Bartering and communism

[mollymae]

Hypothetically, would it be possible to exchange items between communes by bartering while still maintaining a communist system? Or would this behavior eventually lead to capitalism once again?

[Niccolò Rossi]

Hypothetically, would it be possible to exchange items between communes by bartering while still maintaining a communist system? Or would this behavior eventually lead to capitalism once again?

Why would you exchange items?

Also, what is a commune and what does it have to do with a world communist society?

Nic.

[mollymae]

Why would you exchange items?

Because that delicious Indian spice for my chicken curry dish isn't made in the US.



Also, what is a commune and what does it have to do with a world communist society?

For this purpose I think of a commune as a small communist society that is part of a federation of other communes.. how do you define the world communist society?

[mollymae]

Because that delicious Indian spice for my chicken curry dish isn't made in the US.

Okay, I'll give a better example than ^ this. Let's say I have a very rare disease, and the community that I am in doesn't have the medicine to cure it, but the medicine does exist far away from where I am.

[robbo203]

Because that delicious Indian spice for my chicken curry dish isn't made in the US.


I think you have to distinguish between exchange properly speaking which is a quid pro quo arrangement and reciprocity. In a communist society you do not have to exchange something with some purveyor of an Indian spice in order to obtain such a spice. You simply appropriate it for free and without payment from the local store. No barter or money is involved. There is a to and fro movement of goods between places in communism but this is not really "exchange" as such.



For this purpose I think of a commune as a small communist society that is part of a federation of other communes.. how do you define the world communist society?

A system of generalised reciprocity that operates on a global level. It is the globalistion of the relations that would apply at the microlevel of the commune

[Tablo]

Barter is not an aspect of Communism. Exchange of any form isn't really apart of it. Since Communism is a post-scarcity society it will be about freely giving and receiving. Not that you can do nothing and expect to receive free shit though, lol. As long as you contribute to te community the community will be sure to provide for you within reason.

[Proletarian Ultra]

No. Bartering is commodity exchange. Money is merely a special form of commodity.

(Part of the reason Capital is so hard to get into is this subject takes up the first chapters.)

[danyboy27]

yea it would be possible, and seriously if nobody use the mean of production for it, i couldnt care less.

some guy want to exchange his old lamp for a pack of beer? wooo, big deal! lets call the militia!

[ContrarianLemming]

Trade is NOT a defining characteristic of capitalism, it is in fact a characteristic of all economics.

[ckaihatsu]

[A world communist society is] a system of generalised reciprocity that operates on a global level. It is the globalistion of the relations that would apply at the microlevel of the commune


I think because of capitalism's hyper-compartmentalization we're used to thinking of the manufactured material world as a vast, complex circulation within capillary-sized vessels, combining into larger, major vessels at international levels.

And we can't get blood without it being transported inside of vessels, right? But material goods and services are *not* liquids -- there's no *inherent* need to *contain* and *financialize* (and/or politicize) every little material transaction, especially at ground-floor, personal levels.

At some point the overhead required just for *determining* and *tracking* the purported financialized value of every little thing gets to be too much, and the benefits of simple barter become much more attractive. (Likewise, if some goods become too politicized then off-street black markets develop to fill the void.)

As revolutionary leftists we go all the way and look at the *largest* scales possible for the realization of flows of material reciprocity -- particularly for labor since human labor is the only force that can bring about the world of manufactured material goods and services.





People don't mind working as long as they feel that they're getting something worthwhile in return for their work, and that they're not getting ripped-off -- the method of compensation could be in a societal-collective way (communism), or in an interpersonal way (gift economy), rather than in a personal-bank-account kind of way.