What happens to money in a socialist society?

[Questionable]

A friend of mine asked me a question I hadn't thought of before. When a successful proletariat revolution occurs, what will happen to money?

I thought the dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to seize all assets and then begin using them towards the goal of constructing socialism/reaching communism. So what would we do with money? Would currency just become worthless slips of paper which would then be replaced with a labor token system as outlined in the Gotha Critique, or would it be utilized somehow to further the advancement of socialism?

Also, how was currency utilized in the USSR? Was there wage-labor, or were the workers rewarded food tokens or something for doing hard work?

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

According to my theory, the currency seized would be gradually phased out until a new monetary system was constructed by the state bank. This could be 'tokens', 'rations', or even fiscal currency for state controlled market goods (dining out, entertainment, luxury items, extra food etc,.) used just like the 'trading stamps' in the U.S.S.R.

I'm a Socialist, therefor, I believe compensation for 'tokens' would depend on your output, if you're unable to work, money would be allocated based on your needs.

Communists, if I understand correctly, provide you with things that you need and the monetary system is abolished.

The U.S.S.R. had rubles that were used as trading tokens or food stamps.

In both cases Socialist and Communist states agree wage slavery is abolished.

[roy]

If a successful proletarian revolution does occur, money will just become, as you say, worthless slips of paper. It's impossible to know how the transition into a socialist society will be organised, though. And yes, the proletariat was still exploited and paid a wage in the USSR.

[Caj]

There will probably be something with an analagous function to bourgeois money in the early stages of socialism, at least in some regions. When, and if, technology successfully brings about a state of post-scarcity, currency will be rendered unecessary and will be abolished.

And yes, as in any capitalist system, wage labor existed under the USSR.

[Avocado]

That is an interesting question. In my vision of Utopia, money would be phased out in terms of coinage/notes - smart cards with a given amount (determined equally for all) would allow you to buy luxury goods - like books, or fountain pens or rubix cubes.
Education - free
Tools of your trade - Free
Food - free
Clothing - free
Amounts allocated would be determined by local officers.

Penalty for corruption - imprisonment

[Firebrand]

No money. If people can't share nicely they get put on bin duty for a few months.

[Veovis]

Money would almost certainly continue to exist at least during the beginning stages of the revolution. What I'd personally like to see is the basic necessities of life, like housing, water, and staple foods phased off the currency system sooner rather than later, if not right away. Money can be gradually disestablished after that.

[Ostrinski]

It will become obsolete.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

That is an interesting question. In my vision of Utopia, money would be phased out in terms of coinage/notes - smart cards with a given amount (determined equally for all) would allow you to buy luxury goods - like books, or fountain pens or rubix cubes.
Education - free
Tools of your trade - Free
Food - free
Clothing - free
Amounts allocated would be determined by local officers.

Penalty for corruption - imprisonment

That's a good Utopia right there, sounds like an impoverished city under-siege, where books and pens are luxury goods. How would corruption be a problem in this time of abun-- oh, sorry, forgot, thought we were talking abundance here, but clearly it's still an impoverished hell, never mind.

[Avocado]

That's a good Utopia right there, sounds like an impoverished city under-siege, where books and pens are luxury goods. How would corruption be a problem in this time of abun-- oh, sorry, forgot, thought we were talking abundance here, but clearly it's still an impoverished hell, never mind.

Free food, education, clothing, tools of the trade - impoverished? Oh well.

[Firebrand]

Free food, education, clothing, tools of the trade - impoverished? Oh well.

If you have to pay for books education is not free, if you have to pay for pens tools of the trade are not free. Not sounding brilliant to me to be honest.
I thought thr point was to change the basis of society so that people work because they enjoy it or want to contribute something, not work in order to gain access to any form of enjoyment beyond mere survival.

[Avocado]

If you have to pay for books education is not free, if you have to pay for pens tools of the trade are not free. Not sounding brilliant to me to be honest.
I thought thr point was to change the basis of society so that people work because they enjoy it or want to contribute something, not work in order to gain access to any form of enjoyment beyond mere survival.

I'm not sure you have thought about this.

You have not linked up my initial comments on luxury.

