U.S. Government cannot print money

[Kotze]

If I recall correctly, he was paraphrasing a statement made in French.

By Louis Blanc.

If calling the articles I posted, "crap", is the best you can muster then that speaks volumes for your "intellectual strength". You say you read the articles but I frankly doubt it.

Take a look at the quotes and responses in post #14. In post #16 I point out the contradictory nature of Hardcastle's account, first money is claimed to be valuable because of the production cost, then it's the quantity.

And now to the 70s: Look up the 1973 oil crisis, there was an embargo due to the US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In the late 70s, there was another oil supply prob due to the situation in Iran.

So let me ask a question - if the labour voucher scheme no longer exists in the higher phase of communism on what grounds do you suppose that people then would still be "remunerated".

People will continue to be remunerated for their work because the higher phase, taken literally, won't happen. What will happen is a bit of a movement in that direction based on what the economic and cultural development allows, not some point where someone snaps their fingers and says we have the higher phase now. "Das Recht kann nie höher sein als die ökonomische Gestaltung und dadurch bedingte Kulturentwicklung der Gesellschaft." Reading your hippie beliefs into Marx (higher phase indeed) is like reading Deng Xiaoping into Marx: "Accumulate, accumulate!"

No, I have to correct myself, it's actually worse, instant abolishment of remuneration is more like a suicide cult.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Would you care to discuss my critique of Chartalism in my Theory thread?

[robbo203]

.Take a look at the quotes and responses in post #14. In post #16 I point out the contradictory nature of Hardcastle's account, first money is claimed to be valuable because of the production cost, then it's the quantity..

The "contradiction" you refer to was actually dealt with in the link I gave where a distinction is made between the quantity theory of money and Marx's own theory

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/EdDoc%28Inflation%29.rtf

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And now to the 70s: Look up the 1973 oil crisis, there was an embargo due to the US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In the late 70s, there was another oil supply prob due to the situation in Iran...

Yes I am aware of all this but what has this got with the specific points I raised in response to your claim that the contraction in oil supplies which hit the global economy sparked off inflation? In fact the opposite happened. The rate of increase in the general price level caused by the excess issue of incontrovertible currency declined in the recession of 74/5 and only picked up when economic growth improved. You might want to argue that the oil crisis cauused a recession but you cannot argue that a recession causes the general price level to rise because on the contrary, recessions have quite the oppiosite effect. They reduce the general price level

At all times governments have control over the issue of currency. They can cap it at any time they wish and stop inflation in its tracks but decline to do so for various reasons explained in the article I posted. Governments and governments alone cause inflation by allowing it to happen. They can if they so wish. In fact the UK government did so in the 1920s bringing inflation swiftly to an end. What governments cannot do, however, is prevent crises because the trade cycle is built into capitalism. Keynesian pump priming policies which capitalist parties of all hues went in for in the post war era were predicated on the argument that recessions could be overcome by "injecting demand" into the economy, a naive claim that encouraged governments to abandon any cap on the note issue. Keynes called Marx's ideas irrelevant but in fact Marx's ideas have stood the test of time and Keynes' theories have been more or less discredited.

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People will continue to be remunerated for their work because the higher phase, taken literally, won't happen. What will happen is a bit of a movement in that direction based on what the economic and cultural development allows, not some point where someone snaps their fingers and says we have the higher phase now. "Das Recht kann nie höher sein als die ökonomische Gestaltung und dadurch bedingte Kulturentwicklung der Gesellschaft." Reading your hippie beliefs into Marx (higher phase indeed) is like reading Deng Xiaoping into Marx: "Accumulate, accumulate!".

Well now there are two separate issues here aren't there? One is your claim that "Unlike you, Marx did not pretend that work doesn't need to be renumerated in the future, but proposed labour vouchers.. " You have clearly have not been able to substantiate this claim in the least and you are still fumbling for some feeble pretext to back it up without any joy whatsoever. So I ask you again - if labour vouchers were clearly confined to the lower phase of communism in Marx's view what kind of arrangement would prevail in the higher phase is not the complete abandonment of remuneration altogether and the institutionalisation of the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need". Though Marx did not use the expression "free access to goods and services" in communism this is clearly what it means and what is meant by his assertion that products of industry are not "exchanged". Remuneration implies exchange. Ergo there can be no remuneration in a communist society.

