Currency under Socialism

[Bacon-Egg]

What would happen to currency once socialism or communism is established?
Would physcial money seize to exist?

I've often wondered about this when considering that old reactionary line about is it fair to pay a doctor the same wage as a bin man. The issue is obviously with the money itself, that we can measure labour by such a subjective factor.

So what do we do with it?

[The Idler]

smash cash (http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2011/05/smash-cash.html)

[Obs]

It really depends on the circumstances. The more scarcity, the more would have to be done to regulate the flow of goods and services - in the worst case, this would mean allowing currency to stay for a while. Otherwise there are labour vouchers, which would be somewhat like currency, but non-transferrable and only possible to be gained through labour.

Of course, the end goal is eliminating currency altogether.

[DaComm]

Anarcho-Communists along many other socialist persuasions advocate a money-less society, free exchange society. You wouldn't have competition over profits which prompts deteriorating enviornments, is the source for poverty, and creates inequality. Modern day tehcnology would probably allow for the abolition of scarcity of everyday products we use- I've read stuff saying nearly 40% of the avergae productive capacity of the capitalist class simply isn't even utilized and that if such a large amount of commodities weren't wasted wasted for commercial purposes superabundance could be quite a reality. Others envision a society where a non-circulated monetary unit could be used, where it could not be competed over or inherited. Basically, the workers decide on a unit of labor measurement, where a certain occupation, given its intensity could enable you to purchase an amount of products equal in cost to what you contribute to society. In short, you get what you give.

[Old Mole]

Money in all its forms is incompatible with communism, the problem with scarcity Obs mentioned is really no problem at all since primitive communism existed before money, and modern communism presupposes well developed productive forces.

[Blake's Baby]

Even if there is a certain scarcity during the upheavals of the revolutionary period, some of us would advocate rationing (ie planned distribution) before allowing the re-circulation of money.

[Rss]

Obs said it pretty damn well, but we still might use federation credit units or gold-plated latinum to trade with other civilizations. There are good examples from USSR and China, in their use of currency, along with advantages and disadvantages.

[Obs]

primitive communism existed before money
And ensured absolutely atrocious living standards because it was so unbelievably ill-equipped to deal with scarcity.

[Blake's Baby]

Or, you know, not.

Hunter-gatherer societies in for example the Pacific North-west of the USA were able to exploit pretty abundant environments and establish stable societies of relative affluence. There's a certain amount of evidence from the European Mesolithic that suggests that similar habitats were around then, and would require less energy inputs to provide necessary food than farming would. It was, it seems, easier to belong to a hunter-gatherer community in 6000BC in Europe than a farming community.

Now I'm not some kind of Anarcho-Prim saying let's all go and live in yurts. But I think it's mistake to see 'civilisation' as an unmixed blessing. I suspect that for many, settled communities and agriculture were a trade off that involved a relative worsening of living standards, in order to try to guarantee a surplus, in a time of ecological/environmental change.

[hatzel]

I suspect that for many, settled communities and agriculture were a trade off that involved a relative worsening of living standards, in order to try to guarantee a surplus, in a time of ecological/environmental change.

Is that to say, primitive communism was ill-equipped to deal with scarcity? As Obs said. Or how else are you supposing the transition was made? People saying "well, this whole system is perfectly meeting my needs, but I just feel like a change, even if that means a 'relative worsening of living standards', because that whole 'if it's not broke, don't fix it' thing never really resonated with me" just doesn't sound like a remotely feasible explanation...

[Blake's Baby]

No, because that's not what Obs said. Obs said it was ill-equipped to deal with scarcity, and therefore provided a shit standard of lliving.

I agree that it was likely to have to been ill-equipped to deal with scarcity. However, in times of 'no scarcity' that really doesn't matter. The European Mesolithic was a time of abundance, and in that period primitive communism and a hunter-gatherer existence probably provided a very good standard of living for the whole of society.

