View?

[DUNKiNUTS]

My overall view of the whole governmental thing is that we need to just get rid of money and value system and get a credit system set up based off of hours/degree of hardness of work. You would allow a standard of living for everyone (the basics, house, clothes, food, education, health care, so on) But the extras (luxury) like better cars, better entertainment, odds-and-ins would all be based on your credits.

So my question is what view is that closest too?

[violencia.Proletariat]

thats a communist view. your view on "credits" is basically work vouchers but how long that system would last im not sure. it might just be used in the transitionary phase when luxuries are rare.

[Saketh]

Your view has a few parallels to Edward Bellamy's utopian socialism, propounded in his book Looking Backward.

But I must ask this: how would you measure someone's "hardness of work"? In capitalism, there is a mutual negotiation between employer and employee, which, though unfair, serves its purpose. However, it is far more difficult to decide how valuable a certain amount of a certain type of labour is. It is easy to place a value on labour-power, but not on labour. Remuneration in capitalism is based on the hours of labour, whereas remuneration in a utopian society is far more difficult to understand.

The value of a certain labour is defined as the amount of labour required to produce it. In other words, the value of the labour is the same as the value of the worker's means of subsistence.

The view that you hold regarding credit is very similar to Edward Bellamy's view, except that in Bellamy's society, everyone is presented with the same amount of credit, which is more than sufficient for basic needs.

Here is an online version of Looking Backward:http://eserver.org/fiction/bellamy/contents.html

[Donnie]

Thats pretty much what the Aragon front was doing in the Spanish Civil War, although I'm not sure about the luxuries part. The anarchists used a voucher system as a transition during the war. :)

[DUNKiNUTS]

Well the work difficulty will be on a tear system, i.e. ditch diggers, road painters, etc. tear 1; say the high tear is 8 that would be doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. People who effect others will be higher then ones who do luxury/non needed things (framers, movie production, cell phones, etc.). So it will will not be say on hours but it will, meaning if a ditch digger will still get say 10 credits no matter how long they work.

[Entrails Konfetti]

I say we should balance job difficulties,a worker will do menial and empowering labour in the course of a day,the garbage man will also be a technician on waste technology.All you need to do is educate. This way wages can be balanced and resonable.

Also,instead of profit, the money should go to the state,that way income tax in abolished.

[Clarksist]

No credits!!!

This is always being brought up as a way to revision communism and turn it around to capitalism.

Working for "credits" is oddly enough like working for (gasp) money! This will undoubtedly get out of control.

Example: "If you do this small part of work I'll give you some of my credits." You do that to enough people, you aren't working, but you are getting credits, and you start getting profits, suddenly we are back to square one.

Credits will never work. They will only be a way to have capitalism linger for some ass to capitalize (pun slightly intended) on the situation.


The anarchists used a voucher system as a transition during the war.


How "anarchistic".

[violencia.Proletariat]

the only reason i can see work vouchers useable is if there are luxuries that are scarce, and you have a voucher saying you worked the ammount of hours that it took to produce the luxury you want. but im still skeptical of this

[Donnie]

How "anarchistic".
I never said it was anarchistic, I said they were using it as a transition during the war. I never said they wanted to incorperate it.

[DUNKiNUTS]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2005, 04:24 AM
the only reason i can see work vouchers useable is if there are luxuries that are scarce, and you have a voucher saying you worked the ammount of hours that it took to produce the luxury you want. but im still skeptical of this
That is kind of along the lines of what i was thinking, just limit the luxuries or just make them whenever joe-smo gets his credits. But to have a system that allows equal ability for these credits and luxuxrise (i.e. a curise, or a boat or skis).

[Entrails Konfetti]

You can have credits as long as profit doesn't exist, therefore you would need to make a new system of production,if everyone does both menial and empowering labour and decides where the products are supposed to be distrubuted then in theory it should work.And instead the profit becomes public spending.

I like the idea of a gift economy but,necessary measures have to be taken in order to get to that point,its a very advanced idea and you can't just jump into a gift economy.

[Djehuti]

The "disappearance of money" is meaningful only if it entails more than the replacement of one instrument for measuring value with another one (such as labor coupons). But you don't see money as the expression and abstraction of real relationships, but as a tool of measurement, an accounting device, and you thereby reduce communism to a different management of the same categories and fundamental components of capitalism.

Money is not the "evil" to be removed from an otherwise "good" production, but the manifestation (today becoming increasingly immaterial) of the commodity character of all aspects of life. It cannot be destroyed by eliminating signs, but only when exchange itself disappears as a social relationship.

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2005, 11:18 PM
Thats pretty much what the Aragon front was doing in the Spanish Civil War, although I'm not sure about the luxuries part. The anarchists used a voucher system as a transition during the war. :)
Yes, thats true. Agrarian collectives managed to do without money, and they often did so with the help of local currencies, with coupons often being used as "internal money". Sometimes money was handed over to the collective. Sometimes workers were given vouchers according to the size of their families, not to the amount of work done ("to everyone according to his needs"). Sometimes money played no part: goods were shared. An egalitarian spirit prevailed, as well as a rejection of "luxury". However, unable to extend non-commodity production beyond different autonomous zones with no scope for global action, the soviets, collectives and liberated villages were transformed into precarious communities, and sooner or later were either destroyed from within or violently suppressed by the fascists... or the republicans. In Aragon, the column of the Stalinist Lister made this a speciality. Entering the village of Calanda, his first act was to write on a wall: "Collectivizations are theft."

[Entrails Konfetti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2005, 11:57 PM

Money is not the "evil" to be removed from an otherwise "good" production, but the manifestation (today becoming increasingly immaterial) of the commodity character of all aspects of life. It cannot be destroyed by eliminating signs, but only when exchange itself disappears as a social relationship.
What about the capitalist mode of production and the way capitalist work places are set-up ?

[Djehuti]

What about it? The capitalist organisation of work, the commodity value, the capitalist mode of production, et cetera are all kind of stitched together. To abolish capitalism must also mean to abolish the commodity (a fundament of capitalism).

[Entrails Konfetti]

I was just wondering if you though the Capitalist organization and mode of production should be destroyed and replaced.

I think first and foremost the mode of production and the way the work place is operated should be smashed and changed. THEN we figure out how to gradually get rid of commodification. Balancing out the labour of empowering and menial would be a good start,then the notes based on the intensity of labour and finally to a gift economy.

I think the biggest thing thats been ignored when replacing the mode of production is that labour must be balanced. You will still have social-classes if you don't balance out the labour,the people with the crap jobs will be resentful towards the people with the empowering jobs who will want more incentive.

[anomaly]

How could we abolish private property if some received these 'luxury' items? I completely agree with all djehuti said. This concept of 'credits' may be used for transition from capitalism to communism, but it cannot be labeled 'communistic' in the least.