How are we going to get rid of money?

[campesino]

In the "Marxism-Leninism in the 21st century" immediately abolishing money is not recommended.
I understand a system of labor certificates, but once communist control is established shouldn't money be immediately be replaced with labor certificates. I don't see a reason to keep money around.

I would like to know the path and conditions that have to be met to eventually abolish money.

[Blake's Baby]

Money should be immediately abolished and all production and distribution put under community control.

That should happen on day one.

[Koba Junior]

I'm not sure how to go about "abolishing" money, as I'm sure its circulation will continue even following the construction of a socialist mode of production. Perhaps its circulation will continue as part of an extralegal economy not unlike a black market. I honestly can't speak to the abolition of money as I've never done it before.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

Money should be immediately abolished and all production and distribution put under community control.

That should happen on day one.

Yeah, so million of workers and farmers can die. You can't just abolish things at your fancy and especially without a process. Things take time. You are crazy if you actually believe this.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah, so million of workers and farmers can die. You can't just abolish things at your fancy and especially without a process. Things take time. You are crazy if you actually believe this.

Oh yah, I forgot we eat money.

Moron.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

Oh yah, I forgot we eat money.

Moron.

Fucking piece of idealistic shit.

You guys are fucking crazy. You happy? I said the truth. Remember what happened when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge abolished money? It was happy fun time for everyone, wasn't it?

[Caj]

Labor certificates will probably be used immediately following the revolution, but that is not money in the technical sense.

[Yuppie Grinder]

“There cannot exist in the future an economy which is still mercantile but which isn't capitalist anymore. Before capitalism there were economies which were partially mercantile, but capitalism is the last of this genre.” - Amadeo Bordiga

[Yuppie Grinder]

Fucking piece of idealistic shit.

You guys are fucking crazy. You happy? I said the truth. Remember what happened when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge abolished money? It was happy fun time for everyone, wasn't it?

The feudal conditions of 1970s Cambodia could not possibly create a sustainable economy of post-scarcity, you silly goose.

[hatzel]

The feudal conditions of 1970s Cambodia could not possibly create a sustainable economy of post-scarcity, you silly goose.

You forget that you and your sort are all 'idealist shits,' so stop with all this talk of material conditions, ya hear?

[Blake's Baby]

Fucking piece of idealistic shit...

Stalinist.




You guys are fucking crazy...

Told you before, from you this is a compliment, you counter-revolutionary piece of shit.


... You happy? I said the truth. Remember what happened when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge abolished money? It was happy fun time for everyone, wasn't it?

Yah, your mate Pol Pot who believed in Socialism in One Country (AKA national socialism) and the government of the revolutionary party?

Know what the difference is between a Stalinist and a Khmer Rouge is?

No, me neither.

[Koba Junior]

Yah, your mate Pol Pot who believed in Socialism in One Country (AKA national socialism) and the government of the revolutionary party?

Know what the difference is between a Stalinist and a Khmer Rouge is?

No, me neither.

This is the single stupidest thing I've ever read on the internet.

[Blake's Baby]

This is the single stupidest thing I've ever read on the internet.

Meh. You've only been on RevLeft about 4 days. Stick aroun to the end of the week, we let our hair down on Fridays.

[hatzel]

This is the single stupidest thing I've ever read on the internet.

You really need to read more internet, then...

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

The feudal conditions of 1970s Cambodia could not possibly create a sustainable economy of post-scarcity, you silly goose.

Good excuse for wanting something idealistic. Wanting to abolish money on the "first day" is the ultimate form of idealism. All of us want to see money abolished eventually, but not on the first day. Plus, since a lot of you who say that are anarchists, who's gonna abolish the money so fast? The state that doesn't exist? Are the productive forces that no state developed going to allow the abolishment of money?

[Koba Junior]

Meh. You've only been on RevLeft about 4 days. Stick aroun to the end of the week, we let our hair down on Fridays.

You were joking, though, right?

[Yuppie Grinder]

You were joking, though, right?

lol no

[Koba Junior]

You really need to read more internet, then...

It was like Dolan meets a Twilight fan-fiction meets ultra-leftism.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Good excuse for wanting something idealistic. Wanting to abolish money on the "first day" is the ultimate form of idealism. All of us want to see money abolished eventually, but not on the first day. Plus, since a lot of you who say that are anarchists, who's gonna abolish the money? The state that doesn't exist?

Now THIS is the stupidest thing I've read on the internet.

[Magón]

Well the first thing you have to do, is get people to understand exactly what that means and how it differs from what we have now. You have to show them exactly how the current monetary system we all live with, isn't helping anyone, and how exactly a voucher or certificate is different than just being paid after 2 weeks of work.

Once people see the difference, then it'll be up to them on how they go about creating the new system. There is no one right way, to achieve a voucher or certificate system.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

Now THIS is the stupidest thing I've read on the internet.

I fixed it, dumb ass.

[Misanthrope]

By eliminating a system which requires it as a necessity and replacing it with a proletariat dictatorship.

[Misanthrope]

Good excuse for wanting something idealistic. Wanting to abolish money on the "first day" is the ultimate form of idealism. All of us want to see money abolished eventually, but not on the first day. Plus, since a lot of you who say that are anarchists, who's gonna abolish the money so fast? The state that doesn't exist? Are the productive forces that no state developed going to allow the abolishment of money?

No one is going to abolish money, it will wither away. Read some Marx. That's the problem with you, your so damn knee-jerk authoritarian that you think everything needs to be "abolished" by the state.

[Conscript]

Stalinist.




Told you before, from you this is a compliment, you counter-revolutionary piece of shit.



Yah, your mate Pol Pot who believed in Socialism in One Country (AKA national socialism) and the government of the revolutionary party?

Know what the difference is between a Stalinist and a Khmer Rouge is?

No, me neither.

Well, stalin didn't try to base his state on the peasantry. This started with maoists and pol pot's idea of communism being a peasant utopia is one of its excesses, not stalin's.

Stalin argued against revolution in countries like that. Doing it anyway is the maoists' 'contribution' to marxism.

[Blake's Baby]

You were joking, though, right?

Not to any great degree, no. You all look the same to the rest of us. Stalinists, Maoists, Pol Potists... anyone who believes in Socialism in One Country is a counter-revolutionary. Some of you are quite polite about it, some of you froth at the mouth, but you're all standing in the way of the revolution.

[L.A.P.]

Yeah, so million of workers and farmers can die. You can't just abolish things at your fancy and especially without a process. Things take time. You are crazy if you actually believe this.

Keeping capital and private property because it's a process........to recuperate the revolution back into capitalism.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I fixed it, dumb ass.

meh still pretty dumb

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

No one is going to abolish money, it will wither away. Read some Marx. That's the problem with you, your so damn knee-jerk authoritarian that you think everything needs to be "abolished" by the state.

Did you read what I edited on: Who's gonna abolish it so fast.

[Blake's Baby]

The workers' councils.

Why would they (we) want to do otherwise?

[Yuppie Grinder]

yea man we gotta establish that direct domination of the proletariat

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

So, I'm by no means in love with Kropotkin, and the weird techno-utopian he espouses in this same pamphlet is, well, regrettable, but the take on expropriation and communization in THE CONQUEST OF BREAD is pretty dece, as I recall. I mean, yeah, communize everything immediately, avoid messy transitions. I mean, obviously there are complicated specificities within that, but nothing nearly as complicated as trying to simultaneously communize everything and maintain a monetary economy. For srs.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

It is somewhat of a shame that a thread with a decent question degenerated into such a useless flame war so I am going to say this: back on track or the thread gets closed.

[Misanthrope]

Did you read what I edited on: Who's gonna abolish it so fast.

Fucking Stalin.

does that answer suffice?

[Koba Junior]

Not to any great degree, no. You all look the same to the rest of us. Stalinists, Maoists, Pol Potists... anyone who believes in Socialism in One Country is a counter-revolutionary. Some of you are quite polite about it, some of you froth at the mouth, but you're all standing in the way of the revolution.

To begin, I have two very sincere questions for you:


What is a "Pol Potist" and have you ever actually met one? Or are you just trying to get a rise out of me?
Do you sincerely believe that socialism in one country is related to Nazi-Fascism? If so, in what ways are they congruent?
If socialism in one country is counter-revolutionary, what practical measures do you propose take its place?

Those questions aside, falling back on Pol Pot is a really weak maneuver on your part and, frankly, I expect better from most RevLeft users.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

I expect better from most RevLeft users.

:laugh:

[Yuppie Grinder]

1. There are some creepy Maoists out there who'll defend Pol Pot.
2. There not the same thing and I'm sure he knows that.
3. Ever heard of proletarian internationalism? It's sort of one of the central tenets of Marxism.

[Koba Junior]

3. Ever heard of proletarian internationalism? It's sort of one of the central tenets of Marxism.

It confuses me that people seem to think socialism in one country necessarily means a withdrawal from the international communist movement. Socialism in one country differs not from proletarian internationalism, in that a socialist country can fan the flames of revolution internationally and serve as a model, but from permanent revolution, this idea that before socialism can be constructed, revolution must break out in all sufficiently industrialized nations.

[Blake's Baby]

It is somewhat of a shame that a thread with a decent question degenerated into such a useless flame war so I am going to say this: back on track or the thread gets closed.

I'm listening, even if no-one else is.

I'm still waiting for an answer from them about the workers' councils.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The nation state is bourgeois and unique to the economic epoch of capital. It did not exist beforehand, it will not exist after.

[Koba Junior]

The nation state is bourgeois and unique to the economic epoch of capital. It did not exist beforehand, it will not exist after.

That isn't to say, though, that sovereign territories will suddenly vanish. You wouldn't dispute that territorial sovereignty has existed since well before capitalism.

[Koba Junior]

I'm listening, even if no-one else is.

I'm still waiting for an answer from them about the workers' councils.

I apologize, but could you repeat what you said about workers' councils? If I constitute "them," I may have an answer.

[Bostana]

Marx did say a complete Communist society will have no form of currency and/or money. However when to abolish it is the main question here. I do believe Marx said that money could only really be abolished when commodity production was abolished. So I figure after the world revolution and the world market is gone you can abolish money and with that wage labour.

[Yuppie Grinder]

lol no it doesn't do you have poo-brain or something

[Blake's Baby]

I apologize, but could you repeat what you said about workers' councils? If I constitute "them," I may have an answer.

So it went something like this: Comrade Commistar/Brolatov shouting because someone had called him out on the stupidity of something and he wanted us all to pay attention to him:


...Who's gonna abolish it so fast.

Me answering:



The workers' councils.

Why would they (we) want to do otherwise?

Now as to the rest of it all:


It confuses me that people seem to think socialism in one country necessarily means a withdrawal from the international communist movement. Socialism in one country differs not from proletarian internationalism, in that a socialist country can fan the flames of revolution internationally and serve as a model, but from permanent revolution, this idea that before socialism can be constructed, revolution must break out in all sufficiently industrialized nations.

That's not what 'permanent revolution' says. The theory of permanent revolution is the theory that Russia didn't have to go through a liberal capitalist phase preparatory to a socialist revolution.

What you're talking about is Trotsky's support for world revolution.

And even then you don't get it right I'm afraid.

Socialism cannot be built until capitalism has been suppressed everywhere. That doesn't mean that the revolution has broken out in some industrialised countries, it means the revolution has been completed everywhere. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not socialism.


That isn't to say, though, that sovereign territories will suddenly vanish. You wouldn't dispute that territorial sovereignty has existed since well before capitalism.

Well, having studied the 100 Years War, I can pretty confidently say that the idea of the 'nation' is one that comes along with capitalism. The 100 Years War was instrumental in the foundation of both England and France as nations; it began, however, as a dynastic dispute between the Plantagenets and the Capetins. The causes of the war were many and complex, involving dynastic rivalries but, crucially, also control of the English wool trade and Flemish weaving trade; thus it can reasonably be seen as the first 'capitalist' war, or at least as the first feudal war that has a large element of capitalist motivation. And as I say it was instrumental in turning England and France from dynastic fiefdoms into nations. So, yeah, I can pretty catagorically say that your idea of 'territorial sovereignty', at least as I think you understand it, is somewhat a-historic.

[Tim Cornelis]

National sovereignty is a concept based on the necessity of the state to enforce order, and for this reason alone communists ought to oppose it. National sovereignty in practice means the sovereignty of the national ruling class, the landowners, capitalists, and the state. It is furthermore meaningless to have a state based on one ethnicity, it is racist in fact. Africans do not have a right to a homeland, nor do the Catalans, Scotts, or anyone. Even if they had, this would be an impossibility given the nature of what national sovereignty entails.

That being said, it is an absolute illusion to believe we can abolish money within the timeframe of one day because this presupposes a fundamental transformation of the mode of production on at least a continental scale.

First, workers need to seize control over the economy (workers' councils). Then these workers' councils need to be federated within and between industries over a regional, then 'national', then continental scale (at least), and globally ultimately.

Once this has been accomplished (which may take up to a year given that the capitalists will be reluctant to allow these workers' councils to germinate and expand), a planned economy needs to be introduced before money can be abolished (If you abolish money before a planned structure has been established it will degenerate into barter and commodity money).

Once the planned economic structures function properly (workers, through trial and error need to figure out how it works best), money can be abolished completely. This process may take up to a couple of years.

In the meantime 'moneyless' distribution in small proportions will be integrated from the very beginning in localities, but some form of monetary exchange will persist for a few years. Within communes, especially the smaller ones, moneyless distribution will co-exist will monetary exchanges especially in external trade relations.

[ckaihatsu]

Money should be immediately abolished and all production and distribution put under community control.

That should happen on day one.





Well the first thing you have to do, is get people to understand exactly what that means and how it differs from what we have now. You have to show them exactly how the current monetary system we all live with, isn't helping anyone, and how exactly a voucher or certificate is different than just being paid after 2 weeks of work.

Once people see the difference, then it'll be up to them on how they go about creating the new system. There is no one right way, to achieve a voucher or certificate system.





Keeping capital and private property because it's a process........to recuperate the revolution back into capitalism.


What's missing here is an acknowledgement that real-world *conditions* of revolution may vary -- we would have to speak in terms of best-case and worst-case scenarios.

Best-case is that everything happens quickly and money instantly becomes obsolete and anachronistic -- this would equate to the resounding defeat of the bourgeoisie on a worldwide mass basis and the quick dissolution of its state. It would be replaced more-or-less in a bottom-up organic way with production rapidly reorganized on vast scales (for economies of scale and efficiency).

Worst-case is that there's an ongoing situation of dual-power where contending forces from the bourgeoisie and proletariat linger on in protracted labor-based battles, both political and physical. World public opinion remains divided and the class war takes on the characteristics of a country-by-country civil war between the classes. In such a situation it would be more-than-understandable for revolutionary forces to call for the seizing of the state, and to use it in an authoritarian, top-down way in the interests of the workers' forces, against the imperialists. This could include a system of labor vouchers, in an attempt to assert some kind of consistent economic valuation system, as counterposed to imperialist/colonialist resource extraction, corporatist/militarist syndicalism, and market-type commodity-production valuations.


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

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

[campesino]

seriously, comrades. I would like to know the different approaches of the tendencies to the question of money, I would like to know so I can hear how future science projects(such as a mass drive or large hadron collider) will be created or if they will even happen at all.

[Rafiq]

My, my, this thread is flourishing with Utopians and dreamers of all sorts. No Communist current, with any Marxist sympathies has outlined a blueprint for what it will do after a supposed revolution.

A revolution is not the fulfillment and realization of your Ideas. Do not take a revolution as some kinds of means for your glorious, flowery Utopian Ideas to be for filled and expressed in reality.

It is you, those of you who are criticizing people over "YOU DIDN'T ABOLISH MONEY!" who have bastardized and re invented the Communist movement into a movement of Utopians who simply want a new society, who are abstract from capitalism and have their glorious blueprint to put forth, for all to adhere to. Then, it becomes a battle over Ideas, of Capitalism vs Communism, or any of that other nonsense.

Any Marxist would reply to this with a simple, short answer: During a time of Revolutionary struggle, after a revolution, should they deem it necessary, then yes. Should material conditions point in the other direction, no. The material circumstances which could allow us to predict such an irrelivent, and specific demand do not exist, and therefore predictions made otherwise are done only by fortune tellers.

Those who are communists because it sounds cool, because the society that is "Proposed" seems cool or interesting to live in, are in for dissapointment. They are not Communists, but Utopian Socialists whom seek to destroy the emancipation of the proletariat in favor of their flowery fantasy land.

[campesino]

what are the differences between a Communist and a Utopian Socialist?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

what are the differences between a Communist and a Utopian Socialist?

Very simply put: a communist/socialist/Marxist has a long term concrete plan on how to reach socialism (Often referred to as "scientific" socialism) while a Utopian Socialist has no understanding of how to reach said socialism and simply dwells on what he would like to achieve but doesn't know how.

It is the difference between having a travel plan and just taking things as they come.

[Conscript]

I don't understand people who are flatly against abolishing money, but I don't understand people who want to abolish it without post-scarcity.

Marx talked about appropriating some surplus value in the lower phase of communism to fund disaster funds, maintenance, etc. Wouldn't money be appropriate for representing this value and giving labor subsistence?

[honest john's firing squad]

since money still apparently has a function in the stalinist paradise, it can be inferred that the law of value still operates within it. that's good to know.

[ColonelCossack]

I think it depends on... the material conditions. But generally I think things like this need to be phased out slowly and gently, to avoid unforseen disaster etc

[Tim Finnegan]

Look,

Money = Abstract labour-time
Abstract labour-time = Aliented labour
Alienated labour = Capital
Capital = Capitalism

Therefore, Money = Capitalism

You want to retain money after the revolution, you want to retain capitalism. No two ways about it, however many red flags you drape on that shit.