Changing environmental conditions, not to mention population pressure as settled communities from SE Europe expanded northwards, were probably the motivating factors behind much of the changeover from hunter-gatherer economies to farming economies, and the associated change from primitive communism to early class societies.

In these early settled, hierarchical communities, the 'standard of living', measured by any criteria you like (health, longevity, hours worked per day, relative share of social wealth) probably worsened (generally went down, except for hours worked) for the majority of the population.

[Obs]

No, because that's not what Obs said. Obs said it was ill-equipped to deal with scarcity, and therefore provided a shit standard of lliving.

I agree that it was likely to have to been ill-equipped to deal with scarcity. However, in times of 'no scarcity' that really doesn't matter. The European Mesolithic was a time of abundance, and in that period primitive communism and a hunter-gatherer existence probably provided a very good standard of living for the whole of society.

Changing environmental conditions, not to mention population pressure as settled communities from SE Europe expanded northwards, were probably the motivating factors behind much of the changeover from hunter-gatherer economies to farming economies, and the associated change from primitive communism to early class societies.

In these early settled, hierarchical communities, the 'standard of living', measured by any criteria you like (health, longevity, hours worked per day, relative share of social wealth) probably worsened (generally went down, except for hours worked) for the majority of the population.
I'll cede that I was unclear in my post. Yes, fairly good living standards are possible in primitive communism - unless, of course, you are more people than, say, a tribal community (as is the case with quite a few societies today). In that case, returning to the primitive communist method of dealing with scarcity (that is, not at all) is a really bad idea, which is why it's likely that a gift economy will be unfeasible in the early stages of socialism.

[Blake's Baby]

Yes, I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm not holding up hunter-gatherer society as some sort of template we can apply to society now. We do not live in the Mesolithic, when the whole population of Europe for instance could be measured in hundreds of thousands at most I would have thought, not hundreds of millions.

Sadly, nor do I believe that the process of defeating capitalism in the world civil war will leave us immediately in a position of abundance (I wish it would but realistically think that the position of the working class will be hard for at least several years); in this time I would still oppose the return of money and argue for rationing.

[robbo203]

smash cash (http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2011/05/smash-cash.html)


Here's the link to the original "Smash Cash" article written in 1968. Still worth reading even today


http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/june04/smashcash.html

[robbo203]

And ensured absolutely atrocious living standards because it was so unbelievably ill-equipped to deal with scarcity.

Read (or google) Stone Age Economics : The Original Affluent Society by Marshall Sahlins. You might just be persuaded to question your prejudices...

[hatzel]

I feel that we should drag this conversation away from whether or not it was pleasant to live in primitive communist societies, because the question is about currency under the forthcoming socialism / communism. The OP lists his organisation as the Irish SWP. I don't know if we have any members of this group here. I also don't know if they are comparable to the British SWP - if so, we of course have members of that organisation. Or we could just get a general Trotskyist, to explain their whole currency idea, what they have to say about it, or labour vouchers, or whatever. Then the OP might actually learn what they came here to learn and that would be really nice to them :)

[Jose Gracchus]

Get a rid of it as soon as possible. Some kind of currency system will probably remain during the transition to socialism, and while the revolution is still sequestered in progress to global victory.

[robbo203]

I feel that we should drag this conversation away from whether or not it was pleasant to live in primitive communist societies, because the question is about currency under the forthcoming socialism / communism.

True, but the question of primitive communist societies in relation to a future moneyless socialist society is not unimportant. Specifically it ties in with the bourgeois claims about "human nature" that has often been raised against the possibility of socialism/communism (even by people on Revleft astonishing though it may seem). If 95%+ of our existence on this planet was without money it cannot reasonably be asserted that our human nature forbids us to abandon money.

