A Moneyless Communism

[The Vegan Marxist]

As a Technocratic Marxist, my view of the monetary system is just as similar as my view of Capitalism. It must be destroyed in order to gain freedom for our people. But, I've heard plenty of technocrats say things that spoke against Communism - somewhat - like Jacque Fresco who said that Communism still has things like money, banks, the police, etc. Though, to me, this is far from the truth. But, in order for this belief of mine to continue, I'd like to know where exactly Marx entailed that money would be obsolete within a Communist world, that way I can have the right resources to use during a debate against ill-informed technocrats & capitalist/anarcho-capitalist sympathizers.

[Tablo]

Money/Currency is a feature of Market economies and will not exist in Communism. Both Marx and Kropotkin opposed the continuation of currency. The closest perspective to Communism that maintains currency is Collectivism.

[mikelepore]

I'd like to know where exactly Marx entailed that money would be obsolete within a Communist world, that way I can have the right resources to use during a debate against ill-informed technocrats & capitalist/anarcho-capitalist sympathizers.

It wans't actually Marx who claimed it, but other writers had previously claimed it, and Marx cited it to add a few qualifications about it -- if it were to happen, what else would have to happen first.

The following text is copied from Marx's pamphlet _Critique of the Gotha Programme_, 1875.

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm

Notice the use of the terms "first phase of communist society" and "higher phase of communist society."

Supposedly the moneyless characteristic of the "higher phase" is implied by the last sentence of this excerpt, the phrase, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" However, it was a slogan that had already been in use for over thirty years by several other socialists, and it was a paraphrase of Bible passages. The reader needs what leads up to that sentence to see how Marx is qualifying its meaning.


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What are the "proceeds of labor"? The product of labor, or its value?
And in the latter case, is it the total value of the product, or only
that part of the value which labor has newly added to the value of the
means of production consumed?

"Proceeds of labor" is a loose notion which Lassalle has put in the
place of definite economic conceptions.

What is "a fair distribution"?

Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is "fair"?
And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the
present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by
legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary,legal relations arise out
of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied
notions about "fair" distribution?

To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase "fair
distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together.
The latter presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor are
common property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated, and
from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong
undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

"To all members of society"? To those who do not work as well? What
remains then of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor? Only to those
members of society who work? What remains then of the "equal right" of
all members of society?

But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously mere
phrases. The kernel consists in this, that in this communist society
every worker must receive the "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of
labor".

Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of
the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the
_total_social_product_.

From this must now be deducted:

- cover for replacement of the means of production used up.

- additional portion for expansion of production.

- reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents,
dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an
economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to
available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities,
but they are in no way calculable by equity.

There [now] remains the other part of the total product, intended to
serve as means of consumption.

Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted
again, from it:

- the general costs of administration not belonging to production.
This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted
in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in
proportion as the new society develops.

- that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such
as schools, health services, etc.

From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with
present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new
society develops.

- funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is
included under so-called official poor relief today.

Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the program, under
Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion -- namely,
to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the
individual producers of the co-operative society.

The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become
converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is
deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him
directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.
Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor has
disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear
altogether.

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means
of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as
little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the
_value_ of these products, as a material quality possessed by them,
since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer
exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total
labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on
account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has
_developed_ on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it
_emerges_ from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect,
economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the
birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.

Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after
the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he
has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the
social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work;
the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the
social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a
certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount
of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this
certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as
much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which
he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the
exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values.

Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no
one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand,
nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual
means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter
among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails
as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in
one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.
Hence, _equal_right_ here is still in principle -- _bourgeois_right_,
although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the
exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average
and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly
stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is
_proportional_ to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the
fact that measurement is made with an _equal_standard_, labor.
But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies
more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor,
to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity,
otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This _equal_ right
is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class
differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but
it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive
capacity, as a natural privilege.

It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every
right.

Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an
equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different
individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal
standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are
taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case,
are regarded _only_as_workers_ and nothing more is seen in them,
everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another
is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth.
Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the
social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one
will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects,
right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society
as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from
capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic
structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving
subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith
also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;
after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want;
after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around
development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative
wealth flow more abundantly -- ONLY THEN then can the narrow horizon of
bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its
banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs!

[ZeroNowhere]

Technically, Marx was quite clear that the labour credits he proposed were not money, as in that well-known footnote from vol. 1 of Capital, on Owen's labour credits, which were 'no more money than a film ticket', in contrast with Proudhonian 'labour money' schemes.

[mikelepore]

We have to remember that the decision isn't up to Marx. The decision will be up to people of the future. It's hard to distinguish between how much subject of this is technically necessary, and how much is an individual judgement like a moral question.

[Uppercut]

I'm no economist, but I think that as long as a nation needs to trade with other nations and so long as capitalism still exists in other countries, currency will be needed in one form or another. Maybe if we were an autarky, then sure, we probably wouldn't need money as everything we need would be produced at home.

[Zanthorus]

I think it's a mistake to confuse the "labour certificate" scheme proposed by Marx in the GothaKritik with money. Money was something that arose within the market economy in order to facilitate exchange and act as a common measure of value. If capitalism is abolished and all means of production are centralised in the hands of the association of producers then it no longer makes sense to talk of "money" because there can be no exchange as such because there are no longer reciprocating autonomous producers in need of the value-form in order to mediate their exchanges. The "labour certificate" is "no more money than a film ticket" because it is simply a claim held against society by a member of that society that they are entitled to X amount of goods from the total social product.

Of course some of this may be semantics, but most major economists have also defined money in the way Marx did as a medium of exchange acting as the common measure of value. So the abolition of exchange and the value-form would also for them have to logically entail the end of money as such.

[anticap]

I've heard plenty of technocrats say things that spoke against Communism - somewhat - like Jacque Fresco who said that Communism still has things like money, banks, the police, etc.

When I've heard Fresco say that, I've taken him to be referring to "actually existing 'communism'" [sic]. That is, he simply accepts, like most everyone else, the notion that communism is synonymous with, e.g., the USSR under Stalin. Viewed through that lens, he makes a valid point. But I don't think he was making an analysis of how actual communism would work.

You also have to consider that they understandably don't want to be painted as pinkos, which they surely knew they would be, no matter how ridiculous the accusation (and they were, from the moment Addendum was released). So they've taken great pains to distance themselves from communism, and to explicitly portray themselves as something new under the sun (when in fact they're just the new utopians on the block -- and I say that as someone who really likes Fresco and would love to sit and chat with him for hours).

[mikelepore]

To ZeroNowhere and Zanthorus: How can anyone make those contrasts with the function of money? I wouldn't be at all surprised to find the people of the future classless society wanting the ability to exchange and circulate their labour certificates. I think it's enough to say that there won't be an infrastructure that supports private ownership of the means of production, because isn't that the only main concern? However, I expect that there will be a widespread feeling that it's convenient to be able to transfer their labour certificates. For example, it's a very old tradition for some people to give money as wedding presents. Labor certificates can be used for that purpose, but then they would have to be transferable.

[Agnapostate]

Are you focused on remuneration differentials themselves?

[Sam_b]

I'm no economist, but I think that as long as a nation needs to trade with other nations and so long as capitalism still exists in other countries, currency will be needed in one form or another. Maybe if we were an autarky, then sure, we probably wouldn't need money as everything we need would be produced at home.

Well yes. But how is communism in one nation state plausable and/or desirable?

[Zanthorus]

To ZeroNowhere and Zanthorus: How can anyone make those contrasts with the function of money? I wouldn't be at all surprised to find the people of the future classless society wanting the ability to exchange and circulate their labour certificates. I think it's enough to say that there won't be an infrastructure that supports private ownership of the means of production, because isn't that the only main concern? However, I expect that there will be a widespread feeling that it's convenient to be able to transfer their labour certificates. For example, it's a very old tradition for some people to give money as wedding presents. Labor certificates can be used for that purpose, but then they would have to be transferable.

