Labour vouchers

[Comrade1]

Would you like them or a currency

[mikelepore]

You didn't define your terms. If the system provides for me to transfer some of my labor vouchers from my computer account to yours, to give you a gift, then the vouchers ARE a currency.

[Tablo]

I think he means labor vouchers just proof that you are working member of the community and not as something you can accumulate.

[Magón]

It's pretty simple.... USD. :p

Labor Vouchers. :thumbup1:

[Jalapeno Enema]

How about a gift economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economics)?

Think shareware for the economy.

Anyway, I voted vouchers, because I believe it's a decent choice transitionally.

[Tablo]

How about a gift economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economics)?

Think shareware for the economy.

Anyway, I voted vouchers, because I believe it's a decent choice transitionally.
How are vouchers incompatible with gift economy? Vouchers just ensure your not some random dude drinking all the community's communist booze.

[Jalapeno Enema]

How are vouchers incompatible with gift economy? Vouchers just ensure your not some random dude drinking all the community's communist booze.If everybody's a member of our global stateless society, where are these random dudes coming from?

[Tablo]

If everybody's a member of our global stateless society, where are these random dudes coming from?
I'm referring to the rare cases of individuals refusing to perform labor when they are perfectly capable of doing so.

[Jalapeno Enema]

I'm referring to the rare cases of individuals refusing to perform labor when they are perfectly capable of doing so.yes, I can see your point.

I really don't know, I haven't given much thought to that (sometimes it's hard to wrap my mind around sloth, when I've spent my life working my ass off just to get nowhere)

Perhaps I should; the defense of our booze should be paramount.

[Tablo]

yes, I can see your point.

I really don't know, I haven't given much thought to that (sometimes it's hard to wrap my mind around sloth, when I've spent my life working my ass off just to get nowhere)

Perhaps I should; the defense of our booze should be paramount.
Indeed. The defense of our booze is my primary security concern for after the revolution. :thumbup1:

We won't have to worry quite as much after all booze production is fully automated.

[Quail]

I would favour a gift economy but obviously I prefer labour vouchers to any currency. I'm not sure why anyone on this forum wouldn't since, you know, we're all communists.

[Tablo]

I'm for a gift economy too. I'm not sure how labor vouchers would be against that though.

[Jalapeno Enema]

I'm for a gift economy too. I'm not sure how labor vouchers would be against that though.see, idk. I don't think they'd both by necessary, but as you pointed out, I agree they're not mutually-exclusive.

[mikelepore]

I think he means labor vouchers just proof that you are working member of the community and not as something you can accumulate.


How are vouchers incompatible with gift economy? Vouchers just ensure your not some random dude drinking all the community's communist booze.

The idea isn't just to show that you work, but to be the counting units that allow each individual to take an amount of products in proportion to their work hours.

"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." -- Karl Marx, from _Critique of the Gotha Programme_

[Property Is Robbery]

Neither are ideal

[Tablo]

The idea isn't just to show that you work, but to be the counting units that allow each individual to take an amount of products in proportion to their work hours.

"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." -- Karl Marx, from _Critique of the Gotha Programme_
Whoa. That works the same as wage labor. Marx was arguing in the Critique of the Gotha Program that wage labor was ultimately to be a done away with which is why he explained the difference between "to each according to contribution" and "to each according to need". Marx is against wage labor in the final stage of communism.

Just to show I'm not bullshitting.

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!
There is more to this in this part of the critique, but he repeats and this is the first part I came across mentioning it. He pretty much only wants it temporarily at most as in teh final stage it is to be done away with in favor of a gift economy. Kropotkin rejects the concept entirely, but most Marxists don't care what he thinks.

Some Marxists think the concept is outdated entirely due to the level of abundance now days. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/WestLothian/Marx-Engels&Socialism.html

Two points here. One is that modern production is social, not individual. It is doubtful whether the value of the 'individual quantum of labour' could have been measured in Marx's time except in the crudest terms of time. It is even more doubtful whether such a measure could be made today. The second point is adequately dealt with in the Socialist Party ( 1978) publication of the article 'Labour time vouchers'. Marx made it quite clear that, if labour time vouchers were used in socialism, this would be a temporary measure resulting from the comparatively low level of technology. Today potential abundance resulting from improved technology has made the idea of labour time vouchers quite outdated. It will no doubt become even more outdated in future.