Very simply put: a communist/socialist/Marxist has a long term concrete plan on how to reach socialism (Often referred to as "scientific" socialism) while a Utopian Socialist has no understanding of how to reach said socialism and simply dwells on what he would like to achieve but doesn't know how.

It is the difference between having a travel plan and just taking things as they come.
I'd say you've got that backwards, to be honest. A communist, in understanding communism to be implicit within capitalist social relations, doesn't feel the need to plan or scheme, because he knows that the real movement is an historical process beyond his control. The one who draws up grand, long-term plans is the utopian who believes that you can bring socialism into being through a force of will, the material process of class struggle serving merely as a vehicle for the realisation of a program essentially prior to that struggle. The communist takes it as it comes because that is the only way that one can take it, and to think otherwise, as the utopian does, is self-delusion.


My, my, this thread is flourishing with Utopians and dreamers of all sorts. No Communist current, with any Marxist sympathies has outlined a blueprint for what it will do after a supposed revolution.
Oh, fuck off, you bloviating little tit.

[DCPmusic]

How get rid of the money problem? Everyone withdraw all of their money from the banks and stop paying your bills on the same day. The system collapses. Then if the people are strong enough to do that, they will be strong enough to create the venus project's future of man kind. It will happen, its just a matter of when. Why suffer any longer in a mathmatically unsound equation of constantly increasing debt and enslavement? Stop the spread of flouride, wake up your inner intelligent being. Unplug yourself from their invisible Matrix and create a world that you would be proud to leave to your children. You live once, be great.

One Love, DCP (revolutionary hip hop) - link up brothers and sisters.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

How get rid of the money problem? Everyone withdraw all of their money from the banks and stop paying your bills on the same day. The system collapses. Then if the people are strong enough to do that, they will be strong enough to create the venus project's future of man kind. It will happen, its just a matter of when. Why suffer any longer in a mathmatically unsound equation of constantly increasing debt and enslavement? Stop the spread of flouride, wake up your inner intelligent being. Unplug yourself from their invisible Matrix and create a world that you would be proud to leave to your children. You live once, be great.

One Love, DCP (revolutionary hip hop) - link up brothers and sisters.'

Take your medication, mate. :laugh:

[Tim Cornelis]

Look,

Money = Abstract labour-time
Abstract labour-time = Aliented labour
Alienated labour = Capital
Capital = Capitalism

Therefore, Money = Capitalism

You want to retain money after the revolution, you want to retain capitalism. No two ways about it, however many red flags you drape on that shit.


I'd say you've got that backwards, to be honest. A communist, in understanding communism to be implicit within capitalist social relations, doesn't feel the need to plan or scheme, because he knows that the real movement is an historical process beyond his control. The one who draws up grand, long-term plans is the utopian who believes that you can bring socialism into being through a force of will, the material process of class struggle serving merely as a vehicle for the realisation of a program essentially prior to that struggle. The communist takes it as it comes because that is the only way that one can take it, and to think otherwise, as the utopian does, is self-delusion.


Ignoring in what I think is simplistic reductionism, the question is do we want money during the revolution. A social revolution may take between a month and a decade. Do we need money in the period of the social transformation?

[Rooster]

Fucking piece of idealistic shit.

You're the idealist piece of shit if you think that you have any control over the matter.


Labor certificates will probably be used immediately following the revolution, but that is not money in the technical sense.

Why not during?


what are the differences between a Communist and a Utopian Socialist?

One's a communist, the other is a stalinist.

[SacRedMan]

Money isn't something you abandon in one day. It's something almost implanted in humans and it's like directly taking drugs from a drug addict: he's going to freak out and demand his drugs back. And all people won't let go off their money so fast that they earned by doing their work.

I'm not saying we should keep money, but this takes time and not one day. After a revolution people have to get used to the changed lifestyle and their new habitat. You don't have to study psychology to know that if you abolish money after the day of the climax of the revolution that people will be confused and start riots.

Minimize the usage and need of money at the point when people say on the street "You still have a dollar bill? It's only good for using it when you've run out of toilet paper!!".

SacRedMan

[campesino]

Ignoring in what I think is simplistic reductionism, the question is do we want money during the revolution. A social revolution may take between a month and a decade. Do we need money in the period of the social transformation?

I guess what a revolution needs is

popular support
food>shelter>means of production>guns

do we need money to have all those things? I think "The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin establishes a good road map to communism.

I also believe the communes themselves and a liberated working class will keep themselves from falling into capitalism.

I question the need for a "guided" path from capitalism to communism. I would like to hear why the communes and people would need to be "guided."

My question is, what is the reasoning behind non-anarcho-communism?
Not that you all are wrong, I'm here to learn.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Money isn't something you abandon in one day. It's something almost implanted in humans and it's like directly taking drugs from a drug addict: he's going to freak out and demand his drugs back. And all people won't let go off their money so fast that they earned by doing their work.

I'm not saying we should keep money, but this takes time and not one day. After a revolution people have to get used to the changed lifestyle and their new habitat. You don't have to study psychology to know that if you abolish money after the day of the climax of the revolution that people will be confused and start riots.

Minimize the usage and need of money at the point when people say on the street "You still have a dollar bill? It's only good for using it when you've run out of toilet paper!!".

Money isn't a "drug" that people need to get used to not using. Money is a commodity that functions as the general equivalent in a given society at a given time. This isn't about what people are used to, or that "money is implanted in humans" -- it's about a certain function in the organisation of production, the function money holds in capitalism. If a different mode of production were to be installed, money would be gone, regardless of how people would react to the fact that money is gone.

[SacRedMan]

Money isn't a "drug" that people need to get used to not using. Money is a commodity that functions as the general equivalent in a given society at a given time. This isn't about what people are used to, or that "money is implanted in humans" -- it's about a certain function in the organisation of production, the function money holds in capitalism. If a different mode of production were to be installed, money would be gone, regardless of how people would react to the fact that money is gone.

I guess you're right then...

[TheGodlessUtopian]

One's a communist, the other is a stalinist.

Verbal warning for flame baiting and flaming.

[Brosip Tito]

How get rid of the money problem? Everyone withdraw all of their money from the banks and stop paying your bills on the same day. The system collapses. Then if the people are strong enough to do that, they will be strong enough to create the venus project's future of man kind. It will happen, its just a matter of when. Why suffer any longer in a mathmatically unsound equation of constantly increasing debt and enslavement? Stop the spread of flouride, wake up your inner intelligent being. Unplug yourself from their invisible Matrix and create a world that you would be proud to leave to your children. You live once, be great.

One Love, DCP (revolutionary hip hop) - link up brothers and sisters.
I didn't know Billy Mayes had an account on RevLeft...or that he was still alive...or this big of an idiot.

[Brosip Tito]

Verbal warning for flame baiting and flaming.
Referring to a Stalinist as not a communist is flaming?

I mean, are you going to crack down on Stalinists calling everyone else Revisionists, or Ultra Leftists?

*not arguing flame baiting*

[the zizekian]

In the "Marxism-Leninism in the 21st century" immediately abolishing money is not recommended.
I understand a system of labor certificates, but once communist control is established shouldn't money be immediately be replaced with labor certificates. I don't see a reason to keep money around.

I would like to know the path and conditions that have to be met to eventually abolish money.

To get rid of money, we have to cure fetishism.

[Tim Finnegan]

Ignoring in what I think is simplistic reductionism, the question is do we want money during the revolution. A social revolution may take between a month and a decade. Do we need money in the period of the social transformation?
But the abolition of capital is the revolution. You can no more talk about waiting until after the revolution to abolish money than you can talk about waiting until you've finished a meal to begin eating it. Perhaps the abolition of money won't come with the initial seizure of power, with whatever episode of working class insurrection challenges the bourgeois state, but until capital itself is brought down there is no revolution, just a rebellion- and Soviet Russia shows us exactly where rebellions-without-revolutions take us.


To get rid of money, we have to cure fetishism.
To cure fetishism, we have to get rid of money!

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Referring to a Stalinist as not a communist is flaming?

I mean, are you going to crack down on Stalinists calling everyone else Revisionists, or Ultra Leftists?

*not arguing flame baiting*

You called, essentially, individuals who wanted to uphold the monetary system past the immediate revolution as Stalinists. Such is a generalization and not acceptable.

There has been a lot of crap in this thread but my first intervention saved a little bit.Last thing we need is for more tendency baiting and useless squabbles over who's dead person has the better theories.

See the Mod actions thread for my reasoning.

[Koba Junior]

So you're avowedly in favour of nationalism? And not just any nationalism, but ethnic nationalism (i.e. racism)? Is this correct?

Forgive my rudeness, but did I post all those links for nothing? Please scroll back through the messages just a little bit; the articles I posted reflect how I feel about nationalism. I'm not a cut-and-dry "nationalist" as much as I am a supporter of national identity and liberation of exploited peoples. For instance, I support the Black nationalist movement as an expression of solidarity between members of an exploited and oppressed group, but not reactionary white nationalism.


Oh yay, we're playing the immaturity game! Let me join in...

Give me the benefit of the doubt and actually scroll back through the messages. You'll find that my response was made in a rhetorical way to demonstrate the immaturity and stubbornness of another poster who refused to hear any argument that ran counter to his own position simply because it ran counter to his own position. I was demonstrating how absolutely idiotic that looks.


Well I ignored your posts because you've got a Stalin-avatar and are clearly just a know-nothing oh-so-'radical' (by which I mean not at all radical, just latching onto images you think make you seem radical) USSR-fanboy, which may go some way towards explaining why none of the stuff you're saying here is even remotely leftist.

You ignored my posts, but you know for certain that none of their content contains anything leftist. You can also extrapolate my entire personality not from the content of my writing. which you admit to ignoring, but from my avatar alone.


No, they do not not have a "right" to self determination.

Each case needs to be taken on individually, and examined, and determined which case is in the interests of the international working class, and which is not.

Marx, Engels, and Wilhelm Liebknecht were opposed to the Baltic Slavs struggle for National Self-Determination in Turkey, for example. "...they judged the national movements of the Slavic peoples in the Turkish empire not from the standpoint of the “eternal” sentimental formulae of liberalism, but from the standpoint of the material conditions which determined the content of these national movements, according to their views of the time. Marx and Engels saw in the freedom movement of the socially backward South Slavs only the machinations of Russian tsardom trying to irritate the Turks, and thus, without any second thoughts, they subordinated the question of the national freedom of the Slavs to the interests of European democracy, insisting on the integrity of Turkey as a bulwark of defense against Russian reaction."

Black and Chicano "nationalism", from my understanding, would be better termed "liberation", "equality" or some other term. Did the Black Panthers seek an African American state? No. How many black "nationalists" wanted a nation-state of their own?

Now, the above is quite unfortunately the only post so far that makes a legitimate argument against my position. Perhaps it is most accurate to describe the "nationalist" movements in this case as "liberation" movements, but I, quite frankly, see that as an issue of semantics. I do, however, acknowledge the excellent point made that each case needs to be examined individually with regards to the interest of the international working class. This is something I'd be interested in discussing further.

I don't meant to rant, but why is it everyone else who responded to my position absolutely failed, and some quite spectacularly I might add, to actually make any attempt whatsoever to understand my position and actually argue against that with an actual citation regarding the position of Marx and Engels (or any historical leftist, for that matter), rather than building up a straw-man or attacking me personally and willfully ignoring any counter-argument?

[Offbeat]

I don't go along with this idea that people are instinctively attached to money and will struggle to give it up. If the proletariat has got far enough in terms of class consciousness to actually stage a revolution, it's illogical to suggest that they're going to hold onto something which (where I live at least) has a picture of the fucking queen on it!

You can't just abolish things at your fancy and especially without a process. Things take time. You are crazy if you actually believe this.
Yeah, that process is called the revolution.

[Koba Junior]

I don't go along with this idea that people are instinctively attached to money and will struggle to give it up. If the proletariat has got far enough in terms of class consciousness to actually stage a revolution, it's illogical to suggest that they're going to hold onto something which (where I live at least) has a picture of the fucking queen on it!

Prima: Daddy, Daddy! What's this bit of paper with a lady on it?
Secunda: That, my son, is Madam Milk, Lady of Dairyland.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

I don't go along with this idea that people are instinctively attached to money and will struggle to give it up. If the proletariat has got far enough in terms of class consciousness to actually stage a revolution, it's illogical to suggest that they're going to hold onto something which (where I live at least) has a picture of the fucking queen on it!

It's ok. We'll change the faces on the money. :rolleyes:


That's not the problem. The problem is that, most likely, productive forces will not be developed enough at the time of the revolutions so that money can be abolished. Thus, you may think that productive forces will be developed enough to get rid of it on the first day, but they probably won't.

[Bostana]

I love how this thread is completely derailed. The OP's question was about the abolishing of currency and/or money. How the hell did we get to Nationalism? Nationalism is bad this is common sense in Marxism. Marx said that money could only really be abolished when commodity production was abolished.

[Koba Junior]

I love how this thread is completely derailed. The OP's question was about the abolishing of currency and/or money. How the hell did we get to Nationalism? Nationalism is bad this is common sense in Marxism. Marx said that money could only really be abolished when commodity production was abolished.

I'm beginning to wonder why I even bother to argue if fellow users are just going to stumble past my posts like a drunkard, trying to find a toilet, stumbling his way past the restroom.

[Rafiq]

Oh, fuck off, you bloviating little tit.

It's you who needs to fuck off, you're living in a fantasy land.

But no, perhaps the proletariat should sacrifice itself so you all can have your wonderful Ideas for filled about a society, of which would be a product of a revolution, and the revolution, of which would be a product of material conditions, of which class struggle is at it's peak, conditions, of which do not exist.

[Rafiq]

To get rid of money, we have to cure fetishism.

Do you post here intentionally to dumb us all down?

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

It's you who needs to fuck off, you're living in a fantasy land.

But no, perhaps the proletariat should sacrifice itself so you all can have your wonderful Ideas for filled about a society, of which would be a product of a revolution, and the revolution, of which would be a product of material conditions, of which class struggle is at it's peak, conditions, of which do not exist.

The withering away of the state will bring about the disappearance of all money/labor vouchers (whatever). Both of these interconnected events can only happen when material conditions allow for them to happen, not on the first day after a revolution. So, I agree with you on this.

[Rafiq]

The withering away of the state will bring about the disappearance of all money/labor vouchers (whatever). Both of these interconnected events can only happen when material conditions allow for them to happen, not on the first day after a revolution. So, I agree with you on this.

That's not the point at all. The point is this: No one here is a fortune teller and there is no telling of whether "money" is to be abolished, even ever. The point is simple: We are not to focus on whatever future social relations we may have with each under under what ever mode of production can follow a revolution.

To criticize capitalism, scientifically, and unmask it's mystification, to point out it's contradictions, is a thousand times more useful than to talk of whatever fantasy land users would prefer to live in.

[ckaihatsu]

Ignoring in what I think is simplistic reductionism, the question is do we want money during the revolution. A social revolution may take between a month and a decade. Do we need money in the period of the social transformation?





Money isn't something you abandon in one day. It's something almost implanted in humans and it's like directly taking drugs from a drug addict: he's going to freak out and demand his drugs back. And all people won't let go off their money so fast that they earned by doing their work.

I'm not saying we should keep money, but this takes time and not one day. After a revolution people have to get used to the changed lifestyle and their new habitat. You don't have to study psychology to know that if you abolish money after the day of the climax of the revolution that people will be confused and start riots.

Minimize the usage and need of money at the point when people say on the street "You still have a dollar bill? It's only good for using it when you've run out of toilet paper!!".





To get rid of money, we have to cure fetishism.


---










That's not the problem. The problem is that, most likely, productive forces will not be developed enough at the time of the revolutions so that money can be abolished. Thus, you may think that productive forces will be developed enough to get rid of it on the first day, but they probably won't.





I don't understand people who are flatly against abolishing money, but I don't understand people who want to abolish it without post-scarcity.

Marx talked about appropriating some surplus value in the lower phase of communism to fund disaster funds, maintenance, etc. Wouldn't money be appropriate for representing this value and giving labor subsistence?


We have to distinguish between the *fetishism* of money and the *tool* of money....

Unlike many anarchists I myself can't see a world that's supposed to function like a jigsaw puzzle, with pieces interlocking in a strictly *lateral* way. Money as a *tool* is useful for *generalizing* value and for finding efficiencies of production over grand scales. In this way even the market system is superior to confederated commune-based bartering and trading, no matter how "liberated" its workers may be.

Of course any of us can get addicted to the lifestyles that are enabled by consumption, but even that has more to do with social mores and societal civilization rather than the functioning of money, per se. I would be all for a post-capitalist society that is mostly permissive and enabling in regards to the individual.

I don't see why there's any question as to whether the productive forces are developed enough -- it should be apparent that they *are*, due to capitalism, and that conditions have been overripe for revolution for many decades.

It's always the *transition* that's the trickiest part, but we could at least use standard administrative categories, like 'security', 'production', 'consumption', etc., for mass-gauging what *proportion* of revolutionary efforts should go where, if formal valuations are to be entirely avoided (I don't think they necessarily should be, depending on conditions).

Also, my blog entry has a unique feasible model for a post-capitalist valuation system of labor-hours.

[Tim Finnegan]

It's you who needs to fuck off, you're living in a fantasy land.

