Competing Currencies?

[ckaihatsu]

You're certainly much over the line of economic knowledge (or it could be called better: ignorance) of this forum.

Hey, thanks -- y'know, us red-background-avatar types gotta stick together here.... (grin)

However, this definition of personal property isn't strict at all. And strict definition for it is needed for capitalism. In socialism (the first phase) the difference between personal property and collective one will be so clear that it wouldn't need any further clarification.

Well, we might simply use the workplace-fridge analogy, where everyone's brown bag for lunch should be labeled so that there's no confusion over whose food is whose. Likewise, in a post-private-property context, maybe everyone would just use RFID chips on everything that they want to lay claim to, with any disputes to be worked-through, possibly with the intervention of larger groupings, if necessary.

Also, I want to clarify point [1], in that the elimination of finance leaves open the use of *some* kind of currency, which I think would still be objectionable and inappropriate. The graphic in post #55 is meant to illustrate that even a socialism-minded 'labor vouchers' is problematic, too.

[Luís Henrique]

Socialists are opposed to monetary economy, so how do you feel about abolishing legal tender? Libertarians and Communists typically hose each other with spit during arguments, but, it seems to me, this is something both want? Communists don't have any interest in governments exercising exclusive power over what medium of exchange people can use, do you?

Gresham's law.

And if there is no legal tender, the effects are worse. Since workers need to be paid immediately, they are likely to accept worse money.

It isn't good for workers, and it is not good for the functioning of a capitalist economy as well.

And as it is against the interests of both fundamental classes in a capitalist society... it has no chance of being put on practice.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

So is making the state bigger or smaller the goal? I can never understand why communists want to make the state bigger when they are essentially anarchists. I don't understand why communists don't support libertarians in their goal to minimize the state. The state is apparently for the bourgeois. Let's libertarians and communists gang up on the state and sort out differences out later on.

Well, people who want the bulls to pull the carriage and people who want bulls to push it are fundamentally in agreement that the carriage should move forward. Unhappily the later suggest a method that will prevent that end from being attained. That's why pullerists won't support pusherists in their efforts to harness the bulls backwards.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

A state is a nonphysical juridical entity of the international legal system that is represented by one centralized government that has supreme independent authority over a geographic area.

And what is an "international legal system"? Ah, a system of relations between States. So this is a circular definition.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I don't doubt free healthcare is possible.

"Free" in the sence of "gratis" is a word that only makes sence in a monetary economy. It is "free" when it is not paid for. In a moneyless society, there won't be "free healthcare" because there will be no "paid healthcare" either.

Luís Henrique

[tuwix]

Well, we might simply use the workplace-fridge analogy, where everyone's brown bag for lunch should be labeled so that there's no confusion over whose food is whose. Likewise, in a post-private-property context, maybe everyone would just use RFID chips on everything that they want to lay claim to, with any disputes to be worked-through, possibly with the intervention of larger groupings, if necessary.

It would be good idea. But some clever guys would tag by RFID a houses worth more than $1,000,000, etc...

Also, I want to clarify point [1], in that the elimination of finance leaves open the use of *some* kind of currency, which I think would still be objectionable and inappropriate. The graphic in post #55 is meant to illustrate that even a socialism-minded 'labor vouchers' is problematic, too.

I think that replacing a money with an other equivalent of it during the first phase isn't particularly good idea. The best way is to accelerate growth to faster achieve an abundance of commodities and automation in unpleasant jobs. What do you thin about double currency? The one that would be deflationary and would serve as measure of salaries, and second one highly inflationary that would serve for taxation (to maintain exchangeability between both), social service, public investments, automation, commodities prices, etc. The first one would have fixed amount as bitcoin and second one would be printed to do listed above things in order to accelerate process of getting into conditions possible to get rid of money completely. What do you thin about that?

[liberlict]

And you claim that you're fascinated by Marx... And now do you ask what is exploitation?
The truth is that probably you've never read Marx...

