The Meaning of Money/Currency

[Josephine Garfunkel]

A thought I thought of recently. History teaches that currency evolved as a way to deal with different cultures/peoples trading, and that bartering was no longer effective. Living in America, a lot of fundamentalist right-wingers vilify Obama by claiming that he just wants people to have things for free. (Because of his abhorrent "socialist" agenda). And people tend to dislike any left-wing philosophies/politics because they see it as the workers not getting paid for anything/people not having to work for a living. But what if.... Why do they think only workers wouldn't be getting paid? What would happen if currency suddenly became useless? If everyone gets what they need, what need is there for actual physical money? And in all actuality, what use is money/currency when you can't use it? Taking money by itself, it stands for nothing. Currency is simply another object in the world. Keep in mind, just a thought. So, for a moment, imagine a world where people still worked. And some people didn't work. And no body used money or bartered. And no one starved to death on the streets. Do we really think people are so lazy that they won't realize that goods/services require work? And if there is no currency, what need is there for bosses/workers/governments/etc. The world runs on money, but take that away and it runs on people.

[ckaihatsu]

What would happen if currency suddenly became useless? If everyone gets what they need, what need is there for actual physical money? And in all actuality, what use is money/currency when you can't use it?


While the development of no unmet humane need *would* be a monumental event, I'd have to question to what extents, particularly geographically, that this would actually be the case.

I say this because, if there *is* anywhere that people are under duress to labor for the basics, then there *would* be something of a market there, and the resulting use of money / currency.

And, a second aspect would be that, even if social norms got to commonly freely providing the basics for life and living with no stigmas attached -- a societally enlightened norm -- I'd argue that it would only be a momentary *historical* stage, and that such a broad base of plenty would wind up being the foundation for *new* developments, introducing *new* kinds of inequalities and social stratification, barring a mass political revolution to consciously establish a wholly different mode of social production.

Sure, one could argue that even today people are living 'successfully' in ancient hunter-gatherer ways of life, so that it's possible to 'opt-out' of modern civilization and still be healthy, etc. But that is to dodge the question of money, then, and what it means in relation / in regards to the *norm* of living in the larger, commodified society.

If the commodity society overproduced to such an extent that its own monetary system became increasingly meaningless, that would be the equivalent of an historical "pause" since we're talking about the meaning of money in relation to *mass production* (and consumption), *not* about the satisfaction of people's basic human needs.

Without a proletarian revolution the widespread bounty would spur new civilizational developments, not unlike the *original* founding(s) of civilization based on the initial use of agriculture and *its* resulting surplus, for good and ill.

[Comrade #138672]

You are correct. Money by itself stands for nothing. Money is mystified in a way that people forget about the social nature of money and think of money as if it had value of its own.

But this is not the case. The value (exchange-value, that is) is derived from the way society is structured. Here lies the solution too. By structuring society in a different way, by moving from Capitalism to Socialism, we are able to transcend money and its limited exchange-value. A society based on producing use-value rather than exchange-value is way more productive than a society based on blind profit "incentives".

[Durruti's friend]

The "no incentive to work" is a common libertarian argument. We should consider it offensive, actually, because it assumes all people are lazy, stupid, no-good animals that need a leader in order to survive. As we know that is not true and that there would be methods of isolating free riders in a communist society, we get to the conclusion that the "no incentive argument" is invalid in essence.

In the end we understand there isn't a need for money in order for the human race to survive and that a gift economy is possible. But explaining that to libertarians is another thing...

Only to add, I believe a no-currency economy is higher on the "evolutionary scale" than our present system.

[Comrade #138672]

Karl Marx famously said that, if there had to be an "incentive" to work, then Capitalist society should have fallen a long time ago. Because the rich people who do not work get everything and the people who do work get nothing in return. Obviously, it is something else which "motivates" people to work.

Also, a scientific experiment has shown that toddlers who were "rewarded" for drawing, stopped drawing when the "reward" was taken away afterwards. However, when toddlers weren't "rewarded" at all, they continued to enjoy drawing compared to the toddlers who were "rewarded" for a while. So, you see, something else is the driving factor.