The other point specifically about primitive communism is the claim, for example made by Obs, that it " ensured absolutely atrocious living standards because it was so unbelievably ill-equipped to deal with scarcity" This Hobbesian myth, effectively demolished by the likes of Marshall Sahlins, serves as an ideological prop for capitalism because the subtext is that only by organising into class society and especially capitalism can we ensure an improving standard of living

Empirically this is highly questionable. For one thing, Hunter-gatherer societies did not readily relinquish their way of life to embrace settled agriculture. Many HG societies coexisted and interacted with settled agriculturalist or pastoralist societies over long stretches of time (Im thinking here of the San & bantu speaking tribes in Southern Africa, like the Xhosa, whose language interestingly enough showed the influence of the San by incorporating the distinctive "click" sound of the latter). So it was a matter of choice and preference as far as HG societies were concerned. Insofar as their standard of living dropped or became precarious this was often as not as a result of them being marginalisied and forced out of their hunting territories onto more ecologically fragile land

For another thing, I think we have to be wary of the underlying assumptions of this whole modernist paradigm that what is the most "modern" and advanced - meaning capitalism - is the best and most productive and can ensure the highest possible standard of living and that what socialism has got to do is just go one better than capitalism in that respect. With regard to agriculture for example there has been a lot of recent literature reassessing the importance and productivity of traditional techniques and stressing the point that there is a lot we can learn from such techniques. We should not just assume modern = better. In some cases, it is not. There are many example in the literature where traditional agriculture not only produces more per hectare than moder capitalist farming but is also a lot more sustainable

Obviously I accept there is no way we can return to a hunter gathering society of primitive communism in a world of 6 billion + and rising. However we need to put the question of primitive communism in its proper context and not allow it to be usurped by the bourgeois mythmakers for their own ideological purposes

[Tablo]

Did not read the thread, but communism has no currency as it operates under a gift economy. I seem to recall Marx claiming that a "lower stage" of communism has it, but I hate Marxist semantics. Socialism can have currency, but whether this is a truly viable option in the long term is debatable. I do believe that the transition to communism will have some type of collectivist socialist economy that needs currency, but I see currency as temporary as a post-scarcity society(communism) has no need for such an outdated remnant of market economics.

[robbo203]

Did not read the thread, but communism has no currency as it operates under a gift economy. I seem to recall Marx claiming that a "lower stage" of communism has it, but I hate Marxist semantics. Socialism can have currency, but whether this is a truly viable option in the long term is debatable. I do believe that the transition to communism will have some type of collectivist socialist economy that needs currency, but I see currency as temporary as a post-scarcity society(communism) has no need for such an outdated remnant of market economics.

Marx advocated (somewhat unenthusiastically) the use of non circulating labour vouchers for the lower stage of communism but differentiated this from money. It is no more money than is a ticket to the theatre, he argued.

Traditionally, of course, "socialism" and "communism" meant the same thing and it was mainly lenin who broke with this tradition by decribing socialism as a transitional stage to communism. In any event, I have serious reservations about this idea of money being used within some kind of transition to communism (socialism)

Money is not some kind of neutral tool of administration; it is fundamentally a social relationship between people. Of course, money existed before capitalism but, in its generalised usage, it corresponds to , and demonstrates, the existence of capitalist relations of production as a monetised economy par excellance

This is why I would totally reject the idea of using money not only - obviously - in a communist society but in any supposed transition to such a society. A transitional stage that continiued to use money would not be a transition at all. It would still be a capitalist society based on generalised commodity production. That is why Marx advocated labour vouchers - although I reject this too as both unnecessary and far too cumbersome - precisely because it was not money

[Tablo]

Marx advocated (somewhat unenthusiastically) the use of non circulating labour vouchers for the lower stage of communism but differentiated this from money. It is no more money than is a ticket to the theatre, he argued.