I know what the Marxian idea of exploitation is. It is workers not getting the full value of their labour. It's amazingly simple.

Yes. Exploitation is everywhere, when there is a profit of someone else. And the will to be exploited has nothing to do with that. If one agrees to be slave, it doesn't means he isn't slave. He is very much.

OK, so you think that is exploitation. I don't. You say whenever somebody makes a loss from a consensual agreement they are being exploited. Of course there is no such thing as "consensual" in the Marxian world view is there .. we are all players in the narrative of historical materialism. No transaction is what it seems .. nobody has ownership of their own decisions. You have decided already for everybody. I could make up my own meta-historical schema just the same. Maybe your decisions can be explained by me?

In present world it's very easy. Corporate property isn't personal property at all. And in the UK each employer must be corporate and this is why all companies have Limited (Ltd.) responsibility. I don't know how it is in the USA, but I suppose there are similar regulations.

What, specifically, is 'corporate property'? Everything a corporation has legal title to?

[Kill all the fetuses!]

OK, so you think that is exploitation. I don't. You say whenever somebody makes a loss from a consensual agreement they are being exploited. Of course there is no such thing as "consensual" in the Marxian world view is there .. we are all players in the narrative of historical materialism. No transaction is what it seems .. nobody has ownership of their own decisions. You have decided already for everybody. I could make up my own meta-historical schema just the same. Maybe your decisions can be explained by me?

Could you, please, explain what do you understand as historical materialism?

[tuwix]

OK, so you think that is exploitation. I don't. You say whenever somebody makes a loss from a consensual agreement they are being exploited. Of course there is no such thing as "consensual" in the Marxian world view is there ..

And certainly everything what you agree under a gun touching you do you find consensual? I ask because this is exact "choice' that employers give to employees: you'll be deprived of of salary that is a part of your job called a profit or you can die due to famine...

What, specifically, is 'corporate property'? Everything a corporation has legal title to?

Yes.

[ckaihatsu]

It would be good idea. But some clever guys would tag by RFID a houses worth more than $1,000,000, etc...

You're just being argumentative here by doing the classic thing of substituting a blaming of technology / technical process, to sidestep the underlying unresolved *social* practice. As I already mentioned:

any disputes [would] be worked-through, possibly with the intervention of larger groupings, if necessary.

So the RFID-tagging thing is simply a social *overlay* on empirical reality -- it can't *substitute* for social relations themselves.

I think that replacing a money with an other equivalent of it during the first phase isn't particularly good idea. The best way is to accelerate growth to faster achieve an abundance of commodities and automation in unpleasant jobs.

Agreed.

What do you thin about double currency?

But then why are you backtracking here -- ?

If the initial plan is to 'accelerate growth', 'faster achieve an abundance of commodities', and 'automate unpleasant jobs', why *retard* that by tolerating any form of the wages system? Surely the political economy could be one of a gift economy for all of the essentials, to start, with a consciously *political* drive to rapidly expand that sphere of freely-available goods and services.

The one that would be deflationary and would serve as measure of salaries, and second one highly inflationary that would serve for taxation (to maintain exchangeability between both), social service, public investments, automation, commodities prices, etc. The first one would have fixed amount as bitcoin and second one would be printed to do listed above things in order to accelerate process of getting into conditions possible to get rid of money completely. What do you thin about that?

I'm not a Stalinist or a market socialist.

[tuwix]

possibly with the intervention of larger groupings, if necessary.

Then people should decide what is private property? Not bad idea.

If the initial plan is to 'accelerate growth', 'faster achieve an abundance of commodities', and 'automate unpleasant jobs', why *retard* that by tolerating any form of the wages system?

But who says about wage system? Economy is collective then there's no wage but salary paid as part of enterprise profit. But money are still valid...

Surely the political economy could be one of a gift economy for all of the essentials, to start, with a consciously *political* drive to rapidly expand that sphere of freely-available goods and services.