[ckaihatsu]

The "no incentive to work" is a common libertarian argument. We should consider it offensive, actually, because it assumes all people are lazy, stupid, no-good animals that need a leader in order to survive.


Yes.





As we know that is not true and that there would be methods of isolating free riders in a communist society, we get to the conclusion that the "no incentive argument" is invalid in essence.


I'll go one step further with this and say that even *this* position is too defensive and not positive enough -- how do we know that, given full political co-sovereignty over mass production, workers / people would want to do anything else *but* be workers, in such favorable conditions for it -- ?

Perhaps, in our current *commodity*-based global economics, we readily see that the preferable option is to be *consumers* of some sort, and to enjoy the relatively anointed social position that accompanies that role, over options for less-desired, dehumanizing, alienating labor roles.

But in a world where workers are self-empowered over all aspects of their collective domain, the position of 'consumer' might actually become less-desirable and increasingly meaningless, as comrades have alluded to on other threads.

Should we really internalize the concern that's been *imposed* on us by the likes of libertarians -- that of people wanting to *forfeit* their self-activity for the creation of a world finally under humanity's full conscious control, for the first time ever in history -- ? -- !





In the end we understand there isn't a need for money in order for the human race to survive and that a gift economy is possible. But explaining that to libertarians is another thing...




Only to add, I believe a no-currency economy is higher on the "evolutionary scale" than our present system.


I'll shockingly disagree here (grin), to note that the benefit of free-circulating currency is its flexibility in arranging (liberated) labor to meet the requirements of mass demand. I don't think there should be private property or finance capital, of course, but even those conditions don't preclude the use of a kind of labor-representing system of tokens -- more at my blog entry.

[Comrade Alex]

Money is just a piece of paper with some dead person printed on it, its just a shiny piece of metal that has been stamped with an image, when you think of it money is just some old object with no significance whatsoever and without the capitalist system It's worthless yet people are willing to kill thier own family for it, they are willing to cause pain and suffering for millions, they are willing to forsake thier education and spirituality for it, they are willing to sell themselves physically and mentally for it, and unfortunately they are willing to kill themselves for it
All this for a piece of paper, a shiny coin or just a plastic card with a barcode
"Money is the root of all evil"
1 Timothy 6:10 KJV

[ckaihatsu]

Money is just a piece of paper with some dead person printed on it, its just a shiny piece of metal that has been stamped with an image, when you think of it money is just some old object with no significance whatsoever and without the capitalist system It's worthless yet people are willing to kill thier own family for it, they are willing to cause pain and suffering for millions, they are willing to forsake thier education and spirituality for it, they are willing to sell themselves physically and mentally for it, and unfortunately they are willing to kill themselves for it
All this for a piece of paper, a shiny coin or just a plastic card with a barcode
"Money is the root of all evil"
1 Timothy 6:10 KJV


Money enables true individualism because without it our work and our politics would have to be one and the same -- think of an economics tied to patronage here, or feudalism or slavery.

This is a double-edged sword, of course, because, for a (revolutionarily) progressive politics, our work and our politics *should* be one and the same -- away from capitalist control, that is.

We may be living in a time, though, wherein the notion of a romantic rugged individualism has run its course, since today's immense disparities of wealth just turns such naive individualism into either curiosity or farce.

I'm always open to the idea of people becoming ennobled by a greater access to resources, if that's their inclination, but it's hardly guaranteed, of course -- much of it goes to mere jockeying for social status.

Nonetheless it's indisputable though that people's lives are generally richer for the benefits of civilization than without.

[Vilhelmo]

History teaches that currency evolved as a way to deal with different cultures/peoples trading, and that bartering was no longer effective.

History teaches no such thing.
There are no documented cases of any society using barter as its primary mode of exchange nor is there any evidence that barter occurred with anything but extreme rarity.
Neither is there any evidence that money evolve from barter or as a way to deal with different cultures/peoples trading.

Money was developed in the temples & palaces (public sector) of Bronze Age Sumer to coordinate resource flows and denominate debts owed to these public institutions