[Kotze]

See also this thread: Abolition of Monetary System (http://www.revleft.com/vb/abolition-monetary-system-p1793800/index.html)


That works the same as wage labor.Except that today the means of production are privately owned and rich individuals hire labour to extract surplus value for their own private purposes.

"Today potential abundance resulting from improved technology has made the idea of labour time vouchers quite outdated." That would be pretty cool if true but it just isn't.

[mikelepore]

Whoa. That works the same as wage labor.

Wage labor has non-workers take a profit, and the worker who works an hour get compensated for only ten minutes, just enough for the worker to barely survive. Socialism has the workers become full partners in the administration their own workplaces, and nothing is deducted from their compensation to send it to a separate class of absentee owners.

If you mean that's the same as wage labor _except for all of the important differences_, okay. They are the same same -- except for the ways in which they aren't the same.


Marx was arguing in the Critique of the Gotha Program that wage labor was ultimately to be a done away with which is why he explained the difference between "to each according to contribution" and "to each according to need". Marx is against wage labor in the final stage of communism.

Marx left it very vague about what new conditions he thought would be needed before the final stage could be possible. In that pamphlet he mentioned two main conditions: (1) "the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly" --meaning an extreme degree of automation; and (2) "labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want" -- meaning the presumption that having a classless society would cause work to become enjoyable. Whether those changes would probably take, say, four years, or four hundred years, or some other duration, is what Marxists sometimes argue about. Marx was not particularly qualified to make such estimates, so he didn't try to.


Just to show I'm not bullshitting.
There is more to this in this part of the critique, but he repeats and this is the first part I came across mentioning it. He pretty much only wants it temporarily at most as in teh final stage it is to be done away with in favor of a gift economy. Kropotkin rejects the concept entirely, but most Marxists don't care what he thinks.

I can read it either as "he pretty much only wants it temporarily at most", or that he is saying that subject should be dropped until a future generation born in classlessness raises the subject again.


Some Marxists think the concept is outdated entirely due to the level of abundance now days. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/WestLothian/Marx-Engels&Socialism.html

I have been arguing with the members of worldsocialism.org for many years. A central thesis of my argument is this: that level of abundance they refer to -- the classless society wouldn't have that abundance anymore if we found that almost no one showed up for work, because everyone knew that they could acquire products without showing up for work. This is the well known "free rider problem" that all socialists must answer.

[ZeroNowhere]

Whoa. That works the same as wage labor.No, it doesn't, unless you're going to reduce 'wage labour' to 'labour with compensation', in which case a student studying for a test in return for a gift from their parents if they do well, or a person duelling in order to win somebody or other's heart, are performing 'wage labour', and 'wage labour' long pre-existed capitalism. Wage-labour is defined precisely by the fact that production is collective by not directly social, and a socialist system with labour credits would precisely have directly social labour, and hene no value-production and such, as Marx notes.

[Zanthorus]

He pretty much only wants it temporarily at most as in teh final stage it is to be done away with in favor of a gift economy.

I interpreted the point more as that there will be no 'final stage', but that within the given set of conditions necessary for a society to be called 'Communist', there is room for development, change and general evolution of societies institutions beyond the basic mode of production. This was one of the points brought up during an article discussing this topic in the context of a critique of the CPGB's draft programme in an issue of the Weekly Worker while back. Whatever the case, it's clear that the labour vouchers scheme does not violate what Marx saw as the necessary conditions for a society to be called Communist. This is stated quite explicitly in the first footnote to chapter three of Capital:


On this point I will only say further, that Owen’s “labour-money,” for instance, is no more “money” than a ticket for the theatre. Owen pre-supposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely in consistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#n1

And the description of a Communist society in Chapter one:


Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time.

In fact, the only place any mention is made by Marx of the 'from each according to his ability' slogan is the Critique of the Gotha Program, which was actually a private letter not intended for public consumption anyway.