But certainly not all of them will be available... And then there is a problem what to do make them more and more and automate a production to get rid of money ASAP.

I'm not a Stalinist or a market socialist.

I didn't ask you about it, as I suppose. But I'd like to have your economic opinion about this my idea.

[ckaihatsu]

Then people should decide what is private property? Not bad idea.

Either you mean 'personal property' here, or else you're not even a revolutionary, if you mean 'private property' literally.

But who says about wage system? Economy is collective then there's no wage but salary paid as part of enterprise profit. But money are still valid...

You're a market socialist with this remark, and I'm not -- we're talking past each other.

Surely the political economy could be one of a gift economy for all of the essentials, to start, with a consciously *political* drive to rapidly expand that sphere of freely-available goods and services.

But certainly not all of them will be available... And then there is a problem what to do make them more and more and automate a production to get rid of money ASAP.

Yup -- I definitely agree with this.

I'm not a Stalinist or a market socialist.

I didn't ask you about it, as I suppose. But I'd like to have your economic opinion about this my idea.

I'm not an apologist for capitalism, either, so I don't give advice on how to bust unions -- I have no comment on something / anything that I think is inappropriate.

[tuwix]

Yup -- I definitely agree with this.

But you don't have solution for that...

[ckaihatsu]

Surely the political economy could be one of a gift economy for all of the essentials, to start, with a consciously *political* drive to rapidly expand that sphere of freely-available goods and services.

But certainly not all of them will be available... And then there is a problem what to do make them more and more and automate a production to get rid of money ASAP.

Yup -- I definitely agree with this.

But you don't have solution for that...

Well, that's only because-- I mean, what I mean to say here is that-- Look, I have this thing I have to get to, so this just isn't going to be--

(Heh)


No, seriously, though, I'll refer you to my 'labor credits' and 'communist supply & demand' model, since this contingency you're pointing to is exactly the kind of thing it's meant to address:

My framework [...] addresses the *outer reaches* of what a strictly moneyless communistic 'gift economy' could conceivably cover. Some on the revolutionary left have suggested that perhaps a *remnant* of the former markets could exist within a post-capitalist social order, to cover luxury / specialty production, since such might be *unaddressed* by the more mass-oriented mainstream gift economy.

However, a regular market-based approach to luxury / specialty production could very well be more cumbersome than it's worth -- it would be tolerating a kind of exchange-values-based 'black market' within an otherwise free-access social paradigm.

My 'labor credits' is meant to acknowledge a post-capitalist liberated-labor on its own terms, without resorting to backsliding to any system of exchange values.

A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673

---

But certainly not all of them will be available... And then there is a problem what to do make them more and more and automate a production to get rid of money ASAP.

So, to recap -- your concern here is with material *shortfalls*, of whatever, due to the nascent gift economy being severely limited in scope and attempting to grow in the midst of protracted political struggle, possibly. Technically, then, this falls under the category of 'luxury / speciality production', since the regular "honor system" gift economy isn't robust and variegated enough to provide for a full array of consumer-type goods and services.

[tuwix]

^^ Thinking this way, ham or yogurt can become very luxury goods with almost halve of economy... A little bit too much for me... You haven't convinced me that is any solution, because shortage isn't solution at all...

[ckaihatsu]

^^ Thinking this way, ham or yogurt can become very luxury goods with almost halve of economy... A little bit too much for me... You haven't convinced me that is any solution, because shortage isn't solution at all...

Right -- you're indicating one scenario that could very well be real, and the 'labor credits' framework would be flexible enough to accommodate it.

So, if, for whatever reason -- say, a fierce and protracted political battle worldwide for control of production...

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.

...And simple basics like ham and yogurt couldn't be readily produced by the communistic gift economy, and were 'scarce' in relation to actual mass demand, they *would* be considered 'luxury goods' in economic terms, and would be *discretionary* in terms of public consumption.