Education is free - completely - school, University, pens, books, all is provided.

Tools of the trade - everything provided.

I'm not sure I see what is vague about this.


I thought thr point was to change the basis of society so that people work because they enjoy it or want to contribute something, not work in order to gain access to any form of enjoyment beyond mere survival.

Not sure where that came from : certainly not me.

Work would be allocated on ability to deliver on it. That doesn't mean work harder or longer. It means that you work for the benefit of all for the greater good and according to ability.

[ckaihatsu]

As long as there are enough liberated-laborers -- *volunteers*, even -- to run the machines to produce a per-item *surplus*, and enough of the same to distribute the stuff, then where's the @#$%^&* problem??! (I mean, that's the whole *point* and *premise* -- right???)

If there's a *lack* of a per-item surplus, *and* the people can't quite seem to work out how to administrate it equitably, then there's a political weakness there and market economics will re-emerge.

[daft punk]

this is what I posted on the subject on a different thread:

Moneyless society, let's start with that. You need to know that Marxists think it would take a couple of generations at least to get to that stage, probably longer. First you need an economy capable of easily producing everything everyone needs, and most of what they want, internationally. So you would need the poor countries brought up to the level of rich ones. You would need to have scrapped private ownership of the means of production, and implemented a democratically controlled planned economy.

You would evolved to moneyless society by making one thing free at a time. First, free healthcare and education. Next, free public transport and food. Then free housing, then free energy. Finally, luxuries may be on some kind of points of token system.

Some people on here seem to want to abolish money overnight, but I've no idea how they would expect it to work.

The socialist economy would be more efficient that a capitalist one, because money is a much a hindrance as a help - if you havent got it you cant do anything. The world's rich have $10 trillion under their mattresses doing nothing, as investment opportunities are so poor. They turned from manufacturing to finance to make easy money and a world cannot run on finance. People need things, food, houses, electricity, clean water.

[ВАЛТЕР]

We eat it.

We need to secure the means of production and ensure a surplus large enough to feed the population and supply it with goods that are needed. Only after we have abolished scarcity of basic goods and ensured that the mean of production and distribution are within the hands of the people can we begin to phase out money.

[Rooster]

Money will disappear along with commodity production. So no labour-power being sold and bought, hence no wage-labour. Wage-labour requires the means of production being divorced from the immediate producer or in other words, someone has to own no means of subsistence and someone has to own the means of subsistence.

[Questionable]

Money will disappear along with commodity production. So no labour-power being sold and bought, hence no wage-labour. Wage-labour requires the means of production being divorced from the immediate producer or in other words, someone has to own no means of subsistence and someone has to own the means of subsistence.

I have trouble understanding this viewpoint. It's very good to say "There will be no more wages because we'll own everything," but how will this be carried out in practice? What about the millions of dollars sitting in the private banks? Will they just cease to be of value, or will those assets be seized to help carry society into socialism?

I think the slowly-make-things-free approach explained by daft punk and ВАЛТЕР makes a bit more sense at the moment, no offense, although I'd be interested in knowing how they would organize such a system to avoid corruption.

[Railyon]

What about the millions of dollars sitting in the private banks? Will they just cease to be of value, or will those assets be seized to help carry society into socialism?

I think they will cease to be of value, as money as it is right now is just a representation of exchange value to fulfill its function as a universal equivalent. It's just paper and pieces of metal embodying past labor, which I think will not be of any use in a transitional society; we'd have to re-build the whole remuneration system towards our ends.

[ckaihatsu]

those assets




corruption


These are the key words here -- how are 'assets' defined currently, and how *would* they be defined as society moves away from monetary valuations -- ? This is a *political* question, then, along with 'corruption' -- meaning deviance from agreed-upon rules for valuating and administering.





remuneration system


A remuneration system would be concerned with how to equitably value labor, if not through market economics -- again, it becomes a consciously *political* issue since the question of social value is taken out of the market mechanism (which runs on its own automatically, in a hands-off way).