But no, perhaps the proletariat should sacrifice itself so you all can have your wonderful Ideas for filled about a society, of which would be a product of a revolution, and the revolution, of which would be a product of material conditions, of which class struggle is at it's peak, conditions, of which do not exist.
All this pre-teen posturing would probably be a bit more effective if you ever tried to make any sense with this stuff, rather than just denouncing anybody and everybody who disagrees with you as an "idealist", whatever that's actually supposed to mean coming out of your mouth. I mean, it's thoughtful of you to make it clear to tremendous extent to which your unpolitics are just warmed over Stalinist drivel, but, really, if you're gonna insult people at least put in some fucking effort.


We have to distinguish between the *fetishism* of money and the *tool* of money....
Now we don't. Money is abstract labour-time, abstract labour-time is alienated labour, alienated labour is commodity fetishism. Money is only a class-neutral "tool" if you use the term in the ahistorical manner of the bourgeois economists, as nothing more than a formalised way of keeping track of favours owed.

[Revolution starts with U]

for filled about a society,

It's *fulfilled*

Sry, that's been bugging me :lol:

[Rafiq]

All this pre-teen posturing would probably be a bit more effective if you ever tried to make any sense with this stuff, rather than just denouncing anybody and everybody who disagrees with you as an "idealist", whatever that's actually supposed to mean coming out of your mouth. I mean, it's thoughtful of you to make it clear to tremendous extent to which your unpolitics are just warmed over Stalinist drivel, but, really, if you're gonna insult people at least put in some fucking effort.


Do you know my age, now?

What I posted made absolutely perfect sense. To think otherwise would imply you have a loose and limited grasp of Marxism. Of course, I didn't say anything to you in this thread, you were the one who insulted me. It would seem that you can't have a civilized debate without resorting to uncalled for personal attacks...

And I find it entertaining: I'm a Stalinist to you, but the opposite to a Stalinist. Make up your minds, dammit.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

And I find it entertaining: I'm a Stalinist to you, but the opposite to a Stalinist. Make up your minds, dammit.


Quite true, but you know what is really reality. This just demonstrates how idealistic people just like to throw around the word "Stalinist" whenever they feel like it, all facts ignored.

"Deng Xiaoping was a Stalinist! Khrushchev was a Stalinist!" And other similar bullshit.

You are in no way a Marxist-Leninist, but I bet this is a complement for you, so it's all good.

[Sputnik_1]

Do you know my age, now?

What I posted made absolutely perfect sense. To think otherwise would imply you have a loose and limited grasp of Marxism. Of course, I didn't say anything to you in this thread, you were the one who insulted me. It would seem that you can't have a civilized debate without resorting to uncalled for personal attacks...

And I find it entertaining: I'm a Stalinist to you, but the opposite to a Stalinist. Make up your minds, dammit.

I can't take seriously someone who posts this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2441024&postcount=64 to run away with his tail between his legs. Seems that some people can't have a debate at all.

[ckaihatsu]

We have to distinguish between the *fetishism* of money and the *tool* of money....





Now we don't. Money is abstract labour-time, abstract labour-time is alienated labour, alienated labour is commodity fetishism. Money is only a class-neutral "tool" if you use the term in the ahistorical manner of the bourgeois economists, as nothing more than a formalised way of keeping track of favours owed.


Agreed and appreciated, *but* -- money can also be re-politicized into a revolutionary administrative tool in a consciously political economy. This would be springboarding and transcending from the definition you've provided, under commodity production.

There is nothing wrong with money itself, or even profit-making itself, for that matter -- what only a revolution can accomplish is the *politicization* of that instrument, to where a mass-liberated working class can *consciously determine* value inputs and outputs, as through a worker-democratic control of the economy.

We don't have to necessarily be number-haters, and *any* mass-political administration of liberated production would be dealing with material quantities regardless.


[8] communist economy diagram

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

[Rafiq]

I can't take seriously someone who posts this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2441024&postcount=64 to run away with his tail between his legs. Seems that some people can't have a debate at all.

By all means, if you want to start a new thread go ahead and we'll debate. I didn't, by any means "lose" in that thread. I just decided that those old threads were a distraction from threads of decent quality. Of course, someone like you, who has no social life or probably no academic life, i.e. Sits on his ass on his basement and munches on his parents doritos probably wouldn't understand that towards the end of the school year, especially in michigan, we're tested more, barricaded with essays, and spend more time with other humans because of earm weather. And because of this, I can't post as often, especially when it's me vs five people in six different threads. Please, fuck off.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Rafiq]

Know the sad part? Mine was the second to last post, with RSWU responding to me in the end. That post was the only one I didn't respond to. I addressed everyone's post in that thread, and after said I'm done. The RSWU addressed mine, which was the last post in the thread

Whose running away now, you pathetic little worm? You don't even fucking debate at all, who are you to say this, you worthless fuck?

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Tim Finnegan]

Agreed and appreciated, *but* -- money can also be re-politicized into a revolutionary administrative tool in a consciously political economy. This would be springboarding and transcending from the definition you've provided, under commodity production.

There is nothing wrong with money itself, or even profit-making itself, for that matter -- what only a revolution can accomplish is the *politicization* of that instrument, to where a mass-liberated working class can *consciously determine* value inputs and outputs, as through a worker-democratic control of the economy.

We don't have to necessarily be number-haters, and *any* mass-political administration of liberated production would be dealing with material quantities regardless.
Well, that's just something on which we disagree. I locate the emancipation of the proletariat in the abolition of alienated labour as such, so I can't but help regard any attempted at "managed" commodity production as a half measure. If labour is in a position to exercise that sort of control over production, then it has no need to voluntarily subsume itself under capital (and what is the abstraction of labour-time, if not the subsumption of labour under capital?) and if it finds it necessary that it be subsumed under capital, then it was never actually in charge to begin with. I don't really see a middle ground between the two.

[Sputnik_1]

By all means, if you want to start a new thread go ahead and we'll debate. I didn't, by any means "lose" in that thread. I just decided that those old threads were a distraction from threads of decent quality. Of course, someone like you, who has no social life or probably no academic life, i.e. Sits on his ass on his basement and munches on his parents doritos probably wouldn't understand that towards the end of the school year, especially in michigan, we're tested more, barricaded with essays, and spend more time with other humans because of earm weather. And because of this, I can't post as often, especially when it's me vs five people in six different threads. Please, fuck off.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

I didn't know it was about losing or winning :/. Of course, someone like you knows everything about people from two or three posts read on an internet forum. I don't intend to discuss the quality of my life with you since I consider it completely off topic. The discussion on the previous thread was pretty similar to this one, so I was wondering if you just gonna disappear all of a sudden from here as well. Not that it matters :/ Not that it's the only reason why I can't take people like you seriously.

[ckaihatsu]

Agreed and appreciated, *but* -- money can also be re-politicized into a revolutionary administrative tool in a consciously political economy. This would be springboarding and transcending from the definition you've provided, under commodity production.

There is nothing wrong with money itself, or even profit-making itself, for that matter -- what only a revolution can accomplish is the *politicization* of that instrument, to where a mass-liberated working class can *consciously determine* value inputs and outputs, as through a worker-democratic control of the economy.

We don't have to necessarily be number-haters, and *any* mass-political administration of liberated production would be dealing with material quantities regardless.


[8] communist economy diagram

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





Well, that's just something on which we disagree. I locate the emancipation of the proletariat, so I can't but help regard any attempted at "managed" commodity production as a half measure. If labour is in a position to exercise that sort of control over production, then it has no need to voluntarily subsume itself under capital (and what is the abstraction of labour-time, if not the subsumption of labour under capital?) and if it finds it necessary that it be subsumed under capital, then it was never actually in charge to begin with. I don't really see a middle ground between the two.


The definition of capital is the extraction of surplus labor value to pass onto the holders of private property. If a revolution wipes out all holdings of private property then there are no longer any private parties to pass surplus labor value to -- production *could not* be for the sake of commodity production since commodities, by definition, are produced for the sake of realizing gains on capital, for private interests.

Your invention of the term "managed commodity production" is a misnomer -- either production is (pre-)planned by the workers themselves, proportionately, or else it is alienating labor by abstracting its labor under the control of external parties like private property or a state-capitalist entity.

If labor is truly liberated and in control of its own labor power it then has to collectively decide what is 'necessary labor' -- for the propagation of a labor force going forward -- and what is more-discretionary. (It is the 'more-discretionary' part that is trickier and brings in questions of how society should be constituted, and what kind of civilization would be desirable, etc.)

A truly global liberated labor could make use of *any* economic calculation system it wanted to use -- the mechanism itself would be arbitrary as long as the *proletarian democracy* underpinning it was sound. This is why even a profit-extracting method could be used -- though I'm not advocating it -- because the profit itself would be under *mass* control, not private control.

[Tim Finnegan]

The definition of capital is the extraction of surplus labor value to pass onto the holders of private property. If a revolution wipes out all holdings of private property then there are no longer any private parties to pass surplus labor value to -- production *could not* be for the sake of commodity production since commodities, by definition, are produced for the sake of realizing gains on capital, for private interests.

Your invention of the term "managed commodity production" is a misnomer -- either production is (pre-)planned by the workers themselves, proportionately, or else it is alienating labor by abstracting its labor under the control of external parties like private property or a state-capitalist entity.

If labor is truly liberated and in control of its own labor power it then has to collectively decide what is 'necessary labor' -- for the propagation of a labor force going forward -- and what is more-discretionary. (It is the 'more-discretionary' part that is trickier and brings in questions of how society should be constituted, and what kind of civilization would be desirable, etc.)

A truly global liberated labor could make use of *any* economic calculation system it wanted to use -- the mechanism itself would be arbitrary as long as the *proletarian democracy* underpinning it was sound. This is why even a profit-extracting method could be used -- though I'm not advocating it -- because the profit itself would be under *mass* control, not private control.
I disagree that capitalism can be understood simply in terms of private property. "Private property" refers to a particular legal form of property, that is, a particular mode by which property mediates the relationship between the state and the individual, and thus by which the state mediates between individual and individual. The social content of capital may also exist in non-private forms of property, such as state-owned enterprises (e.g. the former National Coal Board in the United Kingdom), in "compromised private property" in which major concessions of workplace-control are made to workers (specifically, to unions), or by collective-market forms such as workers' cooperatives. The latter, in particular, demonstrate that the capital-labour relationship is not abolished simply by its democratisation, as workers are still compelled by the laws of the market to engage in the reproduction and expansion of capital, in effect are engaged in self-exploitation.

Capitalism, I would argue, is not a simple matter of institutions, of things which simply are and persist, but of relations in production, of how members of society related to each other as they reproduce their material existence. It is not a structure ontologically prior to our participation in it, but a way of reproducing ourselves as a society: the mediation of productive relationships through exchange-values, which in themselves represent the abstraction of labour-time. As long as abstracted labour-time remains the mediator of social relations, so does capitalism, regardless of how benevolent or democratic a capitalism it may be. Anything that falls short of abolishing this is, in the final analysis, a reform within the fundamental terms of capitalism.

[ckaihatsu]

As long as abstracted labour-time remains the mediator of social relations, so does capitalism, regardless of how benevolent or democratic a capitalism it may be. Anything that falls short of abolishing this is, in the final analysis, a reform within the fundamental terms of capitalism.


Well, I agree, and I said as much -- abstracted labor time, as surplus labor value into capital, constitutes capitalism.

[Tim Finnegan]

Right, but what I'm arguing is that capital is not predicated on capital, but, instead, that private property is a particular legal expression of capital. It's entirely possible for capital to exist in a collectivised and democratic form.

It's not enough for the slaves to collectivise their chains and democratise the functions of the overseer, they have to get rid of the lot of it.

[the zizekian]

To cure fetishism, we have to get rid of money!

To cure fetishism, we have to pay a psychoanalyst with money.

[ckaihatsu]

Right, but what I'm arguing is that capital is not predicated on capital, but, instead, that private property is a particular legal expression of capital. It's entirely possible for capital to exist in a collectivised and democratic form.

It's not enough for the slaves to collectivise their chains and democratise the functions of the overseer, they have to get rid of the lot of it.


Okay, agreed and appreciated. I did address this concern of yours already:





[E]ither production is (pre-)planned by the workers themselves, proportionately, or else it is alienating labor by abstracting its labor under the control of external parties like private property or a state-capitalist entity.

If labor is truly liberated and in control of its own labor power it then has to collectively decide what is 'necessary labor' -- for the propagation of a labor force going forward -- and what is more-discretionary. (It is the 'more-discretionary' part that is trickier and brings in questions of how society should be constituted, and what kind of civilization would be desirable, etc.)

[the zizekian]

In the "Marxism-Leninism in the 21st century" immediately abolishing money is not recommended.
I understand a system of labor certificates, but once communist control is established shouldn't money be immediately be replaced with labor certificates. I don't see a reason to keep money around.

I would like to know the path and conditions that have to be met to eventually abolish money.

I think the best way to learn about the path and conditions to abolishing money is to learn the reasons why among family members using money is much less acceptable than among strangers.

[MotherCossack]

I think it depends on... the material conditions. But generally I think things like this need to be phased out slowly and gently, to avoid unforseen disaster etc

aahhhh! son!!! you sound all grown up and sensible!!!
But this is awful.... slow, gentle...phased.... unforseen.... we are talking of a post- revolutionary landscape, .... if i'm not mistaken...
and here is me hoping that it ensures a comprehensive annihalation of every little last remnant of Capitalism... and all who cling to it.... the quicker and rougher the better ....
BRING IT ON!!!!!!!!


Look,

Money = Abstract labour-time
Abstract labour-time = Aliented labour
Alienated labour = Capital
Capital = Capitalism

Therefore, Money = Capitalism

You want to retain money after the revolution, you want to retain capitalism. No two ways about it, however many red flags you drape on that shit.
.

money is their weapon
nay, their ......gotta go... the enemy within!!!!!!!

[the zizekian]

we are talking of a post- revolutionary landscape, .... if i'm not mistaken...

Talking of a post-revolutionary landscape is a mistake.

[campesino]

Talking of a post-revolutionary landscape is a mistake.

why? we need a goal to achieve. communism doesn't end at the revolution, it starts at the revolution.

[the zizekian]

why? we need a goal to achieve. communism doesn't end at the revolution, it starts at the revolution.

A revolutionary accepts to be entirely determined by the revolutionary process.

[campesino]

A revolutionary accepts to be entirely determined by the revolutionary process.

what does that mean? should we not define communism to prevent the post-revolution's deviation from it. A revolution is a revolution and is the abolishment of money not a revolutionary-necessary act?

[the zizekian]

what does that mean? should we not define communism to prevent the post-revolution's deviation from it. A revolution is a revolution and is the abolishment of money not a revolutionary-necessary act?

It means that, by definition, a revolution is a surprise, it cannot be planned in advance.

[Bostana]

Talking of a post-revolutionary landscape is a mistake.

Why is it a mistake?

What are you going to abolish currency before the revolution? :p To abolish currency we first must abolish when commodity production. This is done after (keyword after) the revolution and/or the revolutionary process.

[the zizekian]

Why is it a mistake?

What are you going to abolish currency before the revolution? :p Assuming what you typed was a mistake typo or whatever I ain't gonna get to deep into it.

Money may very well be already abolished.

[ckaihatsu]

It means that, by definition, a revolution is a surprise, it cannot be planned in advance.


(The pop-culture understanding of revolution.) (Actually there are significant warnings against the practice of spontaneity in revolutionary politics.)

[ckaihatsu]

(Also, surprised I haven't posted this sooner to a thread like this, but here's a particular thought-experiment on the topic....)


Rotation system of work roles

http://postimage.org/image/1d53k7nd0/

[the zizekian]

(The pop-culture understanding of revolution.) (Actually there are significant warnings against the practice of spontaneity in revolutionary politics.)

The surprise may very well be the easy with which we reject spontaneity.

[Imposter Marxist]

Everytime I come here i get the impression no one knows how an economy works

[Revolution starts with U]

I get that feeling wherever I go, especially amongst economists.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Everytime I come here i get the impression no one knows how an economy works

Everytime I see someone with


Organisation: Fan of the ISO/RCP//Kasama/SWP/Socialist International/Democratic Socialists of Americafor their organisation, I imagine this person must have no idea what they are talking about.

[corolla]

That's not the point at all. The point is this: No one here is a fortune teller and there is no telling of whether "money" is to be abolished, even ever. The point is simple: We are not to focus on whatever future social relations we may have with each under under what ever mode of production can follow a revolution.

To criticize capitalism, scientifically, and unmask it's mystification, to point out it's contradictions, is a thousand times more useful than to talk of whatever fantasy land users would prefer to live in.

Do you think that Bordiga was a Bourgeois Utopian Idealist Liberal or whatever, then? Because he was certainly of the opinion that the existence of money was incompatible with a socialist or communist society.

[28350]

Why get rid of it? We can make nice collages and recycle the rest. It's just paper.

The real power of money is the social relation behind it.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

It's fairly simple, we already have enough resources to feed, clothe, shelter, etc. every man, woman and child on the planet. There already exists (in sadly limited numbers) stores in which every commodity one could imagine is free and that's how it should be. At the very most I think we could switch to a Technocratic system of exchange quite easily.

[Rooster]

Why is it a mistake?

What are you going to abolish currency before the revolution? :p To abolish currency we first must abolish when commodity production. This is done after (keyword after) the revolution and/or the revolutionary process.

It's because it's utopian and idealistic. The ending of commodity production, the ending of money is the revolution, not something that happens after a revolution. To think so is to reinforce that utopian and non-materialist reformist thinking that's typical of the political groups you seem to enjoy being a part of.

[Revolution starts with U]

It's because it's utopian and idealistic. The ending of commodity production, the ending of money is the revolution, not something that happens after a revolution. To think so is to reinforce that utopian and non-materialist reformist thinking that's typical of the political groups you seem to enjoy being a part of.

