Deflating and inflating currency?

[GatesofLenin]

Hello comrades! I was just wondering what you folks think of the different currencies around the world? Living in Canada myself, I'm sick of our current govt spending millions of taxpayers money on ads telling the citizen sheeps that "our economic action plan is working". Oh really? The central bank main crook David Dodge is letting the "strong" loonie (Canadian dollar) go even stronger and I know why this is. We're off to the election polls this fall, 100% perfect plan to start advertising how the current party (progressive conservatives) are keeping Canada "strong", just look at our mighty LOONIE compared to that world powerhouse the US Dollar. Oh brother! I'm gonna puke!
So lets hear it comrades! Speak and be heard. I know for a fact that industry is hurting in Canada but no one reports it including the MSM. The working class and the poor are hurting as a strong Loonie drives inflation up = higher food costs. Since last year, average price increase on food rose 40% across the country. Why is no one complaining? Those bourgeois orgs like the Coalition agains't poverty, food banks, etc... are in power to do something right but they keep their mouths closed. Business must be booming I guess for them. Working people are suffering due to their labour making goods that are supposed to be sold around the world are wayyyyy too expensive, all because of the high currency. If you're a business man, what would you do?
Let's take a car for example:

- Canadian made = $30,000
- Third world made = $10,000
(remember, both cars are identical. Parts cost more in Canada because of the high inflation and part costs)

How is this "economic action plan" helping fellow Canadians? My area has no Marxist/Leninist candidate but I will let my voice be heard. I speak my mind out everyday, hoping to slowly educate my fellow canadians to the truth that the fat cats up in Ottawa are draining the country dry. In 50 years, you won't be able to recognize Canada anymore. I plan on wearing a red armband during the whole election period and if someone asks, I will tell them the truth. :thumbup1:

So let's hear it revo brothers and sisters, post your own thoughts on this.

[GatesofLenin]

Man, no comments yet. :laugh:

[Comrade Akai]

Currency is a tool of the bourgeoisie to gain more for themselves and to keep the proletariat suppressed. It must be abolished as soon as possible in the socialist state.

[Robocommie]

Pragmatically speaking, I think currency is a very effective tool at distributing goods and services, the main problem is that currency itself is distributed extremly unfairly and unevenly. I disagree very strongly that we need to get rid of it under socialism, because what would we replace it with?

Currency's been used since the Phoenicians, and still has yet to be phased out, and there's a reason for that; it's useful.

[Comrade Akai]

Pragmatically speaking, I think currency is a very effective tool at distributing goods and services, the main problem is that currency itself is distributed extremly unfairly and unevenly. I disagree very strongly that we need to get rid of it under socialism, because what would we replace it with?

Currency's been used since the Phoenicians, and still has yet to be phased out, and there's a reason for that; it's useful.

What about in the final communist society?

[Common_Means]

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[Common_Means]

Currency is a tool of the bourgeoisie to gain more for themselves and to keep the proletariat suppressed. It must be abolished as soon as possible in the socialist state.

What is wrong with having a monetary system? Money does not need to be abolished - the appearance of what it represents needs to be abolished.

[Morgenstern]

What about in the final communist society?

Depends what your ideal of the final society will be. If you want a gift economy then currency won't exist but even labor vouchers or energy vouchers are currency in a sense. They are able to procure goods and services, they are representative, they are just different than our current currency which has so much more meaning and power.

[Comrade Akai]

What is wrong with having a monetary system? Money does not need to be abolished - the appearance of what it represents needs to be abolished.

Could you explain? The way I see it, money is a threat to economic egalitarianism.

[GatesofLenin]

Thanks for the replies, comrades! What's the general opinion on money being a finite item? I got in trouble here earlier and just wanted to see what people's opinion is on this? I personally think, the super rich storing excess money are hurting the remaining 99% of the population because there's less money to go around. We know that countries control the amount of currency daily to "keep inflation low" but where I live, Canada, the opposite is true: falsely propping up the currency to keep the sheeple happy on the new nationalism theme. Canada is stronger than the rest of the world, just look at our money. :D

[CartCollector]

Money is a way of dealing with scarcity. So sure, with things that are infinite (like information), money isn't necessary. But what about finite goods? Without money, someone could take all of a finite good to the detriment of everyone else. Do you want that? If not, how would you prevent that from happening?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Currency, for ordinary people, is a necessary evil in a free-market, or Capitalistic system. For the ruling class, in this free-market system, it is a tool from which a profit can be spun, mainly through speculation with regards to arbitrage through FOREX.

