theoreticians and laymen - have tossed around, with very few appreciable results. One suggestion I came across that I thought came pretty close to the mark was to back currency by the total GNP of the nation in question, effectively making it possible to exchange labor value for labor value. Also, this method would theoretically provide incentive to work by binding money's subjective worth to the actual worth of labor itself.

Comments? Analyses?

If something bad should happen though, and an economic collapse comes about, the decline in GNP would quickly cause deflation which would only exacerbate the decline in production, and on and on it would go.

[robbo203]

how are prices determinied in anarcho collecitivism? in that i mean, how are prices determined in a money based social anarchism? how do you think it should be done? (collecitivsm and syndicalism)


The very fact that you have a market price merchanism and money means you are operating a system of capitalism. You can either let prices adjust spontaneously under a so called free market or regulate them according to certain criteria by subsidizing some at the expense of others but it has to be born in mind that under capitalism there is no such thing as a free lunch. The sum total of prices will equate in the end with the sum total of values and individual prices will adjust like water finding its own level

[whore]

The very fact that you have a market price merchanism and money means you are operating a system of capitalism.
nah ah.

capitalism is a fuck load more than prices, markets and money. otherwise capitalism would have existed during the roman empire, and during fuedal times. understand?

capitalism, ever since it has been described by marx, has been understood as a lot more than just those things. it is, very simply, an economic system where capital (hence the term) is the rule. capitalism is where surplus is directed back into production. capitalism includes features such as rent, interest and profit. making money, by using money. rather than actually producing something. the entire economic system is around this capital.

so, you can have markets, money, and prices, without capitalism. (and without profit - cost is the limit of price, and without rent - no land ownership, and without interest).

[Ovi]

Putting aside the whole issue of money vs no money, it's nonsense to believe that a collectivist economy would rely on barter. Prices would be determined democratically by local councils instead of authoritarian means, such as a market or a state. You might find this (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/ideas.htm) useful.