Am I correct in interpreting this to say that the armed uprising, the political struggle, etc is a rebellion; the overthrow of the people in charge of the system. And it's only a revolution if the system itself is overthrown?

[SpiritiualMarxist]

Eventually, money should be abolished but it aint gonna happen immediately. WHo's gonna enforce this ? If you're an anarchist, no one. If not, that means you're gonna have an all intrusive super police thus becoming an ultra-authoritarian piece of shit. There inevitably will be a black market that will give rise to a new capitalist class and/or huge counter-revolution. Why would you want to shoot yourself in the foot like that?

I don't mind people being idealistic in thought, but you have to be realistic in action if you're actually serious about this shit.

[Rooster]

Am I correct in interpreting this to say that the armed uprising, the political struggle, etc is a rebellion; the overthrow of the people in charge of the system. And it's only a revolution if the system itself is overthrown?

More or less.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

You guys are a bunch of fools
1. First you have to take control of the national currency morons, this means you nationalise all banks, this means you need Force, i.e. a state to destroy the old capitalist state with a workers state.
2. Once you control the banking system, you can't just replace the money with labor vouchers all of a sudden. Depending on the revolutionary situation (whether it's a revolution only in one country as in Greece but not in the rest of Europe for example) you have to keep a national currency, money, to Trade with other countries.
3. If you don't have a complete or near to complete socialisation of the economy, you will have difficulties distributing labor vouchers and getting people to use them. If we are to say this revolution were to happen in the west (where for instance Germany has 84% proletarians) then a relatively fast socialisation of the economy is plausible. If you Don't have a democratic centrally planned economy, you cannot have labor vouchers for your individual enterprises to trade with (which a non-centralised economy would require), you need a national currency.

But let's assume we all somehow magically fulfill all those steps to complete social control of near to if not ALL Capital in that revolutionary society, then yes, we could introduce labor vouchers and start to rid humanity of money. Having a society for labor vouchers though, is a step away from getting rid of money, so actually getting to that stage is quite a feat.

[sanpal]

what does that mean? should we not define communism to prevent the post-revolution's deviation from it. A revolution is a revolution and is the abolishment of money not a revolutionary-necessary act?

Seems it's the only useful post I've found in this six pages' thread.


Sad story.:(

[Revolution starts with U]

You guys are a bunch of fools
I'm sure what comes after this will be convincing :rolleyes:


1. First you have to take control of the national currency morons, this means you nationalise all banks, this means you need Force, i.e. a state to destroy the old capitalist state with a workers state.

Who has to control the money supply? If workers as a class "control the money supply" why could they not just get rid of it that moment?
What are you... some kind of libertarian leninist? :confused:
And the "national" currency? Wouldn't we have to take control of currency worldwide?


2. Once you control the banking system, you can't just replace the money with labor vouchers all of a sudden.
Why not? Money really just represents an incriment of the ability to command labor power.

Depending on the revolutionary situation (whether it's a revolution only in one country as in Greece but not in the rest of Europe for example) you have to keep a national currency, money, to Trade with other countries.

So what you are saying is that you have to keep a market to get rid of the market?

3. If you don't have a complete or near to complete socialisation of the economy, you will have difficulties distributing labor vouchers and getting people to use them.
Can you even nearly socialize the economy without getting rid of money?

If we are to say this revolution were to happen in the west (where for instance Germany has 84% proletarians) then a relatively fast socialisation of the economy is plausible. If you Don't have a democratic centrally planned economy, you cannot have labor vouchers for your individual enterprises to trade with (which a non-centralised economy would require), you need a national currency.

You seem to have suggested twice now that retaining markets is essential to get to a post-market economy.

[MotherCossack]

Seems it's the only useful post I've found in this six pages' thread.


Sad story.:(

shame you did not bother to read mine....cos ....

I never talk shite!!!!!!

but you do have a point... very depressing.....that is rev-left for you!

revolution with a U
is on form though..
whats with this sheepishness about lolly... dosh...cash...readies...wonga...whatever you call it...

Money does not make the world go round ......NO, NO, NO.

Money is the fuel that powers the WAGE SLAVERY MACHINE

money aint a force for good.... money does not save lives

money does not feed anyone.... heal anyone.....

money does not solve anything.....

Money empowers no-one... or enable anything

except .... greed , prejudice, theft, hypocracy, abuse of power, destruction, inequality, war, hunger, hatred, drug abuse, etc etc ad infinitum......

basically... money makes shit stuff flourish and grow...

I say .... why do we need it....?
we need a planet... water... food.... warmth... light... sleep... purpose... fun and games and a few other bits and pieces... none of which involve money.... necessarily.

[MotherCossack]

and before you label me a liberal leninist or a leninist libertarian, utopia seeking dreamer i am more impatient than you can imagine and i dont think we all need to be politics majors and academics to do this thing.... being a revolutionary ... do you really need qualifications?
for my part.. i am with the proletariat... point me in the right direction. and lets go get 'em.
as long as we take a lot of care with the afterwards bit........
but then that won't last forever... will it?.... there is the antithesis... then the synthesis.......
then it starts all over....

but we should make a start...

[Tim Finnegan]

Eventually, money should be abolished but it aint gonna happen immediately. WHo's gonna enforce this ?
Why does it have to be "enforced"? Money has no existence independent of human activity, it's not a plague of rats that has to be stamped out. Reorganise production on a basis other than abstract-labour time, and it ceases to exist.

[Blake's Baby]

Good point. It's not the abolition of money that needs to be 'enforced', it's the existence of money that needs to be enforced.

So, who's going to enforce the existence of money all you 'communo-capitalists' out there - the state that doesn't exist?

Oh, no wait, I've just remembered, y'all are for state-capitalist dictatorships, aren't you? Of course the state is going to enforce the continuation of capitalism, as that's the whole point as far as you're concerned, isn't it? It becomes clearer now...

[Rooster]

I have no idea why some people are so fascinated with the idea of labour vouchers. Marx certainly wasn't. I'm not even sure the people proposing such an idea know what they are talking about. You don't just replace money with labour vouchers. That implies that they fulfill the same function, as a universal equivalent.

Secondly, what other aspects of the capitalist mode of production are these advocates going to keep after a revolution? We already have money and currency. I assume that also means wage labour, which also implies a divorcement of the means of production from the immediate producers, commodity production, alienated labour and so on.

I also have to point out that the when the proletariat is in a position to emancipate itself, it will. There's a line in The Civil War in France that is succinct and to the point (which leads me to believe that many here haven't even bothered to read some key texts); "The political rule of the producers cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery". This means an ending to all of those things mentioned that create and maintain a proletariat class.

[Paul Cockshott]

seriously, comrades. I would like to know the different approaches of the tendencies to the question of money, I would like to know so I can hear how future science projects(such as a mass drive or large hadron collider) will be created or if they will even happen at all.

In my view the abolition of money has to go via a stepwise process. Assume that in Europe say a political revolution has occured and a socialist peoples democracy has been established with its capital in let us say Athens. How does the abolition of money occur?

1. Existing debts have to be abolished. Most money is in the form of bank deposits and bank loans. It is the dead weight of these overgrown loans that lie at the heart of the current crisis. These debts are owed initially to the banks, but ultimately to the billionaire class of rich firms and individuals who hold most of the bank deposits. So the first step is to cancel all debts to the banks owed by states, individuals and firms, and to cancell all deposits over say 1 years average wage.

The immediate effect of this is to liberate the public purse of the huge burden of debt and to liberate individuals of the burden of credit card and mortgage debt.

2. Next the currency has to be re-expressed in terms of the labour theory of value so the the unit of currency becomes a unit of time. That means for example that 10 euro notes would be redonominated as 20 minute notes.

At this stage all we are doing is making explicit what is hidden by commodity fetishism - that value is the comand over human labour time. But at this stage the notes are still money - labour money but still money as the bank notes can circulate and be used to buy and sell.

3. The revolutionary regime anounces a new constitution with the right of workers collectively to the full value of the labour they perform. Thus firms are obligated to pay workers collectively the amount of hours they have performed. There would probably still be some level of wage differentials based on skill at the begining, but the moral pressure of being paid in hours is likely to mean that collectively workers will decide to equalise pay fairly rapidly.

The public authorities would still levy social security taxes on workers income after the firms had paid them.

At this stage you have no exploitation, you have payment according to labour, but you have not completely eliminate commodity production as the firms are still using the labour money for transactions.

4. Next the worker managed firms form industrial syndicates to plan whole industries and from this a total planning mechanism is built.

Once a planning mechanism is in place and working, the use of labour money for buying and selling between the workers syndicates comes to an end and labour vouchers become non transferable electronic tokens that can only be earned by actually working.

[the zizekian]

In the "Marxism-Leninism in the 21st century" immediately abolishing money is not recommended.
I understand a system of labor certificates, but once communist control is established shouldn't money be immediately be replaced with labor certificates. I don't see a reason to keep money around.

I would like to know the path and conditions that have to be met to eventually abolish money.

No money, no labor. Labour cannot exist without money; (subsistence) labour is a illusion invented for the purpose of extracting surplus labour.

[fabian]

Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution

"In many communities money for internal use was abolished, because, in the opinion of Anarchists, 'money and power are diabolical philtres, which turn a man into a wolf, into a rabid enemy, instead of into a brother.' 'Here in Fraga [a small town in Aragon], you can throw banknotes into the street,' ran an article in a Libertarian paper, 'and no one will take any notice. Rockefeller, if you were to come to Fraga with your entire bank account you would not be able to buy a cup of coffee. Money, your God and your servant, has been abolished here, and the people are happy.' In those Libertarian communities where money was suppressed, wages were paid in coupons, the scale being determined by the size of the family. Locally produced goods, if abundant, such as bread, wine, and olive oil, were distributed freely, while other articles could be obtained by means of coupons at the communal depot. Surplus goods were exchanged with other Anarchist towns and villages, money being used only for transactions with those communities that had not adopted the new system."

[the zizekian]

In the "Marxism-Leninism in the 21st century" immediately abolishing money is not recommended.
I understand a system of labor certificates, but once communist control is established shouldn't money be immediately be replaced with labor certificates. I don't see a reason to keep money around.

I would like to know the path and conditions that have to be met to eventually abolish money.

Here is why it is absolutely necessary for a revolutionary to insist on the process in regard to money:

There is a well‑known, very Hegelian joke that illustrates perfectly the way truth arises from misrecognition, i.e., the way our path towards truth coincides with the truth itself. In the beginning of this century, there were a Pole and a Jew sitting in a train, facing each other. The Pole was shifting nervously, watching the Jew all the time. Something was irritating him. Finally, being unable to restrain himself anymore, he exploded: “Tell me, how do you Jews succeed in extracting from people the last small coin and in this way accumulate all your wealth?" The Jew replied: "Okay, I will tell you, but not for nothing; first give me five zloty" (Polish money). After receiving the required amount, the Jew began: "First, YOU take a dead fish; you cut off her head and put her entrails in a glass of water. Then, around midnight, when file moon is full, you must bury this glass in a churchyard." "And," the Pole interrupted him greedily, "if I do all this, will I also become rich?" "Not too quickly," replied the Jew, "this isn't all you must do; but if you want to hear the rest, you must pay me another five zloty!" After receiving the money again, the Jew continued his story. Soon afterwards, he again demanded more money, etc., till finally the Pole exploded in fury: "You dirty rascal, do you really think that I didn't notice what you were aiming at? There is no secret at all! You simply want to extract the last small coin from me!" The Jew answered him calmly and with resignation: "Well, now you see how we, the Jews . . ."

http://zizek.livejournal.com/3848.html (http://zizek.livejournal.com/3848.html)

[campesino]

Paul Cockshott's reply is the best by far. Fabian's reply also shows us that the immediate abolition of money is not disastrous. now I would like to see a communist argue for keeping money thoughout the revolution and after. I read in Rafiq's reply that it would depend on material conditions, but what kind of material conditions justify keeping money?

[Paul Cockshott]

No money, no labor. Labour cannot exist without money; (subsistence) labour is a illusion invented for the purpose of extracting surplus labour.

Domestic labour?
I see you dont do any housework!

[the zizekian]

Paul Cockshott's reply is the best by far. Fabian's reply also shows us that the immediate abolition of money is not disastrous. now I would like to see a communist argue for keeping money thoughout the revolution and after. I read in Rafiq's reply that it would depend on material conditions, but what kind of material conditions justify keeping money?

Where is the revolution anyway!?

[fabian]

Fabian's reply also shows us that the immediate abolition of money is not disastrous.
Not only that it is not disastrous but the mentioned system actually increaced productivity.

[the zizekian]

Not only that it is not disastrous but the mentioned system actually increaced productivity.

Would this forum be more productive if its administrators would stop begging for our money!?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

You guys are a bunch of fools
1. First you have to take control of the national currency morons, this means you nationalise all banks, this means you need Force, i.e. a state to destroy the old capitalist state with a workers state.
2. Once you control the banking system, you can't just replace the money with labor vouchers all of a sudden. Depending on the revolutionary situation (whether it's a revolution only in one country as in Greece but not in the rest of Europe for example) you have to keep a national currency, money, to Trade with other countries.
3. If you don't have a complete or near to complete socialisation of the economy, you will have difficulties distributing labor vouchers and getting people to use them. If we are to say this revolution were to happen in the west (where for instance Germany has 84% proletarians) then a relatively fast socialisation of the economy is plausible. If you Don't have a democratic centrally planned economy, you cannot have labor vouchers for your individual enterprises to trade with (which a non-centralised economy would require), you need a national currency.


Yeah, ok, and how did all of that happy trading with capitalist nations pan out for the Soviet Union? Oh, wait, that's right.

[the zizekian]

Yeah, ok, and how did all of that happy trading with capitalist nations pan out for the Soviet Union? Oh, wait, that's right.

ok, and how does trading with capitalist nations pan out for China?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

ok, and how does trading with capitalist nations pan out for China?

Very well and they are obviously bourgeois capitalists with a shit record in terms of human rights violations against workers.

[the zizekian]

Very well and they are obviously bourgeois capitalists with a shit record in terms of human rights violations against workers.

China is still communist in that it exports its production to the US without any consideration related to the value of the US dollar.

[Psychedelia]

rather question yourself how are we going to get to an marxsist-leninist system in 21 century,other problems dont worrier us right now :)

[the zizekian]

A revolution comes by admiring how past revolutionaries were themselves flexible about their own system, plan and even their own dream about the future.

[ckaihatsu]

Eventually, money should be abolished but it aint gonna happen immediately. WHo's gonna enforce this ? If you're an anarchist, no one. If not, that means you're gonna have an all intrusive super police thus becoming an ultra-authoritarian piece of shit. There inevitably will be a black market that will give rise to a new capitalist class and/or huge counter-revolution. Why would you want to shoot yourself in the foot like that?

I don't mind people being idealistic in thought, but you have to be realistic in action if you're actually serious about this shit.


The anarchist ideal is the petty-bourgeois ideal -- in practice they're good at opposing the capitalist state but what they contend only leads to a reboot of the same.





Why does it have to be "enforced"? Money has no existence independent of human activity, it's not a plague of rats that has to be stamped out. Reorganise production on a basis other than abstract-labour time, and it ceases to exist.


The reason why *some* kind of system of abstracted values is necessary is because there's the little issue of *standardization* -- this is well-expressed in the 'doctor argument' wherein someone who undergoes years of education and training cannot be readily compared to someone who picks up their job within a day of work.

Whatever you want to call the ratio between one's work and another's, it's still a ratio and it needs to be determined, either politically or economically, or some mixture of the two. It doesn't have to be floating-market-value *currency*, and it doesn't have to be authoritarian *issued labor vouchers*, but it *does* have to be reconciled.





In my view the abolition of money has to go via a stepwise process. Assume that in Europe say a political revolution has occured and a socialist peoples democracy has been established with its capital in let us say Athens. How does the abolition of money occur?

1. Existing debts have to be abolished. Most money is in the form of bank deposits and bank loans. It is the dead weight of these overgrown loans that lie at the heart of the current crisis. These debts are owed initially to the banks, but ultimately to the billionaire class of rich firms and individuals who hold most of the bank deposits. So the first step is to cancel all debts to the banks owed by states, individuals and firms, and to cancell all deposits over say 1 years average wage.

The immediate effect of this is to liberate the public purse of the huge burden of debt and to liberate individuals of the burden of credit card and mortgage debt.

2. Next the currency has to be re-expressed in terms of the labour theory of value so the the unit of currency becomes a unit of time. That means for example that 10 euro notes would be redonominated as 20 minute notes.

At this stage all we are doing is making explicit what is hidden by commodity fetishism - that value is the comand over human labour time. But at this stage the notes are still money - labour money but still money as the bank notes can circulate and be used to buy and sell.

3. The revolutionary regime anounces a new constitution with the right of workers collectively to the full value of the labour they perform. Thus firms are obligated to pay workers collectively the amount of hours they have performed. There would probably still be some level of wage differentials based on skill at the begining, but the moral pressure of being paid in hours is likely to mean that collectively workers will decide to equalise pay fairly rapidly.

The public authorities would still levy social security taxes on workers income after the firms had paid them.

At this stage you have no exploitation, you have payment according to labour, but you have not completely eliminate commodity production as the firms are still using the labour money for transactions.

4. Next the worker managed firms form industrial syndicates to plan whole industries and from this a total planning mechanism is built.

Once a planning mechanism is in place and working, the use of labour money for buying and selling between the workers syndicates comes to an end and labour vouchers become non transferable electronic tokens that can only be earned by actually working.