The second issue concerns the viability of higher communism. I am quite happy to systematically demolish your arguments about this one by one although I think this really is straying from the subject matter of this thread and a new thread ought to be opened up for that purpose. I will only say here that you havent got a clue about what is entailed if you think it is a matter of someone snapping their fingers and annoucing the arrival of higher communism. On the contrary it has to be willed and understood by the great majority

.

No, I have to correct myself, it's actually worse, instant abolishment of remuneration is more like a suicide cult.

Ho hum. We will wait and see if , after youve finished scraping the barrel scouring through your bourgeois economic textbooks, you will be able to come up some evidence to disprove the viability of a system of generalised recipocrity - a communist gift economy. In the meanwhile I will keep my powder dry in expectation of this most unlikely event

By the way do the Kotze family members remunerate each for services rendered? Does mummy Kotze request payment up front every time she places a meal on the table? Does daddy Kotze demand remuneration when you ask for a lift to the train station? Just curious. Presumably this is the only reason why you have averted a potential tragedy in the form of the Kotze family committing collective suicide

[Kotze]

Blahblah in fact Marx's ideas have stood the test of time and Keynes' theories have been more or less discredited.

That's not a powerful statement when you don't know either.

Well now there are two separate issues here aren't there? One is your claim that "Unlike you, Marx did not pretend that work doesn't need to be renumerated in the future, but proposed labour vouchers.. " You have clearly have not been able to substantiate this claim in the least

I came to that stunning conclusion by reading a certain Karl Marx, in German, a language I am fluent in, not some hippie's "interpretation".

Though Marx did not use the expression "free access to goods and services" in communism this is clearly what it means and what is meant by his assertion that products of industry are not "exchanged".

You should pay more attention to the context sentences appear in. The statement that producers don't exchange their products is followed by the statement that the individual producer receives vouchers that enable consumption based on how much you work:

Innerhalb der genossenschaftlichen, auf Gemeingut an den Produktionsmitteln gegründeten Gesellschaft tauschen die Produzenten ihre Produkte nicht aus (...) Die individuelle Arbeitszeit des einzelnen Produzenten ist der von ihm gelieferte Teil des gesellschaftlichen Arbeitstags, sein Anteil daran. Er erhält von der Gesellschaft einen Schein, daß er soundso viel Arbeit geliefert (nach Abzug seiner Arbeit für die gemeinschaftlichen Fonds), und zieht mit diesem Schein aus dem gesellschaftlichen Vorrat von Konsumtionsmitteln soviel heraus, als gleich viel Arbeit kostet. Dasselbe Quantum Arbeit, das er der Gesellschaft in einer Form gegeben hat, erhält er in der andern zurück.

Right after that he explains how that looks very similar to what we have had before, but how it actually is different:

Es herrscht hier offenbar dasselbe Prinzip, das den Warenaustausch regelt, soweit er Austausch Gleichwertiger ist. Inhalt und Form sind verändert, weil unter den veränderten Umständen niemand etwas geben kann außer seiner Arbeit und weil andrerseits nichts in das Eigentum der einzelnen übergehn kann außer individuellen Konsumtionsmitteln.

"Content and form are changed, because under the changed circumstances no one can give anything else than his labour, and because nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption." He then says how such a scheme doesn't respect difference in need, eg. if you have children, and claims these problems are unavoidable in the beginnning. You have to keep in mind that certain amenities workers have today, at least in the more developed countries, didn't exist back then.

By the way do the Kotze family members remunerate each for services rendered?

That's a great example of how some things don't scale. I don't know how things work in the robbo family, but I happen to share more genes with my dad than with a random person on the street, which helps with things because personalities are partially determined by genes. More important is that in small groups we actually do reward doing stuff, even when we don't use contracts. There's always a bit of tit-for-tat going on. This informal reciprocity doesn't scale, because keeping track in your head even roughly of how much work everybody does becomes impossible as the number of people and tasks goes up.

So your hippie dream will never become reality.

[VNHCM]

Actually, Keynes's demand management (or pump priming money) aims to overcome crisis by increasing the rate of exploitation. If it was implement correctly, it would lead to lower the working class's living standard. Keynes was never shy about it. In The General Theory, he wrote:

“Thus it is fortunate that the workers, though unconsciously, are instinctively more reasonable economists than the classical school, inasmuch as they resist reductions of money-wages, which are seldom or never of an all-round character, even though the existing real equivalent of these wages exceeds the marginal disutility of the existing employment; whereas they do not resist reductions of real wages, which are associated with increases in aggregate employment and leave relative money-wages unchanged, unless the reduction proceeds so far as to threaten a reduction of the real wage below the marginal disutility of the existing volume of employment. Every trade union will put up some resistance to a cut in money-wages, however small. But since no trade union would dream of striking on every occasion of a rise in the cost of living, they do not raise the obstacle to any increase in aggregate employment which is attributed to them by the classical school.”

