A capitalist tourist in a socialist state, and vice versa

[UltraWright]

How is tourism from capitalist systems to socialist systems supposed to work? For example, how is a socialist state supposed to deal with a tourist who brings lots of money to it? How would a socialist equate poor and rich tourists?

Similarly, how would a socialist state make sure that its citizens are going to manage when they travel as tourists to a capitalist state?

[Kotze]

Cockshott's and Cottrell's Towards a New Socialism (http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/%7Ecottrell/socialism_book/) has a section on how trade could work between a socialist commonwealth that uses labour vouchers internally and countries that don't (chapter 10), where tourism is also mentioned.


In the light of [bad experiences with loans from cappie countries] it seems wiser for socialist countries to follow Mao Zedong’s policy of maintaining balanced trade and refusing toborrow money from capitalist banks.

(...)

The Soviet socialist pattern was to maintain an inconvertible currency which did not circulate abroad, and to pay for imports in Dollars or Marks. We are proposing an internal economic system in which money as a means of payment is phased out in favour of non-circulating labour credits. These labour credits are not money in the normal sense, in that they can only be used by citizens to pay for publicly produced goods and services; they cannot circulate or be used as capital. When this approach is applied to the problem of overseas trade, it implies a system in some ways diametrically opposed to foreign exchange policy on the Soviet model. These countries paid for their foreign trade in hard currency and often restricted the export of their own currency by means of exchange controls. From the 1940s to the ’60s the British government followed a similar policy.

In outline what we propose is the reverse of this: imports from the capitalist world are paid for in labour credits; labour credits may be exported and can circulate abroad but not at home; and the import of foreign currency is outlawed. We wish to prevent the formation of money capital as a social relation within the domestic economy, which is why labour credits are not allowed to circulate domestically. In the capitalist world money capital already exists so there is no objection to labour credits of the socialist commonwealth circulating between foreign capitalists. A capitalist firm that supplies the commonwealth with imports will be given an account with the ministry of foreign trade and credited with a certain number of hours of labour. The firm may then obtain a transferable certificate of credit from the trade ministry.

These certificates of labour credit would then serve as non-interest bearing negotiable instruments which the holders could sell on the financial markets for whatever currency they wished. The demand for such instruments would come from companies who want to buy commonwealth exports. It is unnecessary for the commonwealth trade ministry to establish an exchange rate, that is a private matter for the capitalist financial markets. Since both exports and imports are evaluated (and international transactions settled) in labour vouchers, the Dollar or Yen price of these on the world market can be ignored when deciding what to export or import. All that matters to the socialist economy is the product of the foreign currency price of goods and the exchange rate.

(...)

Goods are only offered for export if the (labour voucher) price yielded is above the labour input required to produce them. Imports are only purchased if the labour price at which they are being sold is lower than the amount of labour that would be needed to produce them domestically.

(...)

Suffice it to say that the scope for black marketeering would be greatly reduced if state shops only accepted domestic currency (or domestic labour tokens).

(...)

There remains the problem of preventing the internal circulation of foreign banknotes. To deal with this, a socialist commonwealth should simply prohibit the import of currency. All domestic purchases will already be made using plastic cards. Arrangements could be made with capitalist banks to allow foreign tourists the use of their credit cards when visiting the commonwealth.

The remaining legitimate reason for citizens of the commonwealth to want capitalist currency is travel to capitalist states. This demand could be met by allowing citizens to use their labour credit cards when travelling in the capitalist world. A commonwealth citizen arriving in Tokyo could go to a Japanese bank and use her labour card to obtain Yen. The procedure would be something like this:
(1) Citizen transfers 20 hrs labour credits to Japanese bank.
(2) Bank gives him an equivalent in Yen.
(3) Electronic record transferred to commonwealth foreign trade computers, which credit account of Japanese bank with 20 hrs labour.
(4) These accounts then used by Japanese bank to finance purchase of commonwealth exports.

Note that although a citizen outside the country is free to use her labour card to purchase Yen, she may not bring the Yen back into the country or change Yen back into labour credits. Correspondingly, although citizens can transfer labour credits to the account of a capitalist bank, the bank cannot transfer labour credits back to the accounts of citizens. This is necessary to prevent foreign currency circulating as an internal means of exchange.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

With the money issue: Socialism (I know I don't speak for all comrades) is the transitory phase to the higher human development phase communism, the latter being a classless, moneyless, society. Personally, I believe that the Socialist phase can, to a better or worse extent, be constructed in a region, i.e. a pre-requisite for Socialism is only that there is enough of the world under workers' control that a Socialist state can survive via trade within said revolutionised Socialist bloc. That being said, money would still exist, for a period, the only difference being that there wouldn't be fluctuations to the strength of the currency from inside the Socialist bloc as there would, presumably, be a ban on currency speculation, and probably some sort of currency controls in force.

I can't see it working any differently during the early part of the Socialist transitory phase. Obviously, as Socialism moves towards the higher phase, communism, money will gradually be replaced as and when it can be, so that might be slightly different, but all in all its probably more of a specific policy issue rather than an ideological one.