This is not a bad idea, in the transitional phase, but what's missing is some sort of *workers democracy* that can consciously set the relative values [of labor vouchers] for various kinds of work. The hazard is that some asshole shithead can simply say "I'm providing socialist political consulting as a service," and be vouched-for by a friend, and then be paid the same as a mine worker.

You're falling victim to the difference between manual and mental labor, and it's the latter that (arguably) needs to be encompassed and addressed in a cohesive manner -- non-economistically, that is.





No money, no labor. Labour cannot exist without money; (subsistence) labour is a illusion invented for the purpose of extracting surplus labour.


Bullshit. You're only speaking about current conditions, and 'subsistence' or 'necessary' labor would have to be defined anew for a *post*-capitalist political economy.





Paul Cockshott's reply is the best by far. Fabian's reply also shows us that the immediate abolition of money is not disastrous. now I would like to see a communist argue for keeping money thoughout the revolution and after. I read in Rafiq's reply that it would depend on material conditions, but what kind of material conditions justify keeping money?


You're forgetting that *all* conditions include material conditions -- not all labor is the same, and some sort of allowances need to be made for that fact of material existence.


[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

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

[the zizekian]

Bullshit. You're only speaking about current conditions, and 'subsistence' or 'necessary' labor would have to be defined anew for a *post*-capitalist political economy.

New means new word, "labor" is a stillborn word.

[Revolution starts with U]

I love how people claim anarchism is a petty bourg ideology that will lead back to capitalism, when state "socialism" was literally a bourgeois ideology that lead back to capitalism... :bored:

[the zizekian]

I love how people claim anarchism is a petty bourg ideology that will lead back to capitalism, when state "socialism" was literally a bourgeois ideology that lead back to capitalism... :bored:

Just think to anarcho-capitalism (libertarianism), capitalists seem to love anarchy.

[Revolution starts with U]

Just think to anarcho-capitalism (libertarianism), capitalists seem to love anarchy.

Not really. They love to play lip service to statelessness. In reality, nobody has been faster to run to the government to save them.

[the zizekian]

Not really. They love to play lip service to statelessness. In reality, nobody has been faster to run to the government to save them.

I think that capitalists run fast precisely to create anarchic situations and then make easy money out of the threats they have themselves created.

[Paul Cockshott]

I like your diagram

[the zizekian]

I think that capitalists run fast precisely to create anarchic situations and then make easy money out of the threats they have themselves created.

Are we to support Ron Paul who wants to get rid of fiat money!?

[Tim Finnegan]

The reason why *some* kind of system of abstracted values is necessary is because there's the little issue of *standardization* -- this is well-expressed in the 'doctor argument' wherein someone who undergoes years of education and training cannot be readily compared to someone who picks up their job within a day of work.

Whatever you want to call the ratio between one's work and another's, it's still a ratio and it needs to be determined, either politically or economically, or some mixture of the two. It doesn't have to be floating-market-value *currency*, and it doesn't have to be authoritarian *issued labor vouchers*, but it *does* have to be reconciled.
I don't follow. What "ratio" are you talking about? A ratio in the length of time worked, in how hard they work, in how unpleasant the work is, in its value to society at large, what?

[the zizekian]

In the "Marxism-Leninism in the 21st century" immediately abolishing money is not recommended.
I understand a system of labor certificates, but once communist control is established shouldn't money be immediately be replaced with labor certificates. I don't see a reason to keep money around.

I would like to know the path and conditions that have to be met to eventually abolish money.

There is no significant difference between money and labor certificates. The best is to use the term used by the IMF: special drawing rights.

[Klaatu]

I am all in favor of labor certificates (to prove that you actually worked for it) but what if you do not spend your entire week's earnings at the grocery store? How will you get change? Or will the store just 'subtract' from your account? And suppose you wish to make a 'secret purchase' (you're buying your wife a gift) can money still be used?

I can't see how money is just going to vanish overnight. That may bring some unforeseen complexities to trading.

[the zizekian]

There is no significant difference between money and labor certificates. The best is to use the term used by the IMF: special drawing rights.

Zizek wrote: it is crucial to take note of how both mercantilists and their Ricardian critics remain "substantialist": Ricardo was, of course, aware that the object which serves as money is not "naturally" money, he laughed at the naïve superstition of money and dismissed mercantilists at primitive believers in magic properties; however, by reducing money to a secondary external sign of the value inherent to a commodity, he nonetheless again naturalized value, conceiving it is a direct "substantial" property of a commodity. It is this illusion that opened up the way to the naïve early-Socialist and Proudhonian practical proposal to overcome the money fetishism by way of introducing a direct "labor money" which would just designate the amount each individual contributed to social labor.

http://www.lacan.com/zizparallax3.htm (http://www.lacan.com/zizparallax3.htm)

[Tim Finnegan]

I am all in favor of labor certificates (to prove that you actually worked for it) but what if you do not spend your entire week's earnings at the grocery store? How will you get change? Or will the store just 'subtract' from your account? And suppose you wish to make a 'secret purchase' (you're buying your wife a gift) can money still be used?

I can't see how money is just going to vanish overnight. That may bring some unforeseen complexities to trading.
You're treating money like it was just a formalised system of IOUs, when it's quite specifically an exchange-value, i.e. an accumulation of abstract labour-time. When we talk about the need to abolition money, we're not ruling out a system of credit distributed on an as-need basis and redeemed at the point of consumption, because that would only constitute "money" for the bourgeois economist who sees capitalism in every human action. We aren't just calling for a war on little bits of paper with numbers on them, we're interested in abolishing abstract labour-time, i.e alienated labour, i.e. capital, i.e. capitalism.

[the zizekian]

You're treating money like it was just a formalised system of IOUs, when it's quite specifically an exchange-value, i.e. an accumulation of abstract labour-time. When we talk about the need to abolition money, we're not ruling out a system of credit distributed on an as-need basis and redeemed at the point of consumption, because that would only constitute "money" for the bourgeois economist who sees capitalism in every human action. We aren't just calling for a war on little bits of paper with numbers on them, we're interested in abolishing abstract labour-time, i.e alienated labour, i.e. capital, i.e. capitalism.

Since all labor is surplus labor, to abolish alienated labor, we have to abolish (the illusion of) subsistence labor.

[ckaihatsu]

The reason why *some* kind of system of abstracted values is necessary is because there's the little issue of *standardization* -- this is well-expressed in the 'doctor argument' wherein someone who undergoes years of education and training cannot be readily compared to someone who picks up their job within a day of work.

Whatever you want to call the ratio between one's work and another's, it's still a ratio and it needs to be determined, either politically or economically, or some mixture of the two. It doesn't have to be floating-market-value *currency*, and it doesn't have to be authoritarian *issued labor vouchers*, but it *does* have to be reconciled.





I don't follow. What "ratio" are you talking about? A ratio in the length of time worked, in how hard they work, in how unpleasant the work is, in its value to society at large, what?


All of the above, really. To leave any of those factors unaddressed would be to do a disservice to labor.

I'm including a couple of excerpts from 'communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors' to indicate how labor value might be formally recognized in a comprehensive way, with circulating labor-hour credits, *without* any resort to market-like currency.





communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

This is an 8-1/2" x 40" wide table that describes a communist-type political / economic model using three rows and six descriptive columns. The three rows are surplus-value-to-overhead, no surplus, and surplus-value-to-pleasure. The six columns are ownership / control, associated material values, determination of material values, material function, infrastructure / overhead, and propagation.

http://postimage.org/image/35sw8csv8/





Determination of material values

labor [supply] -- Labor credits are paid per hour of work at a multiplier rate based on difficulty or hazard -- multipliers are survey-derived




Propagation

labor [supply] -- Workers with past accumulated labor credits are the funders of new work positions and incoming laborers -- labor credits are handed over at the completion of work hours -- underfunded projects and production runs are debt-based and will be noted as such against the issuing locality

A further explanation and sample scenario can be found here:


'A world without money'

tinyurl.com/ylm3gev


'Hours as a measure of labor’

tinyurl.com/yh3jr9x

[Red Rabbit]

I say we burn it while we eat our caviar.

[Koba Junior]

Money, as it stands, is a legally recognized means of representing value in the abstract. The value people associate with currency is dependent on its universal recognition as a, for the most part, objective measurement of human labor. To "abolish" money is to dismantle legal recognition of money as tender for the settlement of debts. Money is currently necessary for the exchange of goods; the alteration of the legal status of money is necessarily concurrent with the dismantling of the market model of distribution. Thus, the exact form that the abolition of currency takes depends on the character of economic planning and distribution in a socialist society. Given that the structure of the state is generally highly centralized under capitalism, the seizure of political power by the proletariat implies that the use of the administrative infrastructure already in place will itself be highly centralized. Thus, the dismantling of the market and the development of a mode of socialist distribution will be planned centrally. This does not address the question as to whether physical currency may retain some vestigial, extralegal validity as a means of private trade, which may become obsolete as economic and social equality is achieved.

[honest john's firing squad]

Given that the structure of the state is generally highly centralized under capitalism, the seizure of political power by the proletariat implies that the use of the administrative infrastructure already in place will itself be highly centralized.
huh?

But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

[Koba Junior]

huh?

I would consider the alternative to the scenario I described before implying that Marx's prediction rules it out. Practically speaking, the military and police are such ready-made machinery, but you'll note that Marx also describes the role of centralization under capitalism as being a key element in the revolutionary character of the united proletariat. The productive forces of a society do not exist in the abstract; they have been designed to function in certain ways. Initially, major elements of carrying out the work of transitioning from capitalism to socialism will deal with the centralized political and economic power as it currently exists. By considering the alternative, I mean that it is important to check the described scenario against other possible scenarios to assess its practicality.

[ckaihatsu]

By considering the alternative, I mean that it is important to check the described scenario against other possible scenarios to assess its practicality.


I'll reiterate that by positing *any* cut-and-dried formulation we're implicitly making *detailed predictions* and that's something we're objectively unable to do since we don't know what the circumstances-at-hand would be for an actual revolution.

We can at best only offer certain *scenarios*, given certain *realistic potential circumstances*, as I did in post #46.

[Koba Junior]

I'll reiterate that by positing *any* cut-and-dried formulation we're implicitly making *detailed predictions* and that's something we're objectively unable to do since we don't know what the circumstances-at-hand would be for an actual revolution.

We can at best only offer certain *scenarios*, given certain *realistic potential circumstances*, as I did in post #46.

But there are certain things we most definitely can predict. We're not running into this blind; Marxism is a model of formulating predictions regarding revolutionary social development.

[ckaihatsu]

But there are certain things we most definitely can predict. We're not running into this blind; Marxism is a model of formulating predictions regarding revolutionary social development.


Yes, and it's appreciated, but we have to take matters of *scale* into account -- we know, on the *macro* scale, that capitalism is untenable, but that doesn't automatically give us insight into how *exactly* a workers democracy would resolve the question of labor value and material valuations.

Given certain circumstances I would readily support an authoritarian proletarian command over valuations of labor value, but if that happened to be unnecessary I *wouldn't* support it.

[Koba Junior]

Yes, and it's appreciated, but we have to take matters of *scale* into account -- we know, on the *macro* scale, that capitalism is untenable, but that doesn't automatically give us insight into how *exactly* a workers democracy would resolve the question of labor value and material valuations.

Given certain circumstances I would readily support an authoritarian proletarian command over valuations of labor value, but if that happened to be unnecessary I *wouldn't* support it.

Experience dictates that planning will be centralized, at least initially.

[ckaihatsu]

Experience dictates that planning will be centralized, at least initially.


Sorry, but I think this is too prescriptive. I'm always wary of being too beholden to precedent and history. (Must be the revolutionary in me.)

The goal -- as I understand it -- is to *dissolve* the bourgeois state as rapidly as possible. If wielding such a pre-made centralization is called for, then so be it, but if we *don't* require that kind of dependence we should be orienting ourselves toward what's really at heart -- communism.

[Koba Junior]

Sorry, but I think this is too prescriptive. I'm always wary of being too beholden to precedent and history. (Must be the revolutionary in me.)

The goal -- as I understand it -- is to *dissolve* the bourgeois state as rapidly as possible. If wielding such a pre-made centralization is called for, then so be it, but if we *don't* require that kind of dependence we should be orienting ourselves toward what's really at heart -- communism.

First of all, society is historically determined. This is one of the central tenets of Marxism. That social orders have behaved certain ways in the past are necessarily indicative of how they may behave in the future. There are always surprises, but it is unwise to dismiss history and charge into the future blind.

It isn't so much the apparatus of the bourgeois state with which I'm concerned, though. There is still a framework of productive infrastructure that will necessarily have to be used. The state's dissolution occurs in the elimination of those infrastructures that provide the ruling class with its violent recourse. In other words, take away the guns and the legitimacy of the ruling class's political power evaporates. But productive infrastructure, that is, means of production and distribution, will remain in place; they are not quite as abstract as political power.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Yeah, ok, and how did all of that happy trading with capitalist nations pan out for the Soviet Union? Oh, wait, that's right.

Are you fucking kidding me?! Let's take Germany, it has barely any resources and is the world's second largest exporter; You expect Germany to all of a sudden stop trading with other nations>???? That's absolutely insane mate, completely mad.

[Koba Junior]

Are you fucking kidding me?! Let's take Germany, it has barely any resources and is the world's second largest exporter; You expect Germany to all of a sudden stop trading with other nations>???? That's absolutely insane mate, completely mad.

Another important thing to note would be that conducting trade with capitalist countries does not necessarily constitute abetting capitalism. Often times, the fight comes down to merely surviving. It's better to live for revolution than to die for it, in my opinion.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

In my view the abolition of money has to go via a stepwise process. Assume that in Europe say a political revolution has occured and a socialist peoples democracy has been established with its capital in let us say Athens. How does the abolition of money occur?

1. Existing debts have to be abolished. Most money is in the form of bank deposits and bank loans. It is the dead weight of these overgrown loans that lie at the heart of the current crisis. These debts are owed initially to the banks, but ultimately to the billionaire class of rich firms and individuals who hold most of the bank deposits. So the first step is to cancel all debts to the banks owed by states, individuals and firms, and to cancell all deposits over say 1 years average wage.

The immediate effect of this is to liberate the public purse of the huge burden of debt and to liberate individuals of the burden of credit card and mortgage debt.

2. Next the currency has to be re-expressed in terms of the labour theory of value so the the unit of currency becomes a unit of time. That means for example that 10 euro notes would be redonominated as 20 minute notes.

At this stage all we are doing is making explicit what is hidden by commodity fetishism - that value is the comand over human labour time. But at this stage the notes are still money - labour money but still money as the bank notes can circulate and be used to buy and sell.

3. The revolutionary regime anounces a new constitution with the right of workers collectively to the full value of the labour they perform. Thus firms are obligated to pay workers collectively the amount of hours they have performed. There would probably still be some level of wage differentials based on skill at the begining, but the moral pressure of being paid in hours is likely to mean that collectively workers will decide to equalise pay fairly rapidly.

The public authorities would still levy social security taxes on workers income after the firms had paid them.

At this stage you have no exploitation, you have payment according to labour, but you have not completely eliminate commodity production as the firms are still using the labour money for transactions.

4. Next the worker managed firms form industrial syndicates to plan whole industries and from this a total planning mechanism is built.

Once a planning mechanism is in place and working, the use of labour money for buying and selling between the workers syndicates comes to an end and labour vouchers become non transferable electronic tokens that can only be earned by actually working.

Good list, thank you. I would like to add that the "liberated" worker controlled enterprises and economies of the world need to reach global equal policies: wages. EU is going down because of this wage disparity, and i think it is quite an important point.

[seventeethdecember2016]

Remarkable what turns this thread has taken.

Money will be abolished only when the proper conditions are in place for it to go. If it is abolished immediately after the Revolution, I'm out!

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

"You seem to have suggested twice now that retaining markets is essential to get to a post-market economy."

I am probably the most anti-market person on RevLeft. I am a realist though and realise that i can't unite all workers of the world and smash markets even within a country within a week :(

[ckaihatsu]

First of all, society is historically determined. This is one of the central tenets of Marxism.


Sorry again, but tethering a future socialist society to the developments of the historical past is to make oneself into a political automaton, watching the world go by while forfeiting any active role in its making.





That social orders have behaved certain ways in the past are necessarily indicative of how they may behave in the future. There are always surprises, but it is unwise to dismiss history and charge into the future blind.


By the standards of revolutionism you're downright *conservative* here -- you cling to history as a necessary blueprint for future revolutions, and I absolutely find that to be inadvisable since it implicitly rejects the subjective factor.





It isn't so much the apparatus of the bourgeois state with which I'm concerned, though. There is still a framework of productive infrastructure that will necessarily have to be used. The state's dissolution occurs in the elimination of those infrastructures that provide the ruling class with its violent recourse. In other words, take away the guns and the legitimacy of the ruling class's political power evaporates. But productive infrastructure, that is, means of production and distribution, will remain in place; they are not quite as abstract as political power.


Yeah, certainly the productive technology as-it-is is what it is, but that doesn't speak in the least to how it *could* be organized by a revolutionary proletariat.

[ckaihatsu]

Another important thing to note would be that conducting trade with capitalist countries does not necessarily constitute abetting capitalism. Often times, the fight comes down to merely surviving. It's better to live for revolution than to die for it, in my opinion.


More revolutionary conservatism.

Why constain yourself to a partial, socialism-in-one-country outlook when the push *should* be for *worldwide* socialism -- ??!

[Koba Junior]

Sorry again, but tethering a future socialist society to the developments of the historical past is to make oneself into a political automaton, watching the world go by while forfeiting any active role in its making.

