Communism with money?

Do any of you envision that it might be possible to achieve communism whilst retaining a monetary system? I know this is anti-Marxian, but there was still a monetary system of sorts, as much as he chose to elaborate on it--labor vouchers. Instead of the fiat system or a gold standard, is there some way labor efforts could be aligned with monetary rewards without throwing out the whole monetary system?

isnt that syndicalism? i think so atleast.

Labor vouchers only partially retain the characteristics and the significance of money, insofar as they cannot be exchanged for the means of production and are not to be transferred from one person to the next (think of it as credit cards with labor performed being directly transposed to labor worth of products people want to consume).

What is achieved this way is basically ensuring renumeration based on labor time while the productive powers of mankind are still insufficient to enable free access.

The answet is simple: no. Communism originated from Latin word that means common. And when everything is common, there can't be monetary system. There is nothing to exchange with nobody.

The economic principle of communism is from each according to his work from each according to need, which means there is no exchange of goods on some non use value basis. Money is meant to facilitate the exchange of goods for a non use value criteria. So no money won't be present.

It is somewhat hard to think of a society where money does not exist. Of course this is only because I have been raised in a strongly capitalist environment.

Perhaps there could be a monetary system, but I provide the same argument that I do with capitalists and ancaps: What's the point? I mean, money is just there and a thing. There really is no point to money, at least not a rational one.

Money is a commodity and is intrinsically linked to labour power and labour time.

"The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money.

It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time."

Karl Marx. Capital Volume One

Chapter Three: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities

Yeah I guess so. I always just thought syndicalism could exist within a capitalist economy. There's no rule stating how a corporation has pay it's staff, or a commune couldn't register as a corp.

So what about if you just nationalize all the productive equipment?

I was a miner in the UK when the mines were nationalized and was on the picket line during the 1984 Miner's strike. I can tell you that nationalisation has nothing to do with communism or working class interests. I did not feel that I had any control or ownership in the mine. Coal was produced for the market to make a profit and I still received a wage slip - proof of my exploitation.

There is actually no evidence that a barter system has ever existed, hard as it is to believe. Money is one of the oldest "inventions", if you can call it that.

Allowing people to define their own needs is a little problematical isn't it? If there are more needs than resources, labor tokens or something would be one way to decide who gets priority.

I'm aware that money is just an invention. It's stupid, and quite pointless. Monetary system: Credo quia absurdum.

Yeah I don't feel like I have any real stake in my countries "public" resources either. That's why I'm happy for (most) of them to be sold off ...lol

But in communism everything will be yours and mine. That's why I'm so happy when I think about communism. :)

Honestly, why would you want one? The monetary system however devised is stupid as fuck and I think we've as a species have gotten to old to be playing with monopoly money now. What would even be the point? What purpose would it serve under full Communism?

I haven't really read most of this, but contemplating whether or not it would be possible to retain money in communist society is not only idealist, but also pointless. Communism is specifically a 'society of free producers,' not only would money be superfluous, but the idea of reintegrating it into the social system, inherently entails with it the reintroduction of markets, which itself is merely a belief that sociological evolution can be turned back (a belief also shared by many primitivists, which is no more logical then the belief that the turning back of evolution, in the realm of natural science, is possible). Similarly that is also why I am a detractor to Ticktin's theory of the USSR being a non-mode of production, although that's not very relevant. Anyways, yeah, this discussion seems somewhat futile to me.

Yeah - it's an interesting phenomenon. People assume, because it's "common sense" that money evolved from a "barter system" but it's not really true. Have you read David Graeber's Debt? He investigates the origins of money in some detail.

I don't know about other parts of the world, but there is strong evidence that barter existed all across the Australian continent prior to European contact, and indeed between Northern Australians, Papuans and Macassans from Sulawesi. Most of this involved valuable resources (e.g. dyes for plants, etc. etc.)

http://aija.org.au/Aboriginal%20Benc...hapter%202.pdf

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]

I can provide more links if you'd like.

i'd be happy to get a check for being a communist, but in a communist system, no there would not be any money. omnia sunt communia

I think the *simple* answer is 'no' -- with full and universal free-access we could finally move past our reliance on petty, ground-level exchanges of all kinds, and instead have a direct distribution from producers to consumers.