As I mentioned, there would be no *objective* need for any formal remuneration system as long as people *politically* agreed to make the world's productive capacity (industry) produce just more than the people of the world could possibly use and consume -- a surplus. Any items that could *not* be readily mass-produced to address mass demand would be outstanding political issues for the revolution, and could also be potential political weaknesses.


[8] communist economy diagram

http://postimage.org/image/1bvfo0ohw/


[10] Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

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

[Rooster]

I have trouble understanding this viewpoint. It's very good to say "There will be no more wages because we'll own everything," but how will this be carried out in practice? What about the millions of dollars sitting in the private banks? Will they just cease to be of value, or will those assets be seized to help carry society into socialism?

What's the point in seizing all of that money? With the conversion of the means of production into common property and the abolition of commodity production through that, and labour-power as a commodity, money will become completely useless. If you're still wanting to continue using money then that would mean that you would have to still maintain commodity production, production for exchange and wage-labour. That's not very socialist to me.


I think the slowly-make-things-free approach explained by daft punk and ВАЛТЕР makes a bit more sense at the moment, no offense, although I'd be interested in knowing how they would organize such a system to avoid corruption.It's not about making things free. That's a fallacy. This is the sort of reformist path that many people take which usually involves welfare states etc. Seizing money from banks and having an institution that has all of that vast amount of wealth and having some sort of state to manage that seems to me more likely to end up with corruption.

[honest john's firing squad]

Some people ITT are answering this question from the perspective of someone planning their own personal utopia or an idealised maximum-efficiency economy from the ground up, and that's just an unscientific and consequently non-Marxist approach to handling this topic.

This question should be approached like how rooster and Railyon have done: investigating the role of money in capitalist societies today, and subsequently determining its place under a mode of production in which the hallmarks and characteristic features of capitalism no longer exist (hint: it simply has no place in an economic system which has done away with production of commodities for exchange).

[honest john's firing squad]

As for what happens to physical currency itself, I can think of a few alternative uses:

fuel, writing on, drawing on, building blocks (http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2011/06/xlarge_children_playing_with_a_tower_of_german_hyp erinflationary_banknotes.png), vessels for the inhalation of cocaine (http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/12/1/1322760878789/cocaine-on-banknotes-007.jpg), dresses (http://www.globaltimes.cn/attachment/100813/5f4d390b2b.jpg), underwear (http://image1.masterfile.com/em_w/00/96/46/619-00964675w.jpg), paper planes (http://corpjetfin.live.subhub.com/custom/Dollar%20paper%20plane.jpg), the list goes on...

[daft punk]

I think the slowly-make-things-free approach explained by daft punk and ВАЛТЕР makes a bit more sense at the moment, no offense, although I'd be interested in knowing how they would organize such a system to avoid corruption.

The more stuff that is free, the less chance of corruption. Also, workers representatives would be on the average wage, elected, an subject to recall. Also, boards running an industry would be comprised of members of the government, the public, and workers in that industry.

[honest john's firing squad]

Some people on here seem to want to abolish money overnight, but I've no idea how they would expect it to work.
We don't want to "abolish money overnight" (that itself sounds disastrous): rather, we agree money will become obsolete and functionally useless as soon as the capitalist mode of production is completely overthrown.

[ckaihatsu]

The more stuff that is free, the less chance of corruption.


This makes sense, simply because people's attentions would be more focused on societal planning rather than on monetary valuations.





Also, workers representatives would be on the average wage, elected, an subject to recall.





[T]hese days we can even realistically potentially transcend *representational democracy* and go straight to *direct participation*, as over discussing and deciding-on the issues themselves (thanks to communications technology), as on a discussion board like RevLeft, perhaps.

So, I'll suggest a proportional weighting, per person, over each-and-all of a mass-contributed pool of issues -- each participant has 100 points to distribute over all issues put forth, for the sake of prioritization. (Issues from the list are then prioritized according to most points received from all participants.)





Also, boards running an industry would be comprised of members of the government, the public, and workers in that industry.


This also makes sense, though the structuring of it could be a flat mass pool with people self-identifying their respective roles and modes of social participation.


[17] Prioritization Chart

http://postimage.org/image/35hop84dg/[/QUOTE]


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

http://postimage.org/image/35ru6ztic/