That attitude smacks of revisionism, but I figure it's typical of someone like me to say such a thing. In any case, science is, at its core, a method of making predictions about the future using collected data. Historical materialism and Marxist dialectic are the sciences of revolutionary social development. Marx himself, for example, was no political automaton when he articulated the role history plays in determining present social conditions. Past experience is really the basis of all knowledge, and, once again, it is unwise to charge into the future blind. Nothing will occur again exactly as it has occurred in the past, but natural laws do exist as the patterns we note in the behavior of the material universe.


By the standards of revolutionism you're downright *conservative* here -- you cling to history as a necessary blueprint for future revolutions, and I absolutely find that to be inadvisable since it implicitly rejects the subjective factor.

There is as much subjectivity involved in the evolution of society as there is in the evolution of organisms. I'm beginning to notice an attitude present also in juche, that man is the determining factor in the course of history, rather than the natural laws that have governed it since time immemorial.


Yeah, certainly the productive technology as-it-is is what it is, but that doesn't speak in the least to how it *could* be organized by a revolutionary proletariat.

You're right; it speaks to how it ought to be organized.

[Koba Junior]

More revolutionary conservatism.

Why constain yourself to a partial, socialism-in-one-country outlook when the push *should* be for *worldwide* socialism -- ??!

Because, like I said, sometimes all you can do is fight for another day to fight. Socialism in one country does not preclude international revolution; it defends the gains of the revolution where it has been successful. Other attitudes dismiss the limited seizure of power by the proletariat as a failure if it has not yet been achieved worldwide. What sense does it make to artificially protract struggle or to abandon the gains of a revolution simply because it was not simultaneously successful everywhere in the world?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

"So what you are saying is that you have to keep a market to get rid of the market?"
No. I am saying that so long All of the Workers of the Whole Planet Earth (or at leas the most advanced capitalist societies) do not take complete control of their economies, you will logically have markets... i don't see how this is difficult or even trivial. Or i'm just missing out on the magic weapon to get international socialism:confused:

[Paul Cockshott]

There is no significant difference between money and labor certificates. The best is to use the term used by the IMF: special drawing rights.
Compare this with

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. But it never enters into Owen‘s head to pre-suppose the production of commodities, and at the same time, by juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary conditions of that production.
(Marx Capital I)
The key point is labour certificates do not circulate and presuppose directly associated labour.

[Paul Cockshott]

Jimmy you need to be more explicit by what you mean by abolishing abstract labour.

The idea is introduced in the English translation of Capital here:
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.


Clearly he just means the physical expenditure of human energy. It is even clearer in the French translation - the last edition of Capital explicitly reviewed and edited by Marx:

La valeur d'usage des marchandises une fois mise de côté, il ne leur reste plus qu'une qualité, celle d'être des produits du travail. Mais déjà le produit du travail lui-même est métamorphosé à notre insu. Si nous faisons abstraction de sa valeur d'usage, tous les éléments matériels et formels qui lui donnaient cette valeur disparaissent à la fois. Ce n'est plus, par exemple, une table, ou une maison, ou du fil, ou un objet utile quelconque ; ce n'est pas non plus le produit du travail du tourneur, du maçon, de n'importe quel travail productif déterminé. Avec les caractères utiles particuliers des produits du travail disparaissent en même temps, et le caractère utile des travaux qui y sont contenus, et les formes concrètes diverses qui distinguent une espèce de travail d'une autre espèce. Il ne reste donc plus que le caractère commun de ces travaux ; ils sont tous ramenés au même travail humain, à une dépense de force humaine de travail sans égard à la forme particulière sous laquelle cette force a été dépensée.


It is not clear what you mean by abolishing the expenditure of human physiological energy - do you mean that you anticipate everything will be done by robots at some time in the future and we will just laze about doing nothing?

[ckaihatsu]

Sorry again, but tethering a future socialist society to the developments of the historical past is to make oneself into a political automaton, watching the world go by while forfeiting any active role in its making.





That attitude smacks of revisionism,


How so? I'm not suggesting a re-inventing of history, if you mean historical revisionism, and I'm certainly not calling for historical inertia to take over, as might be countenanced by fUSSR-type revisionism. I'm arguing the opposite, that (revolutionary) politics is something for workers to use *actively*, in actual real-life situations.





but I figure it's typical of someone like me to say such a thing. In any case, science is, at its core, a method of making predictions about the future using collected data.


Yes, but revolutionary practice is different from science in that it is about actively shaping the world we're in. Institutional science is far more passive than this since it concerns itself mostly with *observing* the world as it is.





Historical materialism and Marxist dialectic are the sciences of revolutionary social development. Marx himself, for example, was no political automaton when he articulated the role history plays in determining present social conditions. Past experience is really the basis of all knowledge, and, once again, it is unwise to charge into the future blind. Nothing will occur again exactly as it has occurred in the past, but natural laws do exist as the patterns we note in the behavior of the material universe.


Certainly -- I'm not dismissing history or science, just saying that neither are they the present, or active roles, respectively.





By the standards of revolutionism you're downright *conservative* here -- you cling to history as a necessary blueprint for future revolutions, and I absolutely find that to be inadvisable since it implicitly rejects the subjective factor.





There is as much subjectivity involved in the evolution of society as there is in the evolution of organisms. I'm beginning to notice an attitude present also in juche, that man is the determining factor in the course of history, rather than the natural laws that have governed it since time immemorial.


No, this is where we have a solid disagreement -- organisms have *zero* or negligible influence over their millenia-long evolutions, whereas people (can) certainly have far more-active roles in human history within their own lifetimes.





Yeah, certainly the productive technology as-it-is is what it is, but that doesn't speak in the least to how it *could* be organized by a revolutionary proletariat.





You're right; it speaks to how it ought to be organized.


Again you're showing your typical historical fatalism -- the past, and 'natural laws', are not the sum total of what the future will look like.





More revolutionary conservatism.

Why constain yourself to a partial, socialism-in-one-country outlook when the push *should* be for *worldwide* socialism -- ??!





Because, like I said, sometimes all you can do is fight for another day to fight. Socialism in one country does not preclude international revolution; it defends the gains of the revolution where it has been successful. Other attitudes dismiss the limited seizure of power by the proletariat as a failure if it has not yet been achieved worldwide. What sense does it make to artificially protract struggle or to abandon the gains of a revolution simply because it was not simultaneously successful everywhere in the world?


I do appreciate this, and I am *not* dismissive of partial gains, just as we shouldn't be dismissive of short-term reformist gains either (in the bourgeois sphere).

That said, though, it's better to clarify that *settling* for partial gains is not a political option even if it happens by default.

[Rafiq]

Do you think that Bordiga was a Bourgeois Utopian Idealist Liberal or whatever, then? Because he was certainly of the opinion that the existence of money was incompatible with a socialist or communist society.

This was a concrete analyization of already existing Socialist states, to root out that they indeed were running the capitalist mode of production. It was not, in fact, a thesis of sorts as a recipe for a future society.

And I'd also like to add it was scientific, in the same sense that markets and so on are criticized: That they may, more or less be inherent to the capitalist mode of production.

However, the OP asked "Will there be money in a socialist society" which is quite absurd. Firstly, because he has not estabilished what this abstract "Society" is, and secondly, because he excepts us to know the future.

The point is simple: We aren't here to formulate a future society so it isn't up to "us" to decide in what way, or in any way that it would present itself as.

Men and Women make history, but not as they please - means more perhaps then what it would appear as.

[campesino]

This was a concrete analyization of already existing Socialist states, to root out that they indeed were running the capitalist mode of production. It was not, in fact, a thesis of sorts as a recipe for a future society.

And I'd also like to add it was scientific, in the same sense that markets and so on are criticized: That they may, more or less be inherent to the capitalist mode of production.

However, the OP asked "Will there be money in a socialist society" which is quite absurd. Firstly, because he has not estabilished what this abstract "Society" is, and secondly, because he excepts us to know the future.

The point is simple: We aren't here to formulate a future society so it isn't up to "us" to decide in what way, or in any way that it would present itself as.

Men and Women make history, but not as they please - means more perhaps then what it would appear as.

So the question of money in the post-revolution, is dependent on what decisions the liberated working class take, and we should not promote removing money. That we should focus only on the liberation of the proletariat, and whatever happens next, can be with confidence called communism.

[Paul Cockshott]

No that is too optimisitic. Socialist societies that have existed up to know have retained a number of capitalist forms which arguably hindered their long term development. One of these was the retention of monetrary calculation rather than direct calculation in terms of labour. From the standpoint of political economy one can criticise policies of retaining these monetary institutions for anything but the short term.

[the zizekian]

The key point is labour certificates do not circulate and presuppose directly associated labour.

That labour certificates do not circulate and presuppose directly associated labour don’t make these certificates significantly different from money because the “general equivalent” idea is as much prevalent in these certificates as it is in money.

[Paul Cockshott]

They are not a general equivalent. They are an equivalent for consumer goods. They cant become capital.

[Koba Junior]

How so? I'm not suggesting a re-inventing of history, if you mean historical revisionism, and I'm certainly not calling for historical inertia to take over, as might be countenanced by fUSSR-type revisionism. I'm arguing the opposite, that (revolutionary) politics is something for workers to use *actively*, in actual real-life situations.

I've already explained the type of revisionism to which I'm referring. It is one thing to call on the proletariat to take charge of the revolution; it is quite another to ignore that all of the material universe behaves according to immutable laws that man can neither circumvent nor negate. Consider this quote from Engels: "From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch."


Yes, but revolutionary practice is different from science in that it is about actively shaping the world we're in. Institutional science is far more passive than this since it concerns itself mostly with *observing* the world as it is.You would not say that science has no practical, active applications. For what purpose does science observe the world as it is? So that man can improve his condition through action armed with understanding.


No, this is where we have a solid disagreement -- organisms have *zero* or negligible influence over their millenia-long evolutions, whereas people (can) certainly have far more-active roles in human history within their own lifetimes.Quite untrue. The behavior of organisms in their own lifetimes do affect their predicament, and these so-called "negligible" changes accumulate over time and eventually erupt into qualitative change.


Again you're showing your typical historical fatalism -- the past, and 'natural laws', are not the sum total of what the future will look like.It is false to call this view fatalism. The proletariat must arm themselves with knowledge of the immutable laws of the universe, as must we all in any undertaking. I cannot demand that the moon be perpetually full that I might study its surface. I can, however, use my knowledge of the moon's phases to plan a cycle of study.


I do appreciate this, and I am *not* dismissive of partial gains, just as we shouldn't be dismissive of short-term reformist gains either (in the bourgeois sphere).

That said, though, it's better to clarify that *settling* for partial gains is not a political option even if it happens by default.Like I've said, socialism in one country is not a dismissal of proletarian internationalism. It is also not settling for partial gains; it is the defense of partial gains in the face of continuous onslaught from those places where revolution has failed to succeed. Simply because an army defends its stronghold without yet advancing does not mean that the army has given up on the war.

[the zizekian]

They are not a general equivalent. They are an equivalent for consumer goods. They cant become capital.

Capital can be destroyed only if we destroy the very illusion of equivalent exchange.

[Paul Cockshott]

They are not a general equivalent. They are an equivalent for consumer goods. They cant become capital.

[the zizekian]

They are not a general equivalent. They are an equivalent for consumer goods. They cant become capital.

Surplus/capital comes from the illusion of equivalent exchange.

[ckaihatsu]

The key point is labour certificates do not circulate and presuppose directly associated labour.





That labour certificates do not circulate and presuppose directly associated labour don’t make these certificates significantly different from money because the “general equivalent” idea is as much prevalent in these certificates as it is in money.





They are not a general equivalent. They are an equivalent for consumer goods. They cant become capital.





Capital can be destroyed only if we destroy the very illusion of equivalent exchange.


I'm seeing a problematic being expressed in this exchange -- it's inherently problematic to adopt *any* system of value abstraction that allows convertibility of *labor* to *material*, as with consumer goods.

The reason is that the type and amount of labor required to produce each kind of material / consumer good will fluctuate over time. Currently the market mechanism provides the flexibility needed to accommodate these fluctuations, but the downside to the market system, of course, is that economic "voting" is per-dollar, thereby precluding any kind of economic democracy whatsoever.

The model in post #155 provides for a system of weighted-labor-hour credits that are *not* exchangeable for materials of any kind -- this retains the value system around considerations of labor *only* and does not mix "apples and oranges".

[ckaihatsu]

Like I've said, socialism in one country is not a dismissal of proletarian internationalism. It is also not settling for partial gains; it is the defense of partial gains in the face of continuous onslaught from those places where revolution has failed to succeed. Simply because an army defends its stronghold without yet advancing does not mean that the army has given up on the war.


Okay.





I've already explained the type of revisionism to which I'm referring.


Would you indicate it then, please?





It is one thing to call on the proletariat to take charge of the revolution; it is quite another to ignore that all of the material universe behaves according to immutable laws that man can neither circumvent nor negate. Consider this quote from Engels: "From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch."


We don't need to repeat ourselves here -- I don't disagree with you on your macroscopic 'natural laws', but you seem to be disregarding the subjective factor, which is far less predictable than the overarching historical inertia you keep pointing to.





You would not say that science has no practical, active applications. For what purpose does science observe the world as it is? So that man can improve his condition through action armed with understanding.


That's fine, too, and again, I'm not disagreeing. You just can't equate science to political practice directly, as if they're synonymous. They're not.





Quite untrue. The behavior of organisms in their own lifetimes do affect their predicament, and these so-called "negligible" changes accumulate over time and eventually erupt into qualitative change.


Yes, but animals are mostly under the sway of their environments, and especially so when it comes to natural selection. Their "choices" during their lifetimes *are* negligible concerning the evolution of their species.





It is false to call this view fatalism. The proletariat must arm themselves with knowledge of the immutable laws of the universe, as must we all in any undertaking. I cannot demand that the moon be perpetually full that I might study its surface. I can, however, use my knowledge of the moon's phases to plan a cycle of study.


Again you're conflating natural science with social science and the two are *not* synonymous -- *that's* why you're ignoring the subjective factor and espousing a kind of historical fatalism.


[6] Worldview Diagram

http://postimage.org/image/1budmnp50/

[the zizekian]

I'm seeing a problematic being expressed in this exchange -- it's inherently problematic to adopt *any* system of value abstraction that allows convertibility of *labor* to *material*, as with consumer goods.

The reason is that the type and amount of labor required to produce each kind of material / consumer good will fluctuate over time. Currently the market mechanism provides the flexibility needed to accommodate these fluctuations, but the downside to the market system, of course, is that economic "voting" is per-dollar, thereby precluding any kind of economic democracy whatsoever.

The model in post #155 provides for a system of weighted-labor-hour credits that are *not* exchangeable for materials of any kind -- this retains the value system around considerations of labor *only* and does not mix "apples and oranges".


Pig = Pork


Zizek wrote: It is perhaps the ultimate case of the parallax situation: the position of worker-producer and that of consumer should be sustained as irreducible in their divergence, without privileging one as the "deeper truth" of the other.

http://www.lacan.com/zizparallax3.htm (http://www.lacan.com/zizparallax3.htm)

[Koba Junior]

Would you indicate it then, please?

It smacks of juche, the ideology of Democratic Korea, which espouses that man, the so-called "subjective factor," is the determining factor in the course of history.


We don't need to repeat ourselves here -- I don't disagree with you on your macroscopic 'natural laws', but you seem to be disregarding the subjective factor, which is far less predictable than the overarching historical inertia you keep pointing to.

Even human beings behave according to certain patterns, especially en masse.


That's fine, too, and again, I'm not disagreeing. You just can't equate science to political practice directly, as if they're synonymous. They're not.

You mean to differentiate between natural science and social science. Marx's and Engels's work showed us that the two are not mutually exclusive.


Yes, but animals are mostly under the sway of their environments, and especially so when it comes to natural selection. Their "choices" during their lifetimes *are* negligible concerning the evolution of their species.

If scientists can predict the behavior of populations of other organisms, why is it impossible, then, to predict the behavior of human populations? It simply isn't.

[the zizekian]

Pig = Pork


Zizek wrote: It is perhaps the ultimate case of the parallax situation: the position of worker-producer and that of consumer should be sustained as irreducible in their divergence, without privileging one as the "deeper truth" of the other.

http://www.lacan.com/zizparallax3.htm (http://www.lacan.com/zizparallax3.htm)


Zizek wrote: Is a nice linguistic example of the parallax between production and consumption not that of the different use of "pork" and "pig" in today's English? "Pig" refers to animals with whom farmers deal, while "pork" is the meat we consume - and the class dimension is clear here: "pig" is the old Saxon word, since Saxons were the underprivileged farmers, while "pork" comes from French "porque," used by the privileged Norman conquerors who mostly consumed the pigs raised by farmers.

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he position of worker-producer and that of consumer should be sustained as irreducible in their divergence, without privileging one as the "deeper truth" of the other.


Perhaps, but consumption is materially predicated on production, and not the other way around. (There can be production without consumption but there can't be consumption without production.)

[the zizekian]

Perhaps, but consumption is materially predicated on production, and not the other way around. (There can be production without consumption but there can't be consumption without production.)

For a dialectician (revolutionary), our kind of reasoning here is false (reactionary).

[ckaihatsu]

It smacks of juche, the ideology of Democratic Korea, which espouses that man, the so-called "subjective factor," is the determining factor in the course of history.


Note that I'm not espousing anything resembling a 'subjective determinism' here.





If scientists can predict the behavior of populations of other organisms, why is it impossible, then, to predict the behavior of human populations? It simply isn't.




Even human beings behave according to certain patterns, especially en masse.


*General* patterns, perhaps, but if you're so positive that everything's so predictable you'd be able to write the history books in advance of world events.