I thik you missed at least one half of my case which I admittedly didn't put across very clearly. Money serves as a common measure of value, value referring to the value form that the products of labour take which regulates exchange between the reciprocally autonomous producers of capitalism. If class property is abolished and all means of production are centralised in the hands of the association then the value-form of capitalism ceases to exist. The labour certificates wouldn't represent a kind of value which stands over the producers and controls their exchanges with each other but something socially determined.

As for exchanging labour certificates, that could happen sure. But is it facilitating the exchange of the goods that the certificates represent?

[Dave B]

I think Karl discussed labour vouchers, that would not be money because they would not circulate eg;



The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch18.htm#2 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch18.htm#2)


in detail in two places.

I think it is clear from the context of the following that he was however not over enthusiastic about the idea.



Karl Marx: Critique of Political Economy
B. Theories of the Standard of Money




John Gray was the first to set forth the theory that labour-time is the direct measure of money in a systematic way. [7] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=1738270#7) He proposes that a national central bank should ascertain through its branches the labour-time expended in the production of various commodities……….




http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02b.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02b.htm)


And;


The Grundrisse NOTEBOOK I October 1857 The Chapter on Money
(Part II)



Now, it might be thought that the issue of time-chits overcomes all these difficulties. (The existence of the time-chit naturally already presupposes conditions which are not directly given in the examination of the relations of exchange value and money, and which can and do exist without the time-chit: public credit, bank etc.; but all this not to be touched on further here, since the timechit men of course regard it as the ultimate product of the ‘series,’ which, even if it corresponds most to the ‘pure’ concept of money, ‘appears’ last in reality.) …………..


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm)


The material in the Gotha programme rather than being an endorsement of labour vouchers was more of an apology for it and the extent that they could go along with it if that was what the workers thought was necessary.

Additional material;


Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890 Engels to C. Schmidt
In Berlin


There has also been a discussion in the Volks-Tribune about the distribution of products in future society, whether this will take place according to the amount of work done or otherwise. The question has been approached very "materialistically" in opposition to certain idealistic phraseology about justice. But strangely enough it has not struck anyone that, after all, the method of distribution essentially depends on how much there is to distribute, and that this must surely change with the progress of production and social organization, so that the method of distribution may also change. But everyone who took part in the discussion, "socialist society" appeared not as something undergoing continuous change and progress but as a stable affair fixed once for all, which must, therefore, have a method of distribution fixed once for all. All one can reasonably do, however, is 1) to try and discover the method of distribution to be used at the beginning, and 2) to try and find the general tendency of the further development. But about this I do not find a single word in the whole debate.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm)


.

[Uppercut]

Well yes. But how is communism in one nation state plausable and/or desirable?

I didn't mean autarky is possible only in communism. You can have an autarkical system without being fully communist. For example, Albania achieved autarky while it was in it's socialist stage. Trade was either extremely limited or abolished, there was no inflation, and hardly any (if any at all taxes). Their economic growth during socialism outmatched what they are producing today. So far, Albania's economic growth has been the same before and after socialism.

[mikelepore]

I thik you missed at least one half of my case which I admittedly didn't put across very clearly. Money serves as a common measure of value, value referring to the value form that the products of labour take which regulates exchange between the reciprocally autonomous producers of capitalism. If class property is abolished and all means of production are centralised in the hands of the association then the value-form of capitalism ceases to exist. The labour certificates wouldn't represent a kind of value which stands over the producers and controls their exchanges with each other but something socially determined.

Other than the numerical values being more rational, I don't see that much difference in the act of exchanging savings for goods when we have the classless society. People may also use the same terminology that they use today: paycheck, go shopping, customer, price tag, and check out.


As for exchanging labour certificates, that could happen sure. But is it facilitating the exchange of the goods that the certificates represent?

It could. If I want to give you a gift of a ten ton widget, I could give you the certificate and let you go pick out your own ten ton widget.

[anticap]

Money/Currency is a feature of Market economies and will not exist in Communism. Both Marx and Kropotkin opposed the continuation of currency. The closest perspective to Communism that maintains currency is Collectivism.