Traditionally, of course, "socialism" and "communism" meant the same thing and it was mainly lenin who broke with this tradition by decribing socialism as a transitional stage to communism. In any event, I have serious reservations about this idea of money being used within some kind of transition to communism (socialism)

Money is not some kind of neutral tool of administration; it is fundamentally a social relationship between people. Of course, money existed before capitalism but, in its generalised usage, it corresponds to , and demonstrates, the existence of capitalist relations of production as a monetised economy par excellance

This is why I would totally reject the idea of using money not only - obviously - in a communist society but in any supposed transition to such a society. A transitional stage that continiued to use money would not be a transition at all. It would still be a capitalist society based on generalised commodity production. That is why Marx advocated labour vouchers - although I reject this too as both unnecessary and far too cumbersome - precisely because it was not money
Interesting. In my mind I have always made a clear distinction between socialism and communism as socialism is an economic system and communism is more of a societal structure. At least in my own opinion. Were these non-circulating labor-vouchers based on teh wage system or were they simply proof of being a working member of the community? I feel like I have heard conflicting views of what a labor-voucher actually is.

[robbo203]

Interesting. In my mind I have always made a clear distinction between socialism and communism as socialism is an economic system and communism is more of a societal structure. At least in my own opinion. Were these non-circulating labor-vouchers based on teh wage system or were they simply proof of being a working member of the community? I feel like I have heard conflicting views of what a labor-voucher actually is.


It is perhaps difficult now to appreciate but, in the late 19th century/early 20th century, when people talked about a socialist society they meant basically a communist society. In fact, earlier on, when Marx and Engels drew up their "Communist Manifesto", they explained why, at the time, they did not call it the Socialist Manifesto - because of the association of the term socialism with certain political currents they did not favour - but increasingly over time they shifted over to using the term socialism rather than communism - particularly Engels. Large numbers of writers in the late 19th century-early 20th adopted this practice. One thinks of people like William Morris, Hyndman, Kropotkin, Kautsky and many others. Even the Russian Social Democrats before they split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks used the term "socialism" in this way and Stalin wrote a pamphlet in 1906 in which he defined socialism as a moneyless wageless society. The rot, so to speak, really set in with Lenin who differentiated between socialism and communism by identifying the former with what we would call "state capitalism" but even Lenin was not consistent in this and in an interview with Arthur Ransome in 1922 reverted to the old usage

Labour vouchers were advocated by Marx as a form of rationing in lower communism. They are not at all based on the wages system becuase, as Marx explained in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, the workers do not exchange their products. There is no commodity poriodyction. Wage labour implies the separation of the producers from the means of production whereas in lower communism, the means of production are owned by everyone.

I personally dont think much of labour vouchers - it is far too cumbersome as a mechanism for rationing. If you are going to have rationing, at least for some goods, there are far more effective and straightforward mechanisms than this. I see no reason why most goods could not be distributed as free goods as would be the case generally in Marx's higher stage of communism

[Rowan Duffy]

I see no reason why most goods could not be distributed as free goods as would be the case generally in Marx's higher stage of communism

The reason that can't happen is that the quantity of available labour is finite and therefor production is finite. If we have free access communism and we run out of item X and we also run out of item Y, we've no information about which of these is the more vital to produce. If X = flat screens and Y = grain, we clearly should be devoting more labour to grain and not flat screens.

How can we signal this information? Well, we can make everyone fill out a partial ordering of products in terms of their interest in obtaining them. This however has flaws in aggregation due to the inability to signal just how much I might want item X more than item Y. In that case we could give people some aggregate quantity that they must disperse among the various items as they see most fit. What should this quantity be? Well a reasonable measure would be the average amount of social labour over the period of consumption.

But wait, why force them to do this all at once when they could just be given labour notes and "purchase" goods when they'd like? This is more convenient as people can make the decisions on the fly.

The use of labour notes is more reasonable as it allows us to convey more information than free access.

[MaximMK]

No cash in Communism

[robbo203]

The reason that can't happen is that the quantity of available labour is finite and therefor production is finite. If we have free access communism and we run out of item X and we also run out of item Y, we've no information about which of these is the more vital to produce. If X = flat screens and Y = grain, we clearly should be devoting more labour to grain and not flat screens. .