Such a situation would *encourage* liberated-labor -- such as it would be -- to 'step up' to supply its labor for the production of ham and yogurt, because the scarcity and mass demand would encourage others to put in their own labor to earn labor credits, to provide increasing rates of labor credits to those who would be able to produce the much-demanded ham and yogurt. (Note that the ham and yogurt goods themselves would never be 'bought' or 'sold', because the labor credits are only used in regard to labor-*hours* worked, and *not* for exchangeability with any goods, because that would be commodity production.)

This kind of liberated-production assumes that the means of production have been *liberated* and collectivized, so there wouldn't be any need for any kind of finance or capital-based 'ownership' there.

[tuwix]

Right -- you're indicating one scenario that could very well be real, and the 'labor credits' framework would be flexible enough to accommodate it.

But I hoped we've agreed it doesn't make any sense to replace money with other money to pretend there is no money when there are... So you don't have any real solution yet...

[ckaihatsu]

But I hoped we've agreed it doesn't make any sense to replace money with other money to pretend there is no money when there are... So you don't have any real solution yet...

Hmmmmm, you're simply *asserting* that the 'labor credits' is like money, but you're not *explaining* how that could be the case.

Again:

(Note that the ham and yogurt goods themselves would never be 'bought' or 'sold', because the labor credits are only used in regard to labor-*hours* worked, and *not* for exchangeability with any goods, because that would be commodity production.)

This kind of liberated-production assumes that the means of production have been *liberated* and collectivized, so there wouldn't be any need for any kind of finance or capital-based 'ownership' there.

So, no buying or selling of goods / materials, and also no capital, no finance, and no private property. Where's the money? Show me the money! (heh)

[tuwix]

^^
Money

Money is the commodity whose sole use is for storing value and acting as a means of payment.

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/o.htm

Are labor credits used for something else than storing value and acting as a means of payment? I don't think so...

[ckaihatsu]

Are labor credits used for something else than storing value and acting as a means of payment? I don't think so...

The labor credits *are not* used for storing value and acting as a means of payment.

Here's from the blog entry:

[I] have developed a model that [...] uses a system of *circulating* labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for material items of any kind. In accordance with communism being synonymous with 'free-access', all material implements, resources, and products would be freely available and *not* quantifiable according to any abstract valuations. The labor credits would represent past labor hours completed, multiplied by the difficulty or hazard of the work role performed. The difficulty/hazard multiplier would be determined by a mass survey of all work roles, compiled into an index.

In this way all concerns for labor, large and small, could be reduced to the ready transfer of labor-hour credits. The fulfillment of work roles would bring labor credits into the liberated-laborer's possession, and would empower them with a labor-organizing and labor-utilizing ability directly proportionate to the labor credits from past work completed.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673

And here are relevant excerpts from the model itself:

Ownership / control

communist administration -- All assets and resources will be collectivized as communist property in common -- their use must be determined through a regular political process of prioritized demands from a locality or larger population -- any unused assets or resources may be used by individuals in a personal capacity only

labor [supply] -- Only active workers may control communist property -- no private accumulations are allowed and any proceeds from work that cannot be used or consumed by persons themselves will revert to collectivized communist property

consumption [demand] -- Individuals may possess and consume as much material as they want, with the proviso that the material is being actively used in a personal capacity only -- after a certain period of disuse all personal possessions not in active use will revert to collectivized communist property

Associated material values

communist administration -- Assets and resources have no quantifiable value -- are considered as attachments to the production process

labor [supply] -- Labor supply is selected and paid for with existing (or debt-based) labor credits

Determination of material values

communist administration -- Assets and resources may be created and sourced from projects and production runs

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

Infrastructure / overhead

labor [supply] -- All workers will be entirely liberated from all coercion and threats related to basic human living needs, regardless of work status -- any labor roles will be entirely self-selected and open to collective labor organizing efforts on the basis of accumulated labor credits

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

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://tinyurl.com/ygybheg

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174