Unlike neoclassical economist who prefer to cut nominal wage (or using deflation). Keynes preferred to cut the worker's living standard by cutting real wage using inflation so there would be fewer obstacles posed by Unions to capitalist's profit restoration project.

Keynes's theory is by far discredited. In the reign of finance capital, it naturally hostile to Keynes's pump priming money since such policy will lower value of its holding. Meanwhile, all Unions are in moribund state. There is no reason to not impose "austerity".

[robbo203]

That's not a powerful statement when you don't know either.

I dont think you are in any position to pass comment on other people's comprehension of the subject matter when your own has been exposed as woefully lacking. Still think the oil crisis is what caused inflation during the 1970s, do you?

I came to that stunning conclusion by reading a certain Karl Marx, in German, a language I am fluent in, not some hippie's "interpretation".

Well perhaps then you might use those language skills your are continually showing off about to answer the simple question I have repeatedly asked you and which you have not deigned so far to answer: if labour vouchers were strictly confined to the lower phase of communism on what basis did Marx see wealth being appropriated in the higher phase of communism is not on a free access basis

You should pay more attention to the context sentences appear in. The statement that producers don't exchange their products is followed by the statement that the individual producer receives vouchers that enable consumption based on how much you work:Right after that he explains how that looks very similar to what we have had before, but how it actually is different:"Content and form are changed, because under the changed circumstances no one can give anything else than his labour, and because nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption." He then says how such a scheme doesn't respect difference in need, eg. if you have children, and claims these problems are unavoidable in the beginnning. You have to keep in mind that certain amenities workers have today, at least in the more developed countries, didn't exist back then.

The "context" in which labour vouchers are discussed by Marx is clear:

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor (my emphasis)

Labour vouchers, Marx is saying, and contrary to what you are saying, are resticted to the time when communist society is just emerging from capitalism and has not yet developed on its own foundations.

Having said that "Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products" Marx then goes on to point out that with the labour voucher scheme products are indeed subject to exchange. As far as individual means of consumption are concerned distribution of these among the individual producers means that "the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form. The clear inference to be drawn from this is the labour vouchers are in a sense a departure from communism proper, justified only becuase the first phase of communism is still stamped with the birthmarks of capitalism.

In communism proper - the higher phase of communiusm - there is no exchange. The producers do not exchange their products. Marx it seems to me is wanting to say that while there is exchange in the case of labour vouchers it is, at least, not capitalist exchange. Labour vouchers are not money - they do not circulate. But this whole apology for labour vouchers as a necessary but temporary expedient only underscores the fact that Marx's real objective is to do with all forms of exchange altogether in higher communism

That's a great example of how some things don't scale. I don't know how things work in the robbo family, but I happen to share more genes with my dad than with a random person on the street, which helps with things because personalities are partially determined by genes. More important is that in small groups we actually do reward doing stuff, even when we don't use contracts. There's always a bit of tit-for-tat going on. This informal reciprocity doesn't scale, because keeping track in your head even roughly of how much work everybody does becomes impossible as the number of people and tasks goes up.

This reminds me of Mrs Thatcher comments "there is no such thing as society only individuals and their families". The tongue-in-cheek example of Kotse family household was not intended as an extended proof of the viability of generalised recipocrity on a society wide scale but only as an opening salvo in debate on that subject if you wish to take up the challenge. There are plenty of other reasons for asserting the viability of communist gift economy based on generalised recipcity than this and incidentally in case you were not aware altruism is not limited to kin altruism even within the hallowed circle of evolutionary biologists

The Kotse family household is "not a great example of how things dont scale". Thats a silly comment when youthink about it. Its just an example of generalised reciprocity on a small scale - thats all. There is nothing about the fact that it appears in this case on a small scale that prevents it from operating also on a large scale. You make a totally unwarranted inference.

So your hippie dream will never become reality.

Another daft comments of yours that eerily echoes Mrs Thatcher: "There Is No Alternative" (TINA).