You are begging quite a few questions here. For instance, one of the great advantages of free access (or higher stage) communism is precisely that with the elimination of capitalism and its multitudinous money-related occupations (banks, pay departments, salespeople, insurance brokers etc etc) you can effectively double the available workforce for socially useful production. Even this may be a conservative estimate. Some people put the figure much higher because they regard the great bulk of the work done today to be totally useless and unnecessary.

Free access communism is the shortest and most effective route to meeting human needs. It immediately cuts out all the kind of work that performs no socially useful fiunction whatsoever but only keeps capitalism ticking over. If anything , given current levels of productivity, I can even envisage there being a shortage of socially useful work for people to do in free access communism. It will be able to produce so much more with so much less


You say labour is finite but so too is the demand side of the equation effectively limited and will be particularly so in free access communism since many goods serve today as status goods which will no longer be needed. Free access makes it pointless wanting such goods when everyone can freely avail themselves of them. The only way logically that you can gain status in free access communism is through your contribution to society and not what you take out of it. Indeed, there will simply be no point in taking more than you need. Its like taking water from a public fountain. You dont take more than you need just becuase its free and available in abundance, do you? That would be silly

On the question of priorities - X or Y - you have answered your own question, havent you? If it is obvious to you that grain is more important than flat screens then why do you think others will not see this as well? I do not think we need a particularly detailed or elaborate schema regarding social priorities . For the most part I think it can be left to commonsense and an intuitive feel for what is more important. Such prorities would come into the play in the allocation of resources only where there are material constrains in the sense of a shortage of a particular input to meet the multiple demands for such an imput. Then it would make sense to allocate said in put according to some notion of society's priorities. But that does not prevent lower priority goods from being produced by resorting to technological substitition and the like. I explained all this in an article I wrote some years ago http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm



How can we signal this information? Well, we can make everyone fill out a partial ordering of products in terms of their interest in obtaining them. This however has flaws in aggregation due to the inability to signal just how much I might want item X more than item Y. In that case we could give people some aggregate quantity that they must disperse among the various items as they see most fit. What should this quantity be? Well a reasonable measure would be the average amount of social labour over the period of consumption.

But wait, why force them to do this all at once when they could just be given labour notes and "purchase" goods when they'd like? This is more convenient as people can make the decisions on the fly.

The use of labour notes is more reasonable as it allows us to convey more information than free access.

I think the proceudre you advocate would prove extremely bureaucratic and cumbersome and I'm all for cutting down bureaucracy to the bare minimum. In any case I question your claim that labour notes convey more information than free access. You overlook what free acces entails - amongst other things , a self regulating system of stock control which of its very nature is capable of responding very rapidly to shifts in demand. If people come to reduce their demand for a particular product this will manifest itself in a build up of surpluses, prompting distribution points to cut back their orders from suppliers who, in turn, will reduce their inputs for said good from their own suppliers and so on further back along the production chain. The opposite would happen if people increased their demand for a good. This would automatically trigger a signal for more of such a good and hence the inputs for such a good. The point is all this is perfectly possible today and more so now with the development of computerised system of stock control

[☭The Revolution☭]

Anarcho-Communists along many other socialist persuasions advocate a money-less society, free exchange society. You wouldn't have competition over profits which prompts deteriorating enviornments, is the source for poverty, and creates inequality. Modern day tehcnology would probably allow for the abolition of scarcity of everyday products we use- I've read stuff saying nearly 40% of the avergae productive capacity of the capitalist class simply isn't even utilized and that if such a large amount of commodities weren't wasted wasted for commercial purposes superabundance could be quite a reality. Others envision a society where a non-circulated monetary unit could be used, where it could not be competed over or inherited. Basically, the workers decide on a unit of labor measurement, where a certain occupation, given its intensity could enable you to purchase an amount of products equal in cost to what you contribute to society. In short, you get what you give.

This. In order for complete equality and fairness, currency as we know it must be abolished and replaced with a more secure system.