You mean to differentiate between natural science and social science. Marx's and Engels's work showed us that the two are not mutually exclusive.


So you're saying there's some *commonality* between the two. Of course, but they're not *synonymous*.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

http://postimage.org/image/1d4ldatxg/

[ckaihatsu]

[C]onsumption is materially predicated on production, and not the other way around. (There can be production without consumption but there can't be consumption without production.)





For a dialectician (revolutionary), our kind of reasoning here is false (reactionary).


You may want to back up this assertion of yours with some kind of reasoning for it.

[Koba Junior]

*General* patterns, perhaps, but if you're so positive that everything's so predictable you'd be able to write the history books in advance of world events.

There's actually already a few books like that out there. I'm sure you've heard of Marx.

[ckaihatsu]

There's actually already a few books like that out there. I'm sure you've heard of Marx.


Great. Well I won't argue with you on this point, then.

Are you going to be posting your manuscript of the history of 2012-2017 anytime soon?

[Rafiq]

So the question of money in the post-revolution, is dependent on what decisions the liberated working class take, and we should not promote removing money. That we should focus only on the liberation of the proletariat, and whatever happens next, can be with confidence called communism.



Indeed. The "demand" to remove money, just as the "demand" to have robots clean public toliets is far too specific and prescise for anyone to predict. It is not, as I would say, an inherent demand to proletarian interests (contrary to, for example, emancipation from Bourgeois society, class dictatorship, the abolishment of private property, and so on) and is simply a Utopian demand of people who are fascinated with the concept of a society without "money", as if they are just starting to break off from Bourgeois ideological illusions.

[Koba Junior]

Great. Well I won't argue with you on this point, then.

Are you going to be posting your manuscript of the history of 2012-2017 anytime soon?

Absolutely, since we were obviously talking about predicting the exact hour of socialist revolution.

[the zizekian]

Perhaps, but consumption is materially predicated on production, and not the other way around. (There can be production without consumption but there can't be consumption without production.)

Matter is only the slaves' resistance to nature’s generosity/gifts.

[Paul Cockshott]

Capital can be destroyed only if we destroy the very illusion of equivalent exchange.

No that is wrong, so long as it is not possible to accumulate labour certificates and use them to employ other people the captialist relation of exploitation can not arise.

[Paul Cockshott]

Surplus/capital comes from the illusion of equivalent exchange.

No it does not arise from illusions it arises from the reality that the labour required to reproduce labour power is less than the labour that the labour power can yield. For this to occur you have to have the possibility to acquire money and use it to buy labour power. If labour certificates do not circulate, this can not be done.

[ckaihatsu]

Matter is only the slaves' resistance to nature’s generosity/gifts.


Trying out a *religious* aphorism / affectation now, huh -- ?


x D

[Tim Finnegan]

Indeed. The "demand" to remove money, just as the "demand" to have robots clean public toliets is far too specific and prescise for anyone to predict.
Bollocks. The abolition of capital, thus alienated labour, thus abstract-labour time, thus exchange-value, thus money, is the absolute precondition of social revolution. Anything less is just capitalism with a red flag.

[Rafiq]

Bollocks. The abolition of capital, thus alienated labour, thus abstract-labour time, thus exchange-value, thus money, is the absolute precondition of social revolution. Anything less is just capitalism with a red flag.


While I don't doubt money is inherent only to capitalism, it's not a concrete demand, as it's a given. It's not a precondition. It's a cannonball of Idealist dickwavers. Should the proletariat take control, it isn't a question of "Okay guys should we get rid of money or should we do X", because these things are inherent to the demise of the bourgeois class.

It's naive enough to make it your agenda, or an ends as "Stateless, classless", as something of holy word. To say "Stateless, classless, moneyless" is downright ridiculous, as is implying a new Idea (society) as something abstract, and external from modern times, i.e. " I dunno bout your capitalism, but I want to input X".

[Tim Finnegan]

I don't really understand what critique you think you're making?

[Blake's Baby]

While I don't doubt money is inherent only to capitalism, it's not a concrete demand, as it's a given. It's not a precondition. It's a cannonball of Idealist dickwavers. Should the proletariat take control, it isn't a question of "Okay guys should we get rid of money or should we do X", because these things are inherent to the demise of the bourgeois class.

It's naive enough to make it your agenda, or an ends as "Stateless, classless", as something of holy word. To say "Stateless, classless, moneyless" is downright ridiculous, as is implying a new Idea (society) as something abstract, and external from modern times, i.e. " I dunno bout your capitalism, but I want to input X".

Well, this almost makes sense.

The point Rafiq is not that 'abolition of money' is part of the 'agenda'; as was pointed out pages ago it's not that money would be abolished after (or even during) the revolution but that, for it to exist, it would have to be enforced. So the way that the use of money will end is... naturally, through no power enforcing its use. As you say, the end of money is inherent in the end of capitalism.

[Paul Cockshott]

Well, this almost makes sense.

The point Rafiq is not that 'abolition of money' is part of the 'agenda'; as was pointed out pages ago it's not that money would be abolished after (or even during) the revolution but that, for it to exist, it would have to be enforced. So the way that the use of money will end is... naturally, through no power enforcing its use. As you say, the end of money is inherent in the end of capitalism.

If you have production that it not coordinated by a plan that has directive qualities and by a planning system that has the power to direct the allocation of labour and resources, then commodity production will persist and units of production will only give up their output for some equivalent.

State money has to be enforced by law, that it true, it is made the legitimate form of settling debts including tax debts. In the absence of state money, then the system would revert to a system based on high level barter with a particular commodity acting as the universal equivalent, cigarettes in post war Germany being the classic example.

[Blake's Baby]

If you have production that it not coordinated by a plan that has directive qualities and by a planning system that has the power to direct the allocation of labour and resources, then commodity production will persist and units of production will only give up their output for some equivalent...

Why would commodity production persist? Why can the working class, organising itself through the workers' councils, be the very directors of such a plan? Why would production units demand 'equivalents' as opposed to requisites? 'If you keep the power on for the next six weeks and make sure we get 8,000 metres of tubular aluminium and enough food for 40 workers, we can deliver 4,000 bicycles'. That doesn't actually seem complicated to me.




...
State money has to be enforced by law, that it true, it is made the legitimate form of settling debts including tax debts. In the absence of state money, then the system would revert to a system based on high level barter with a particular commodity acting as the universal equivalent, cigarettes in post war Germany being the classic example.

Why would it revert to barter if there is no property, and why would there need to be an 'equivalent' if there is no exchange?

Post-war Germany was a capitalist economy. A wrecked one but a capitalist one nevertheless. So your argument is 'socialism will be like capitalism, if you want an example, look at capitalism. That's like capitalism, so there, that proves it'. Which isn't exactly a very good argument.

[Zulu]

Why would commodity production persist? Why can the working class, organising itself through the workers' councils, be the very directors of such a plan? Why would production units demand 'equivalents' as opposed to requisites? 'If you keep the power on for the next six weeks and make sure we get 8,000 metres of tubular aluminium and enough food for 40 workers, we can deliver 4,000 bicycles'. That doesn't actually seem complicated to me.

What happens if there is not enough power, food and/or aluminium available?

[ckaihatsu]

Why would commodity production persist? Why can the working class, organising itself through the workers' councils, be the very directors of such a plan? Why would production units demand 'equivalents' as opposed to requisites? 'If you keep the power on for the next six weeks and make sure we get 8,000 metres of tubular aluminium and enough food for 40 workers, we can deliver 4,000 bicycles'. That doesn't actually seem complicated to me.





What happens if there is not enough power, food and/or aluminium available?


My concern wouldn't be about the actual amounts of raw materials and assets available, but rather the prioritization of one kind of production versus another. If it could be done in a grassroots way, so be it, but some worker committee meetings would be a bare minimum, to address overall logistics at least.

[Zulu]

My concern wouldn't be about the actual amounts of raw materials and assets available, but rather the prioritization of one kind of production versus another.
That's just the two sides of the same medal. Resources limited - you need to prioritize.





If it could be done in a grassroots way, so be it, but some worker committee meetings would be a bare minimum, to address overall logistics at least.
That's why the "more concentrated" planning trumps the "less concentrated". Simply put, it can account for more variables, synchronize more processes, eliminate more wastage. In a "less concentrated system" autonomous entities will always try to hoard as much resources as they can, "just in case", for "a rainy day". Next thing you know, you've got exchange, market, universal equivalent, capitalism.

[ckaihatsu]

That's just the two sides of the same medal. Resources limited - you need to prioritize.



That's why the "more concentrated" planning trumps the "less concentrated". Simply put, it can account for more variables, synchronize more processes, eliminate more wastage. In a "less concentrated system" autonomous entities will always try to hoard as much resources as they can, "just in case", for "a rainy day". Next thing you know, you've got exchange, market, universal equivalent, capitalism.


Agreed, and particularly well-put.

I'll post this diagram again since it pertains to this point of yours.


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

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

[Paul Cockshott]

What Blake has to answer is what is the electoral base of these proposed workers committees?
Are they organised on the basis of



pre existing work places
pre existing firms?
cities?
Regions?
Nations?
Continents?
Whole industries accross a continent?


Which level of committee owns the resources?
Which level can compel others to deliver resources to deal with the reorganisation of the economy in the face of climate change?

That is why I emphasise the need to build up a continental planning mechanism initially on industrial lines before the abolition of commodity production. Unless you have a system of directive planning the only way of coordinating independent producers is the market. A workers committe running Ford is just a change of ownership from the shareholders to the employees - a necessary step, but not sufficient to get rid of money.

[bolshie]

Money should be immediately abolished and all production and distribution put under community control.

That should happen on day one.
sounds a bit impractical to me, not that I know anything much. How would it be done exactly? I mean, ok you could make the buses and hospitals free very quickly, but what about all the small businesses and so on, and just the general way money is used for accounting, planning and so on?

[bolshie]

Very simply put: a communist/socialist/Marxist has a long term concrete plan on how to reach socialism (Often referred to as "scientific" socialism) while a Utopian Socialist has no understanding of how to reach said socialism and simply dwells on what he would like to achieve but doesn't know how.

It is the difference between having a travel plan and just taking things as they come.

So what's the plan?

[Blake's Baby]

What happens if there is not enough power, food and/or aluminium available?

If there is not enough power food and aluminium available, please explain how the addition of money is going to make some.

One cannot readily burn money to make power, one cannot easily eat it, and as the aluminium content of money is small it's difficult to make bikes out of.

The answer 'buy it' is not permissable here, however, because you have said that it isn't available. So there's nowhere to buy it from.

If however it is available to buy, then it is available.

So what you're saying in this case is, 'what if capitalists want to hold on to it and drive up the price/cripple the revolution by cutting off supplies?' to which I would answer:

If it's in the revolution, then we take the aluminium to make bikes (though probably in the middle of a war bikes might not be our highest priority) or if it is after the revolution has been successfully concluded, where are the capitalists coming from? How can they monopolise distribution of resources? Are you sure you've won the revolution comrade? Looks like you're still in capitalism to me.



My concern wouldn't be about the actual amounts of raw materials and assets available, but rather the prioritization of one kind of production versus another. If it could be done in a grassroots way, so be it, but some worker committee meetings would be a bare minimum, to address overall logistics at least.

Well, yeah. Are you saying 'there would have to be soviets in the revolution'? Because y'know, I kinda thought that was a given. If not, really, the point.



What Blake has to answer is what is the electoral base of these proposed workers committees?
Are they organised on the basis of



pre existing work places
pre existing firms?
cities?
Regions?
Nations?
Continents?
Whole industries accross a continent?


Which level of committee owns the resources?
Which level can compel others to deliver resources to deal with the reorganisation of the economy in the face of climate change?...

'The Plan' is worked out in interaction between the population organised as consumers and the population organised as producers. Why should people have to pay themselves from the profits of the things they sold themselves so that they would know which things they wanted because they didn't tell themselves when they were making the things for themselves?

'My suspicion' is that planning would initially be at a regional level - for small countries (say Danmark) that might actually correspond to a national level but for Germany or Britain or the USA I suspect something much smaller than a national level. Say, regional units of 5-10 million people or so.

Implementation of the plan would be up to the workers' councils. If you want to know how they'd work, go ask the workers of Moscow and Petrograd in 1917. Generally they'd be based on workplaces I'd suspect. Industry-wide co-ordination in some things is undoubtedly necessary, but so is cross-industry co-ordination (eg supply chains, distribution). the workers' council at Ford at Dagenham would undoubtedly have links with the Rover workers' committee at Cowley and the Vauxhall council at Luton (I don't even know if they still have a works there but you get the drift) but it would also co-ordinate with other transport and engineering councils in Essex.

Who would 'own' the resources? No one. Who'd be tasked with ensuring the proper use of those resources? My guess is the regional super-soviet.


...
That is why I emphasise the need to build up a continental planning mechanism initially on industrial lines before the abolition of commodity production. Unless you have a system of directive planning the only way of coordinating independent producers is the market...

The soviets are the system of directive planning.



... A workers committe running Ford is just a change of ownership from the shareholders to the employees - a necessary step, but not sufficient to get rid of money.

You don't have 'a workers' committee running Ford' you have 'a workers' committee running the former Ford works' -'Ford' ceases to exist, what you have is the Dagenham People's Engineering Works. The orders they get are delivered from (probably) the regional soviet, the requisitions they make from other local plants, factories etc are on the basis that they're fulfilling their quotas.

If it's decided, for instance, that a hypothetical East Anglian region needs 200 new buses and 4,000 new cars, the rep of the former-Ford-now-Dagenham-People's-Engineering-Works says 'we can build 100 buses and 3,000 new cars', then they're given responsibility for fulfilling that and the East Anglian super-soviet gets in touch with the South Central England super-soviet and says 'you've got a couple of car plants, we need 100 buses and 1,000 cars, Dagenham can't fulfill all our orders' and South Central England says 'sure, we've got 2 car plants, we can get you those in three months'.

Meanwhile, East Anglia is busy sending cabbages off to South Central, North Central (in Nottingham), West Central (in Birmingham), South West England (in Exeter)... lots of cabbages in East Anglia. South West England and North Central England are busy making sure everyone has enough cheese, South Central is sending bread up and down the country, and North West England is busy supplying cakes named after small towns to anyone who wants some.

That's really not all that complicated.

[the zizekian]

No it does not arise from illusions it arises from the reality that the labour required to reproduce labour power is less than the labour that the labour power can yield. For this to occur you have to have the possibility to acquire money and use it to buy labour power. If labour certificates do not circulate, this can not be done.

Capitalism can survive with no more than the accumulation that comes from self-exploitation.

[Paul Cockshott]

Capitalism can survive with no more than the accumulation that comes from self-exploitation.

This looks like a meaningless jumble of words. Give some concrete meaning to what you mean
by self exploitation
accumulation by self exploitation

[the zizekian]

This looks like a meaningless jumble of words. Give some concrete meaning to what you mean
by self exploitation
accumulation by self exploitation


Remember proletariat comes from “prole” which means children. Self-exploitation very concretely means exploiting yourself to raise our own children so that they themselves become exploitable later on by you.

[Paul Cockshott]

Remember proletariat comes from “prole” which means children. Self-exploitation very concretely means exploiting yourself to raise our own children so that they themselves become exploitable later on by you.

Well if you are exploiting your children that is not self exploitation, and if you are supporting children - non producers - with your labour then they are exploiting you. But in any case you seem to be refering to patriarchal economy not capitalism.

[the zizekian]

Well if you are exploiting your children that is not self exploitation, and if you are supporting children - non producers - with your labour then they are exploiting you. But in any case you seem to be refering to patriarchal economy not capitalism.

Capitalism can survive only by keeping alive paternalism just like China survives only by keeping alive Confucianism. Without Confucianism in China, its capitalism would rapidly become communism.

[Rafiq]

Capitalism can survive only by keeping alive paternalism just like China survives only by keeping alive Confucianism. Without Confucianism in China, its capitalism would rapidly become communism.

What a horridly Idealist assertion. The rise of Confucian ideology is not a cause, but a reflection of China's full turn to the capitalist mode of production. Without Confucianism, another obscure Ideology would take ahold.

[the zizekian]

What a horridly Idealist assertion. The rise of Confucian ideology is not a cause, but a reflection of China's full turn to the capitalist mode of production. Without Confucianism, another obscure Ideology would take ahold.

"Obscure" here can only mean in clear terms: self-relating or self-reflective.

[Rafiq]

"Obscure" here can only mean in clear terms: self-relating or self-reflective.

My, you really are a pretentious epidemic on this forum, aren't you?

What the hell are you trying to say? Spit it out, and with a tad bit of comprehensibility.

[Zulu]

If there is not enough power food and aluminium available, please explain how the addition of money is going to make some.

Addition of money helps regulate exchange. If there is "not enough" of something, its price goes up, the money cheapen (inflation), and before long, it's already just "enough" of that stuff to meet the solvent demand. That's the trick that the Soviets fell for after Stalin: "There is never shortage of anything under capitalism!"

But we're not Soviet revisionists to fall for this trick, and we actually want to get rid of money, right? So I ask again, what's your solution to the shortage of resources in your "council communism" (or whatever it is you call it)?

[the zizekian]

My, you really are a pretentious epidemic on this forum, aren't you?

What the hell are you trying to say? Spit it out, and with a tad bit of comprehensibility.

I'm not your slave!

[Blake's Baby]

Addition of money helps regulate exchange. If there is "not enough" of something, its price goes up, the money cheapen (inflation), and before long, it's already just "enough" of that stuff to meet the solvent demand. That's the trick that the Soviets fell for after Stalin: "There is never shortage of anything under capitalism!"