If you take a look back from the generally acceptant view that 'currency exists', one can see how ridiculous it really is. Currency, to me, is an inherently nationalistic tool. There is no argument against a unified world currency, that cannot be moved by speculation, other than the ruling class wanting economic control via speculative profit-making, and political control via a 'strong' currency, which is basically a nationalistic geo-political outlook.

A short summary of the currency system, as a world view, might be that it is has developed into a cumbersome, disjointed mechanism of pricing goods, services and labour, with a secondary purpose (for those in the financial services world) of spinning a cheap and easy profit.

Labour credits > Currency.

[Robocommie]

What about in the final communist society?

I'm not sure a gift economy is truly viable in the long term. And even if it is, things like labor credits are really just another form of currency, except they lack the ability of currency to be transferred. Some people consider the ability of currency to be transferable to be one of it's flaws, and cite labor credits as a better alternative because of that. But I think anything in economics which is too rigid, and too inflexible, is guaranteed to face serious problems.

Currency is useful because it represents a neutral marker of exchange. If the commune needs materials for a public works project, I've seen some suggest that the communal government could maintain a sort of quota of concrete, lumber, steel, what have you, in order to work on such projects. But that, to me, is merely a return to the medieval system of "payment in kind" which was eventually replaced by currency for the sake of ease and efficiency; it's a hell of a lot more practical to keep cash on hand for projects that need to be done than it would be to just have warehouses full of raw materials all over the place, and then trying to figure out how to get ahold of all the little bobs and bits you may need, like copper wire or circuitry or what have you.

[Comrade Akai]

I'm not sure a gift economy is truly viable in the long term. And even if it is, things like labor credits are really just another form of currency, except they lack the ability of currency to be transferred. Some people consider the ability of currency to be transferable to be one of it's flaws, and cite labor credits as a better alternative because of that. But I think anything in economics which is too rigid, and too inflexible, is guaranteed to face serious problems.

Currency is useful because it represents a neutral marker of exchange. If the commune needs materials for a public works project, I've seen some suggest that the communal government could maintain a sort of quota of concrete, lumber, steel, what have you, in order to work on such projects. But that, to me, is merely a return to the medieval system of "payment in kind" which was eventually replaced by currency for the sake of ease and efficiency; it's a hell of a lot more practical to keep cash on hand for projects that need to be done than it would be to just have warehouses full of raw materials all over the place, and then trying to figure out how to get ahold of all the little bobs and bits you may need, like copper wire or circuitry or what have you.

I think labor credits would be a much, much better idea than money.

I guess we'll see what happens? As long as we get a stateless, classless, egalitarian and democratic society, with no capitalism and no oppression, I'm happy.:)

[vyborg]

Money in a commodity system is different from a money in a use-value system (for instance asiatic mode of production, stalinism, etc).

You can have money but it performs a different role, has a different nature from the money under capitalism

[GatesofLenin]

Thanks a second time for all the wonderful replies Comrades! I so enjoy speaking with like-minded people. This thread has given me hope that there are smart people out there that know that the current currency for profit system is a massive HOAX to keep the bourgeois in power so that they can rule the other classes. This is disgusting. (I'll mention as much as is needed for me to make my point here about myself) My current situation, living here in Ontario, is not too good. I work full-time for a living but find, even with cutting back, my expenses keep growing. I'm sure I'm not the only one that canceled services with all the currency inflation happening lately. I feel alone in the fact that I see myself as one of the few people that actually called the current govts bluff in that our country, Canada, is NOT getting better economically but we're all heading down in a major economic head-on-collision and it won't be pretty. Just a few weeks ago, the Union representing chartered accountants released a detailed study that states "the bedt load of Canadians has risen!". When I heard that, I laughed. I've been saying that for years and now some jackoff charged millions to do a study that finds the average joe and jane canuck are getting poorer. NO KIDDING SHERLOCK!
How do you folks deal with crap like this? I know that you folks are pretty smart when it comes to socio-economic topics. Guess I can just wait and laugh my behind off when others start to get pinched and start to complain and I'll be like: "Told you so! Why did you vote that lying bugger in the first place."
Man, I can just imagine what the first communists must of felt like during the October 1917 revolution. I'm ready for another, lets start with Canada. :D

[robbo203]

Pragmatically speaking, I think currency is a very effective tool at distributing goods and services, the main problem is that currency itself is distributed extremly unfairly and unevenly. I disagree very strongly that we need to get rid of it under socialism, because what would we replace it with?

Currency's been used since the Phoenicians, and still has yet to be phased out, and there's a reason for that; it's useful.