Since you brought it up, and since he takes a few shots also at his understanding of the Marxist system, and since he arrives nevertheless at the same conclusion ("to each according to need") and even ends up repeating (in his own words) some of what Mike and Dave have excerpted above, here (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/conquest/ch13.html) is Kropotkin's critique of the collectivists' "labour-cheque" system.

[Zanthorus]

Other than the numerical values being more rational, I don't see that much difference in the act of exchanging savings for goods when we have the classless society. People may also use the same terminology that they use today: paycheck, go shopping, customer, price tag, and check out.

Isn't this one of the main critiques of capitalism that all the individual market transactions add up to something that manifests itself as greater than an outside all the individuals taking part and makes society lose control of itself, and that in a socialist planned economy society would decide things rationally? In the market economy money acts to mediate exchange between isolated producers, whereas in the socialist economy as you said prices are decided rationally.

Perhaps we could just settle this by saying that in a socialist economy money would not play the same function that it does in the market economy and that with prices being decided by rational mechanisms it would not have the same alienating control function.

[Dave B]

I think the idea of labour vouchers originated, pre Marx, from the idea that if you got rid of exploitation and if workers received the full value and remuneration of their labour power etc everything else would look after itself and their would be nothing to complain about etc etc.


I suppose to some extent that was the starting position of early socialist as in the Ricardians and people like Bray, Gray , Owen and importantly Proudhon.

The argument then splits up into two to some extent; and you have one tendency that lets the market look after the allocation of who gets what for what in a fair exchange of commodities etc etc and that requires circulating labour vouchers and thus ‘money’.

That was essentially Proudhons position I think.

Then you get the idea of democratic centralised production and ‘boards of trustees’ etc or the metaphorical ‘bank’; as a central clearing house of produced goods setting labour voucher ‘exchange values’ in a giant universal one stop shop supermarket.


In which each individuals/production unit’s products would be deposited in the ‘bank’ in exchange for labour vouchers which would then be used to purchase other peoples products etc.

The so called ‘Bank’ in as much as it could set the exchange value of products against labour vouchers would at least have indirect control over what and how stuff was produced, in a syndicalist kind of way, even if it didn’t have to, or would have, any direct centralised control.

Thus it would stop the production of square wheels in its tracks etc just by merely not setting a labour voucher value to them.


Irrespective of how it might be done much of the paraphernalia of capitalism would remain including check out tills, ticket inspectors, store detectives and clocking in and clocking out.


To the objectors of this system like myself it would just look like ‘democratic state capitalism’ with state capitalism in big inverted commas obviously.

The idea of a money-less and labour voucher less socialism and a ‘gratis’ system as regards the perception, even if idealised, was much more current 100 years ago than it is now.


It is in fact now only put forward by the WSM/SPGB as far as self described Marxists are concerned apart from perhaps some council communist types and some traditional Kropotkinist anarchists.


Even Lenin knew what it was;





Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.


It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm)



.

[mikelepore]

In Marx's 1844 manuscripts he says money does this and money does that. I think he's writing a bit figuratively.

I emphasize the following facts. In the classless society people will be free from dependency -- no one has to become the servant of someone else to acquire access to the means of survival. Administration will be flat and not hierarchical. Leisure time expands as exploitation is deleted. The random noise of the market system is replaced by the intelligence of collective planning. In those acts I see the emancipation of people.

So to me Marx's early description citing the properties of money seems too much of a shorthand notation. The culprit isn't the use of money, literally speaking, but the oppressive environment in which exploited people are today using that money.

Money is only an outward sign. It's like we're lost in a blizzard, and we have to take action so that we won't freeze to death -- figuratively speaking, we may say that we're very concerned about the thermometer.

An example from Marx, 3rd manuscript, where I think he's writing figuratively --


That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for, i.e., that which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money. The stronger the power of my money, the stronger am I.

... Therefore, what I am and what I can do is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman.

... I am lame, but money procurs me 24 legs.

... I am a wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid individual, but money is respected, and so also is its owner.

... He who can buy courage is brave, even if he is a coward.

This 26-year-old Marx had not yet found himself. It's not really the money. It's the social system.