But we're not Soviet revisionists to fall for this trick, and we actually want to get rid of money, right? So I ask again, what's your solution to the shortage of resources in your "council communism" (or whatever it is you call it)?


If there is not enough power food and aluminium available, please explain how the addition of money is going to make some.

One cannot readily burn money to make power, one cannot easily eat it, and as the aluminium content of money is small it's difficult to make bikes out of.

The answer 'buy it' is not permissable here, however, because you have said that it isn't available. So there's nowhere to buy it from.

If however it is 'available to buy', then it is 'available'.

So what you're saying in this case is, 'what if capitalists want to hold on to it and drive up the price/cripple the revolution by cutting off supplies?' to which I would answer:

If it's in the revolution, then we take the aluminium to make bikes (though probably in the middle of a war bikes might not be our highest priority) or if it is after the revolution has been successfully concluded, where are the capitalists coming from? How can they monopolise distribution of resources? Are you sure you've won the revolution comrade? Looks like you're still in capitalism to me.

...

We don't want to 'regulate exchange' because there is no exchange in socialism. Just production for use. Seems like, yet again, you don't know the difference between capitalism and communism.

[the zizekian]

We don't want to 'regulate exchange' because there is no exchange in socialism. Just production for use. Seems like, yet again, you don't know the difference between capitalism and communism.

In communism, there is only production for gifts.

[Zulu]

We don't want to 'regulate exchange' because there is no exchange in socialism. Just production for use. Seems like, yet again, you don't know the difference between capitalism and communism.
How are you going to deal with shortages?

[the zizekian]

How are you going to deal with shortages?

With a new kind of terror.

[Blake's Baby]

How are you going to deal with shortages?

How exactly does money overcome shortages?

If something is not there, it is not there, money doesn't make it exist.

If it is there, it is there, money is no help.

The only time money is necessary is when it is there but someone doesn't want to give it up. Is that the sort of shortage you mean? So not shortages, so much as capitalists refusing to give up 'their' wealth?

The answer is 'revolution does not necessarily mean we will ask nicly and pay the capitalists'.

After the revolution, when there are no capitalists, how will money make any difference?

[the zizekian]

With a new kind of terror.

Zizek, at time 22:00 of this video, explains that our first choice has to be terror because it is a wrong one:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7QcrcNnEJQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7QcrcNnEJQ)

[Zulu]

How exactly does money overcome shortages?

If something is not there, it is not there, money doesn't make it exist.

If it is there, it is there, money is no help.

The only time money is necessary is when it is there but someone doesn't want to give it up. Is that the sort of shortage you mean? So not shortages, so much as capitalists refusing to give up 'their' wealth?

The answer is 'revolution does not necessarily mean we will ask nicly and pay the capitalists'.

After the revolution, when there are no capitalists, how will money make any difference?
Will you please forget about money and answer kindly my question:

How are you going to deal with shortages?

[ckaihatsu]

How are you going to deal with shortages?





How exactly does money overcome shortages?

If something is not there, it is not there, money doesn't make it exist.

If it is there, it is there, money is no help.

The only time money is necessary is when it is there but someone doesn't want to give it up. Is that the sort of shortage you mean? So not shortages, so much as capitalists refusing to give up 'their' wealth?

The answer is 'revolution does not necessarily mean we will ask nicly and pay the capitalists'.

After the revolution, when there are no capitalists, how will money make any difference?





In communism, there is only production for gifts.


Zulu has a valid point -- while developed, existing productivity and capacity both allow for much material abundance, it's obvious that the necessary *social relations* to realize that untapped abundance do *not* exist, while capitalism is still around.

And, while many common, life-necessary items could readily be produced and distributed under a workers production to eliminate barbarity, many items would be more "iffy" and might continue to be "scarce" if they didn't enjoy common mass political support. This is where the market would undoubtedly take over and encourage a de-mass-politicization, back to private interests.

It's necessary to address how items beyond those for mass humane consumption could be administrated-for, so as to head off competition from privatization.








Effectively all liberated labor would be entirely "volunteer" labor. As long as enough people were available to produce a per-item surplus for everyone in the world -- through co-running fully collectivized production -- it wouldn't matter in the least if everyone else worked or not, pragmatically speaking.








It's about distribution systems. Communism (socialism with communal distribution) is usually conceived as a gift economy, but I think a democratic-community model of distribution is a much more accurate depiction of what the intent is. Hypothetically you could have various cities democratically deciding to have different distribution models for different product groups. That seems the most workable model to me.

- Market
- Labor vouchers
- Communal-Democratic
- Gift





This is an excellent point, one I'm surprised we haven't seen earlier. You're placing these various, differentiated methods of distribution on a sliding scale according to the relative *abundance* of the component goods and services produced within.

Perhaps, then, one of the major tasks of a mass collectivized political economy administrating all of this would be to simply categorize *all* goods and services according to their abundant availability, on this sliding scale -- I picture it as a circular bulls-eye centralized point of (all) production, radiating its production outward, with gift distribution closest to the center (indicating abundance), then a bulk-pooled communal-democratic method outside of that, followed by a ratio-based labor voucher system outside of that, with a market-type system (of floating exchange rates) on the outlying peripheral area for least-common and more-specialized items.

tinyurl.com/6dxc8v6

[Zulu]

- I picture it as a circular bulls-eye centralized point of (all) production, radiating its production outward, with gift distribution closest to the center (indicating abundance), then a bulk-pooled communal-democratic method outside of that, followed by a ratio-based labor voucher system outside of that, with a market-type system (of floating exchange rates) on the outlying peripheral area for least-common and more-specialized items

Wow... This actually sounds horrible. Although this kind of reflects the reality of Soviet Union, where the Moscowites had the best access to consumer goods, then came citizens of the republican and regional centers... and the rural dwellers usually enjoyed the least access and variety. Obviously it was due to the low stage of the development of communism and the remaining contradictions characteristic to capitalism.

But if you consider this to be normal and would even institutionalize it, you'll get a caste system, not communism in the end...

Under socialism equality should be promoted even if it means increased costs of delivery of certain products to the periphery, and also by discouraging excessive consumption by those who technically are able to gain access to unlimited supplies of something.

[ckaihatsu]

I picture it as a circular bulls-eye centralized point of (all) production, radiating its production outward, with gift distribution closest to the center (indicating abundance), then a bulk-pooled communal-democratic method outside of that, followed by a ratio-based labor voucher system outside of that, with a market-type system (of floating exchange rates) on the outlying peripheral area for least-common and more-specialized items





Wow... This actually sounds horrible. Although this kind of reflects the reality of Soviet Union, where the Moscowites had the best access to consumer goods, then came citizens of the republican and regional centers... and the rural dwellers usually enjoyed the least access and variety. Obviously it was due to the low stage of the development of communism and the remaining contradictions characteristic to capitalism.

But if you consider this to be normal and would even institutionalize it, you'll get a caste system, not communism in the end...

Under socialism equality should be promoted even if it means increased costs of delivery of certain products to the periphery, and also by discouraging excessive consumption by those who technically are able to gain access to unlimited supplies of something.


Yes, I understand your reaction -- allow me to clarify.

This isn't meant to be *geographic* based, but rather *production* based. Given a certain productive capacity spread out over a certain number of plants there would be a certain coverage, per-item, according to the liberated labor put in.

If there is a "scarcity" or "periphery" for any item then that should be addressed by increasing capacity and participation accordingly.

[Blake's Baby]

Will you please forget about money and answer kindly my question:

How are you going to deal with shortages?

I am at a loss to answer your question because I don't know what it means.

'I' am not going to deal with shortages.

What shortages? Shortages of food? Shortages of ocean liners? Shortages of toilet paper? Shortages of Pokemon Cards?

You give me an idea of what is short supply, and I might be able to tell you whose responsibility I think it would probably be to sort it.

In general, shortages of necessities in the lower stage of communism will be handled with rationing, I suspect, and there are no shortages in the higher stage.

Shortages of necessities in the dictatorship of the proletariat will I suspect be handled in the same manner.

Shortages of luxuries... well, I think again there's likely to be a ration; but as they're luxuries not necessities, I suspect that there'd be some wibble-room for people to get more if they wanted more and not have the thing if they didn't want it.

[Zulu]

Yes, I understand your reaction -- allow me to clarify.

This isn't meant to be *geographic* based, but rather *production* based. Given a certain productive capacity spread out over a certain number of plants there would be a certain coverage, per-item, according to the liberated labor put in.
Well, if you want to reduce all production centers to distribution centers, that certainly lifts the question of how such services as education, healthcare, entertainment, etc. will be "delivered" to all members of society - in the same "bull's eye" manner as everything else. But what about the transport? How will it operate? What about such big things as space exploration? BTW, how this system will be any different from the market system, seeing how it will basically be the "lowest common denominator" operating in the remote areas (production grid will still be dependent on geographic conditions, no way around that; no way to distribute all production evenly, even if only for the uneven distribution of natural resources)?

I think I can't even imagine the system you propose, because to me it gets ridiculous and unworkable before I can get there (the caste-based distribution system I thought of in the previous post can work at least).

The problem many proposals of socialist organization is that they are constructed from the point of what's best for a single factory or kolkhoz. And for the single factory or kolkhoz best of all is, of course, a situation, when it gets to exploit other factories and kolkhozes.





If there is a "scarcity" or "periphery" for any item then that should be addressed by increasing capacity and participation accordingly.
So who gets to make the decision when, where, and how exactly to increase production? Who gets to resolve the conflicts of interests between the production centers?

And the question to top them all, whatever the operation principle of your version of Utopia is, how do we get there from where we are now (after having a revolution)?

[Zulu]

In general, shortages of necessities in the lower stage of communism will be handled with rationing, I suspect, and there are no shortages in the higher stage.

Who decides who gets better rations? Let's think power, for starters. Suppose you're at 75% supply of your society-wide need of power. Who will do the prioritizing? What happens to the workers' collectives who are not allocated power? Say, your bicycle factory is allocated only 50% of power (because, say, the agriculture got 100% of what it needs), what happens to the workers - do they go home and get a free lunch?





Shortages of luxuries... well, I think again there's likely to be a ration; but as they're luxuries not necessities.
Who gets to draw the fine line between the luxuries and necessities?

[L.A.P.]

What's missing here is an acknowledgement that real-world *conditions* of revolution may vary -- we would have to speak in terms of best-case and worst-case scenarios.

Best-case is that everything happens quickly and money instantly becomes obsolete and anachronistic -- this would equate to the resounding defeat of the bourgeoisie on a worldwide mass basis and the quick dissolution of its state. It would be replaced more-or-less in a bottom-up organic way with production rapidly reorganized on vast scales (for economies of scale and efficiency).

Worst-case is that there's an ongoing situation of dual-power where contending forces from the bourgeoisie and proletariat linger on in protracted labor-based battles, both political and physical. World public opinion remains divided and the class war takes on the characteristics of a country-by-country civil war between the classes. In such a situation it would be more-than-understandable for revolutionary forces to call for the seizing of the state, and to use it in an authoritarian, top-down way in the interests of the workers' forces, against the imperialists. This could include a system of labor vouchers, in an attempt to assert some kind of consistent economic valuation system, as counterposed to imperialist/colonialist resource extraction, corporatist/militarist syndicalism, and market-type commodity-production valuations.


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

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


My, my, this thread is flourishing with Utopians and dreamers of all sorts. No Communist current, with any Marxist sympathies has outlined a blueprint for what it will do after a supposed revolution.

A revolution is not the fulfillment and realization of your Ideas. Do not take a revolution as some kinds of means for your glorious, flowery Utopian Ideas to be for filled and expressed in reality.

It is you, those of you who are criticizing people over "YOU DIDN'T ABOLISH MONEY!" who have bastardized and re invented the Communist movement into a movement of Utopians who simply want a new society, who are abstract from capitalism and have their glorious blueprint to put forth, for all to adhere to. Then, it becomes a battle over Ideas, of Capitalism vs Communism, or any of that other nonsense.

Any Marxist would reply to this with a simple, short answer: During a time of Revolutionary struggle, after a revolution, should they deem it necessary, then yes. Should material conditions point in the other direction, no. The material circumstances which could allow us to predict such an irrelivent, and specific demand do not exist, and therefore predictions made otherwise are done only by fortune tellers.

Those who are communists because it sounds cool, because the society that is "Proposed" seems cool or interesting to live in, are in for dissapointment. They are not Communists, but Utopian Socialists whom seek to destroy the emancipation of the proletariat in favor of their flowery fantasy land.

Here's the thing wrong with this whole line of thought, you're making an ideology and pseudo-theory out of the historical situation of the post-WWI revolutions. This is fallacious. The Russian Revolution was doomed to begin with, it was-for lack of a better term-a historical necessity for the Soviet Union to develop bourgeois society before they could even overthrow it. And the German Revolution, which was essential to the Russian Revolution considering Germany was a fully developed capitalist society rich with resources, was a strategic failure. Large part having to do with allowing the social democratic bourgeoisie co-opt the movement and stop the German vanguard from transitioning power to the soviets.

How is it utopian to take apart a symbolically structured aspect of capitalism? What is the revolution fighting for then? Capital is not a material substance sustaining our "physical" reality, where if we abolished it we would all explode. The circulation of capital is a symbolic structure cutting us off from our immediate material needs. Workers should be focused on seizing the grocery stores, the warehouses, etc. and distributing good based on the interest of sustaining the newly restructured society. Any compromise is soaked in bourgeois ideology.

[Koba Junior]

Here's the thing wrong with this whole line of thought, you're making an ideology and pseudo-theory out of the historical situation of the post-WWI revolutions. This is fallacious. The Russian Revolution was doomed to begin with, it was-for lack of a better term-a historical necessity for the Soviet Union to develop bourgeois society before they could even overthrow it. And the German Revolution, which was essential to the Russian Revolution considering Germany was a fully developed capitalist society rich with resources, was a strategic failure. Large part having to do with allowing the social democratic bourgeoisie co-opt the movement and stop the German vanguard from transitioning power to the soviets.

How is it utopian to take apart a symbolically structured aspect of capitalism? What is the revolution fighting for then? Capital is not a material substance sustaining our "physical" reality, where if we abolished it we would all explode. The circulation of capital is a symbolic structure cutting us off from our immediate material needs. Workers should be focused on seizing the grocery stores, the warehouses, etc. and distributing good based on the interest of sustaining the newly restructured society. Any compromise is soaked in bourgeois ideology.

I'm shocked that there was no bourgeoisie in Russia at the time of the revolution.

[L.A.P.]

I'm shocked that there was no bourgeoisie in Russia at the time of the revolution.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2432451&postcount=24

There was a bourgeoisie, and some factions of it supported the Bolsheviks.

[Koba Junior]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2432451&postcount=24

There was a bourgeoisie, and some factions of it supported the Bolsheviks.

So what was the need to develop "bourgeois society," then?

[Rooster]

So what was the need to develop "bourgeois society," then?

Did the bourgeois spontaneously appear in 1789 France?

[Kotze]

How exactly does money overcome shortages?Money overcomes shortages in two ways, and this also applies to labour vouchers (which are nevertheless not money if we go by how these terms were used by Marx and Engels):

The already produced consumer stuff is allocated based on who signals the strongest demand for this or that stuff. The signals are also used to adjust proportions between production processes for the different types of stuff.

How equitable that is obviously depends on how unequally distributed these consumption points or whatever you want to call it are and how consistently time and effort are measured. Suppose there's no big income disparity, what's wrong then with people buying their consumption, even essentials like food? It's much simpler than a system with rigid allocation quotas for consumption or a system where you have to argue with a horde of well-meaning bureaucrats who know better than you what you want. I don't drink milk, so I don't buy it (http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxs-labor-theory-t167212/index.html?p=2365623#post2365623).

Consumption doesn't always work well as a decision left to people acting as individuals though, for several reasons: positional goods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good) (but I think this prob will already shrink a lot as the income disparity shrinks), network effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect), increasing returns to scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Returns_to_scale), and it's sometimes very hard to separate consumers from non-consumers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability) (media). Labour vouchers should be the next default way for consumption, with other ways tested in small steps. These may include a type of more restricted vouchers (http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxs-labor-theory-t167212/index.html?p=2364510#post2364510) for people who don't work (I'm not particularly enthusiastic about that) and "free" (=paid by land value tax) local public transport.

[Koba Junior]

Did the bourgeois spontaneously appear in 1789 France?

Is there any need to develop a bourgeoisie when it's already present?

[Rooster]

Is there any need to develop a bourgeoisie when it's already present?

I notice that you forgot to mention the word "society".

[Tim Finnegan]

Money overcomes shortages in two ways, and this also applies to labour vouchers (which are nevertheless not money if we go by how these terms were used by Marx and Engels):

The already produced consumer stuff is allocated based on who signals the strongest demand for this or that stuff. The signals are also used to adjust proportions between production processes for the different types of stuff.

How equitable that is obviously depends on how unequally distributed these consumption points or whatever you want to call it are and how consistently time and effort are measured. Suppose there's no big income disparity, what's wrong then with people buying their consumption, even essentials like food? It's much simpler than a system with rigid allocation quotas for consumption or a system where you have to argue with a horde of well-meaning bureaucrats who know better than you what you want. I don't drink milk, so I don't buy it (http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxs-labor-theory-t167212/index.html?p=2365623#post2365623).
State capitalism as the road of lesser bureaucracy. That's a new one.


At any rate, I don't understand why any of this stuff requires the existence of exchange-values- money being a circulatory expression of exchange-value, labour-vouchers being a non-circulatory one. If signalling's all your after, then any system of credit would seem quite capable of doing the trick.