Currency is "useful" only in the sense that it expedites exchanges on a market. Saying you approve of currency is tantamount to saying you support production for the market and the fundamental economic relationships that underpin market exchange - sectional or class ownership of the means of production

What do you replace money with? The question is misleading. What you need to get rid of is the need for money itself which springs from the aforementioned economic relations

Once the means of production become the common property of everyone, exchange becomes a meaningless exercise. Instead of buying goods and services you have direct free access to them as a matter of right stemming from the very fact of common ownership of the means of production

[Paul Cockshott]

What is wrong with having a monetary system? Money does not need to be abolished - the appearance of what it represents needs to be abolished.

In any monetary economy there will be an uneven distribution of money. Some people will have a lot and others little. Those with a lot will have the power to exploit those with a little. This has always been the case with monetary economies.

[iskrabronstein]

Currency is essentially a commodity, but it differs from other commodities in one important respect - its use-value and exchange-value are identical. Money is only worth the use-values it can be exchanged for - it has no intrinsic worth or utility outside of an economic system based on the production and exchange of commodities.

As to the question of hoarding - the accumulation of liquid capital, like currency, has only an indirect effect on the general economic processes acting on a society. Capital hoarding is not the cause of a decrease in economic productivity - it is an effect, and one that Marx quite accurately described as a crisis of overproduction: not enough liquid capital exists within the given economic system to match the produced value of commodities. When this occurs, currency-hoarding is common, and contributes to inflation - which is essentially the process by which currency gains in value by limiting its supply and free-movement, in an attempt to balance concrete capital value with available liquid value. Essentially, currency-hoarding is typical of a crisis in liquidity - this is, I think the point you are referring to when you say that the accumulation of currency by the bourgeoisie detriments the remaining portion of the population.

Yet as Marxists, we know that the real issue is not simply the value of a given currency, or who contributes to the inflationary and deflationary cycles of the capitalist market by hoarding money. The Marxist critique of capitalism is not limited to an idealistic denunciation of inequitable outcomes in a society - we argue that the necessity of those injustices is based on the fundamental processes of capitalism itself.

In essence - currency is not the root problem. Capitalism is.

[Robocommie]

Currency is "useful" only in the sense that it expedites exchanges on a market. Saying you approve of currency is tantamount to saying you support production for the market and the fundamental economic relationships that underpin market exchange - sectional or class ownership of the means of production

What do you replace money with? The question is misleading. What you need to get rid of is the need for money itself which springs from the aforementioned economic relations

Once the means of production become the common property of everyone, exchange becomes a meaningless exercise. Instead of buying goods and services you have direct free access to them as a matter of right stemming from the very fact of common ownership of the means of production

What you are speaking of is a gift economy under Communism, but I am speaking of a socialist economy, under Socialism. As I said, I doubt the viability and practicality of a gift economy, because the only arguments I've ever really heard in it's favor simply amounts to, "It will work."

Scarcity is not purely a product of capitalism, nor is it a product of the private ownership of the means of production. Scarcity is very often a product of nature. Certain minerals and substances are more rare than others, and lack a means of easy synthesis. Others may be more plentiful but are extremely limited in their rate of renewability, an example of this is petroleum, which we are quickly running out of, and does not get renewed in a period of years or even centuries, but in geological epochs.

Oftentimes the means of production will be limited by other concerns, such as environmental concerns. Simply producing as much as you can for as long as you can can be extraordinarily devastating to the environmental systems we rely on; not merely lumber stocks or mineral supplies but also soil and water, which are extremely vulnerable to industrial pollutants and toxic waste, all of which have to be dealt with. Technology can help us cope with some of these things, but only to a point, and frequently technology solves one problem only to pose another later on. Modern agriculture, for example, has found a way to produce amounts of agricultural commodities on scales unprecedented to history, but this "factory farming" is environmentally untenable. Overfarming often leads to desertification of the soil, loss of topsoil or contamination of the ground water, and overproduction of livestock can lead to antibiotic-resistant strains of disease and toxic run-off.

The only way that I can see a gift economy to work, without relying on the use of inefficient, clunky, bureaucratically top-heavy systems of quotas, is by essentially "turning the machines on and never turning them off." But that is highly, highly impractical.

[Robocommie]

In any monetary economy there will be an uneven distribution of money. Some people will have a lot and others little. Those with a lot will have the power to exploit those with a little. This has always been the case with monetary economies.

Part of an effectively administered socialist society is to ensure that unequal distribution is done away with. That's not something inherent to money, it's something inherent to capitalism and private ownership of capital.