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So if material realities *don't* allow for free-access there *would* need to be some method of prioritization -- I typically use the example of a one-time, in-person event (like a rock concert), where general demand for attendance could easily exceed the physical capacity of the venue -- which could also conceivably occur in a post-capitalist social context.

Labor vouchers *could* fill this role of individualized economic prioritizations -- as we're used to doing with today's money -- while eliminating the vagaries of the financial realm, since labor vouchers couldn't be used to buy and sell the means of mass (industrial) production.

I myself, though, have reservations about the labor voucher system as a whole, since it begs the question of *valuation* -- what is one labor voucher, exactly, and how is its value arrived-at -- ?

No I haven't. Thanks for the recommendation.

Interesting idea. Shouldn't you factor something in about the usefulness of the work? Would labouring as a Dr value the same as acting in a porno?

Yep, I hear ya.

Here's the relevant part from the model, attached -- have at it....



communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://s6.postimage.org/nwiupxn8t/25...Rh_JMHF_fs.jpg

No that is not syndicalism.

Syndicalists have the same goals as all other communists, just different methods for getting there. If syndicalists wanted communism to have money they would not be communists. In fact the only syndicalists who want this are anarcho-syndicalists who also happen to be mutualists. This is an extremely small group even compared to syndicalism as a whole. The vast majority of syndicalists want communism and therefore a society that eventually has no money. Those who do not are not communists.

As an anarcho-syndicalist i advocate a stateless, classless, moneyless, marketless society. I even oppose labour vouchers during the revolutionary period and instead favour rationing based on need. In fact the primary anarcho-syndicalist organisation in the world, the International Workers Association (IWA-AIT), advocates "libertarian communism". Whether you'd consider the descriptor 'libertarian' as useful or not it doesn't change the fact most anarcho-syndicalists (possibly other syndicalists too) advocate communism, that is a moneyless society.

Money equals greed, greed equals power, and power equals force, remove the monetary system all together and we are good to go. Anyway, why does a green piece of paper with a number on it worth anything? The thing is it isn't, we are forced to use this trash or we will go into the industrial slums living crappy lives with barely any food on the table.

I have an anarcho-syndicalist group in my local area and they say that they want t get rid of the state and have a socialist economy, (so there is money) this is according to them and not me so thats what i thought.

I believe labor credits would (or could) still be used under socialism, which can be seen as the lower stage of communism. According to Marx, since socialism develops out of capitalism, it would be "stamped with its birthmarks". Labor credits, being similar to but not the same as money, would replace money first, before the complete elimination of money and labor credits altogether in the higher stage of communism.

But it may be possible to do without it.

If there is some kind of credit or money in socialism, I think the point would be to increase our ability to make useful abundance to the point where basic things would become increasingly devalued. Capitalism already has this tendency but it results in crashes in the profit-system and so you get things like farm subsidies to incentivise small farmers not growing crops. With socialism however, if we can grow food to feed everyone it can become essentially "free" and money or some kind of voucher would only be needed for things that aren't easily available. So money of some kind would probably have a nominal role right after a revolution, but the goal of our efforts would be not to preserve this, but to make it irrelevant: communism.

The actual currency that we have now would survive probably... preserved in museums (some of the designs of money are quite nice and interesting).

Well, anarchists and stalinists do have different definitions of socialism. When anarchists talk about socialism, they mostly have communism in their mind. As in - a classless, stateless, moneyless society. I've never really been in contact with a pro-money anarchist.

Maybe the anarchists you know are such, but I highly doubt it.

Also, the labour vouchers anarcho-syndicalists sometimes talk about are thought as needed in revolutionary times when there is still scarcity in products. The ultimate goal is still a communist, gift economy.

I'll respectfully point out that the 'higher stage' of communism, while desirable, sounds increasingly to me like a *religious* concept -- of heaven, the hereafter, etc. It doesn't help either us as revolutionaries or the cause of communism to adopt an abstract concept that also sounds "post-materialist" and makes us shut off our thinking about such a society *in* a realistic, materialist context.

The matter of material accounting -- with labor credits or whatever -- will remain a pressing question, along with the issue of luxury goods, and it would be better to be as decisive as possible on these, earlier rather than later.

We shouldn't be satisfied to pretend that there could be a point of historical *stasis* sometime in the future, post-revolution. With a fully liberated technological drive we would undoubtedly see a *faster* pace of developments, which would only *beg* the question of who-gets-what-and-when.