Chartalism and tying currencies to labour hours

[Die Neue Zeit]

How can one reconcile the proposal to tie pre-socialist currencies to labour hours with the monetary theory of Chartalism? According to that theory, the money supply is expanded by printing money and then shrunk through taxation. Governments spend first and collect taxes later, despite budgeting rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the proposal itself is a more labour-centric response to right-populist calls to return to the gold standard as an anti-inflation measure, with the wide publicity for the time-to-money ratio exposing exploitation. It is not yet the full system of labour credits.

[YouSSR]

Do you mean a proposal to tie labor hours to currency under communism? I'm not familiar with any such theory currently being proposed. It's not really relevant because under chartalism the value of money comes from trust in the government as the supplier of the money supply. Any serious revolution, or even post-revolutionary government, would have massively undermined this trust and would have basically fucked up the value of the dollar.

As for the gold standard, that's just garbage rhetoric. It will never happen, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what inflation is and how the economy actually works, and there simply isn't enough gold in the world to put us back on the gold standard.

[robbo203]

How can one reconcile the proposal to tie currencies to labour hours with the monetary theory of Chartalism? According to that theory, the money supply is expanded by printing money and then shrunk through taxation. Governments spend first and collect taxes later, despite budgeting rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the proposal itself is a more labour-centric response to right-populist calls to return to the gold standard as an anti-inflation measure, with the wide publicity for the time-to-money ratio exposing exploitation.

Inflation is caused by the excess issue of inconvertible paper currency for circulation in the economy. That is the Marxian theory of inflation. So there is indeed a connection here with the gold standard. When it operated there was no inflation . For almost a century before 1914 British capitalism operated without inflation. Why do you think this was the case if it did not happen to be connection with the gold standard?

Morover taxation is not anti-inflationary as claimed. Taxation levels have risen enormously in absolute and relative terms throughout the 20th century but the general price level has continued to rise.

While right wing populists might well calll for a return to the gold standard, from a marxist perspective this is irrelvant. With or without the gold standard , with or without inflation, makes no real difference as far as the workling class is concerned. Our class has another struggle to wage without being diverted into a reformist tinkering around with the administration of capitalism

Here are some links that will help to clarify the matter

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/EdDoc%28Inflation%29.rtf (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/EdDoc%28Inflation%29.rtf)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/hard...ationfacts.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/inflationfacts.htm)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/misc/progress.gif

[DavidX]

@zeit- What a bizzare idea. i can only hope i am a laborer in canada operating a ski lift rather then a columbian coffee farmer. =)

@ YOUSSR- I often wonder about the currency under revolutionary china- the shift in the currency to a gold standard by the nationalists, to try and stop rampant inflation, which didn't work and then the transition to a totally fiat currency issued by a few banks under the communists under whom the people held trust in. - i wish i knew more, but maybe that undermines your idea that a revolutionary government necessarily means immediate rampant inflation.

in another life i would have gone into economics. maybe i'll beat one of my kids into it someday.

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

Inflation is caused by the excess issue of inconvertible paper currency for circulation in the economy. That is the Marxian theory of inflation. So there is indeed a connection here with the gold standard. When it operated there was no inflation . For almost a century before 1914 British capitalism operated without inflation. Why do you think this was the case if it did not happen to be connection with the gold standard?

Morover taxation is not anti-inflationary as claimed. Taxation levels have risen enormously in absolute and relative terms throughout the 20th century but the general price level has continued to rise.

While right wing populists might well calll for a return to the gold standard, from a marxist perspective this is irrelvant. With or without the gold standard , with or without inflation, makes no real difference as far as the workling class is concerned. Our class has another struggle to wage without being diverted into a reformist tinkering around with the administration of capitalism

The change under the dictatorship of the proletariat would not be instantaneous... that is impractical. Thus, we must find ways of making the transition in feasible steps...

[ckaihatsu]

The change under the dictatorship of the proletariat would not be instantaneous... that is impractical. Thus, we must find ways of making the transition in feasible steps...


My contribution to the topic:





Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

a model by Chris Kaihatsu, [email protected], 1-09
thanks to comrades at RevLeft.com


[capitalism][economics] -- wages system, private property extracts profit from labor value

[capitalism][politics] -- bourgeois rule, political struggle against it

[syndicalism][economics] -- wages system based on full labor value, surplus value goes into global syndicalist currency

[syndicalism][politics] -- local workers' collectives, economic and political labor network built on global syndicalist currency with transparent, published accounting, possible confrontations with defenders of capital

[socialism][economics] -- labor credits reward uncoerced labor according to difficulty of work, surplus value builds up communist infrastructure

[socialism][politics] -- political economy based on workers' collectives controls all assets, resources, goods, and services, baseline health and welfare for all, regardless of work status

[communism][economics] -- full automation and widespread abundance, ease of administration and material accounting

[communism][politics] -- fully integrated political economy enables global-level planning over uncoerced labor and surplus value


[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

http://postimage.org/image/1bufa71ms/