[GatesofLenin]

Currency is essentially a commodity, but it differs from other commodities in one important respect ... In essence - currency is not the root problem. Capitalism is.
Hi comrade Iskrabronstein, great post. It is true, as Marxists would state, that you cannot blame currency per se but the system that drives that desire to hoard. By hoarding like capitalist pigs do, they eventually skew the whole system and the majority will suffer. I have to order next week, Das Kapital by Karl Marx, I love reading his essays because so much of what he wrote 150+ years ago is now coming true. We're all witnessing a worldwide mass death of capitalism that will have to bring with it a better system that puts HUMANS first. No more first versus third world countries! No more poor versus rich, no more slavery, driven by a socio-economic system that causes untold misery and death on the greater population! Hopefully, my fellow Canadians will see the truth and come autumn, VOTE THE FASCIST BUMS OUT! Bring on equality, NOW! :thumbup1:

[iskrabronstein]

I think you will profit immensely (no pun intended) from reading Capital. It is an excellent diagnosis of the fundamental processes of capitalism, even if some theoretical propositions put forward by Marx have been challenged.

Read it critically and I think you will develop a very nuanced understanding of the processes we have been discussing.

Buena suerte camarada

[GatesofLenin]

I will read it slowly, thanks Comrade! Can't wait. Amazing how theories written about 150+ years ago still hold true today. Marx was really ahead of his time. Great man for sure! :thumbup1:

[Paul Cockshott]

Part of an effectively administered socialist society is to ensure that unequal distribution is done away with. That's not something inherent to money, it's something inherent to capitalism and private ownership of capital.

Well there are 3 points I would like to make here


Marx and Engels were quite clear that even in the lower phase of communism what you would have was a non-monetary economy. Instead they assumed that a system of labour time accounts would be used. This of course is not necessarily persuasive, they could have been wildly mistaken on this.
If you have a monetary economy with no capitalist ownership but instead a set of worker coops, you will end up with wide differences in income between the coops. This follows just from the random character of market transactions. Yakovenko has shown that in a monetary economy with transactions you always end up with at least an exponential distribution of money holdings -- even in the absence of capitalist features of the economy. This meshes with Lenin's stated believe that commodity production continuously and spontaneously gave rise to capitalism.
If you have state ownership of production and a detailed state plan, then the above objection has a lot less force, but even here the persistence of money is an obstacle to further advance towards greater social equality. Money is self validating. If I am paid 500 roubles a month and you are paid only 100 roubles a month, that just goes to show that my work is more valuable than yours. There is no objective check needed, the very fact that I am paid more certiffies this. These sort of income inequalities persisted in 20th century socialist experiments that retained money. They were a significant cause of gender income inequality, and of income inequality between administrators and workers. Marx's proposed labour accounts would have avoided these inequalities.

[cyu]

In any monetary economy there will be an uneven distribution of money. Some people will have a lot and others little. Those with a lot will have the power to exploit those with a little. This has always been the case with monetary economies.



Depends a bit on the "innovation" you have in your system though. For example, if each paper note had an expiration date on it - something like, "This note is good until January, 2011" - then accumulation doesn't work nearly as easily as it did before.

There could be all sorts of alternatives, such as, "This bill is worth 100 on the date of issue. 90 after a month. 80 after 2 months. Etc."

...or even a half-life: "After a month, this bill loses 50% (or 10% or whatever) of its nominal value." Unlike the example above, the bill never fully becomes worthless - just nearly worthless =]

Of course, this all assumes we all want to be anal retentive about keeping track of "what you deserve" or what you've "earned" or how much "work" you've done. Real equality, I think, isn't to be found in ensuring everyone equal amounts of numbers in their bank accounts or monthly salaries, but in the type of society where measuring equality isn't even an issue - one where you can't really say whether someone who chooses to spend their time bird-watching is "more equal" than someone who chooses to spend their time running marathons.

[cyu]

Scarcity is not purely a product of capitalism, nor is it a product of the private ownership of the means of production... Others may be more plentiful but are extremely limited in their rate of renewability, an example of this is petroleum


Not completely the result of capitalism, but capitalism certainly makes the problem of scarcity worse. If you pull up 1000 barrels of oil and two customers show up. One rich guy and one poor guy. The rich guy wants to drive his yacht around the world. The poor guy wants to ensure his motorbike can take his wife to the hospital.

The rich guy can offer 5 times the price for each barrel of oil that the poor guy can offer. The result? The rich guy gets all the oil for his yacht trip. The poor guy gets nothing but scarcity.