# Life Without Money : Wed 30 May



## Jean-Luc (May 19, 2012)

Discussion on recent book Life Without Money edited by Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman.
Join Derek Wall (Green Party councillor, former Principal Speaker for the Green Party and author of _Babylon and Beyond_, _The Rise of the Green Left_) in conversation with editor and contributor Anitra Nelson (over from Australia) and contributor Adam Buick (regularly published in the _Socialist Standard_) at 
Bolivar Hall,  54 Grafton Way, London W1T 5DL, on Wednesday 30 May at 7.30pm (off Tottenham Court Road, nearest tube: Warren Street).

Come and participate in this stimulating discussion on why we, as a society, need to go money-free and how we might do it. Come and comment, question and bring stories of your experiences.


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## love detective (May 19, 2012)

get rid of the pope and retain catholicism


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## Jean-Luc (May 19, 2012)

love detective said:


> get rid of the pope and retain catholicism


You mean, as opposed to getting rid of catholicism and retaining the pope?


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## love detective (May 19, 2012)

as opposed to getting rid of catholicsm


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## littlebabyjesus (May 19, 2012)

From the blurb for the book: they explore



> a collective labour-credit system


 
or

_money_

as it is sometimes known.


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## Jean-Luc (May 19, 2012)

love detective said:


> as opposed to getting rid of catholicsm


But how could you get rid of catholicism without getting rid of the pope?


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## love detective (May 19, 2012)

The point being made is what is the point of getting rid of the pope and retaining catholicism


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## goldenecitrone (May 19, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> But how could you get rid of catholicism without getting rid of the pope?


 
Ask Henry VIII.


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## Hocus Eye. (May 19, 2012)

Well that's one thread successfully hi-jacked. I suppose it saves entering into debate.


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## love detective (May 19, 2012)

what do you mean hijacked?

My post was a criticism of the view that you could just get rid of money and that will somehow magically get rid of the underlying debilitating essence/logic (which gives rise to the expression that is money) that underpins a capitalist system

hence the analogy to it being like getting rid of the pope (money) but retaining catholicism (capitalist social relations)

the ills that money causes in a capitalist system are an expression of that system, not its cause


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## Jean-Luc (May 19, 2012)

love detective said:


> The point being made is what is the point of getting rid of the pope and retaining catholicism


Agreed, there is no point in trying to get rid of money while retaining capitalism (in fact, it couldn't be done or wouldn't last very long) but equally can capitalism be abolished without also abolishing money?

You're on record in another thread (the one on "Why We Need Communism") as wanting to retain the pope (or at least the parish priest) when you wrote, for instance:



> This is because if productive assets are held & managed in common, and the distribution of the fruits of those productive assets managed in an equitable manner and according to need, then the existence of private ownership of personal items in no way contradicts the aims & objectives of that society. In fact the existence of some kind of secondary market could actually facilitate the smooth distribution of the collectively produced use values between people. If my child has a small bike and has grown to big for it, and someone down the road has a small child who wants to learn to ride a bike and someone else further down the road has a child who is nearly grown up and no use for their bigger childs bike. An effective redistribution of those originally distributed use values could take place to ensure the ongoing needs & wants of society's citizens are met. Now the effective redistribution of those bikes is not likely to happen by barter as that demands that all parties are close by each other and have things that the other wants. *So some kind of money token would need to be used to facilitate the redistribution of things between these parties. So here we have 'money' being used within a 'market' within a non exploitative society* for non exploitative ends, i.e. being used in a manner consistent with the objectives of the society it is part of - to ensure the efficient distribution of use values to those who need them.[/quote}


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## littlebabyjesus (May 19, 2012)

ld's quoted post is an illustration of what money is for. It might seem an obvious point, but why would you want to get rid of it? There is also the question of personal choice in consumption. In a system of equitable ownership, there still needs to be a means of rationing finite resources and allowing people to pursue their own paths - that means some kind of money, some kind of token representing value that allows people to consume their share of resources in the way that they want to consume them. I can't see any way around that, and I also don't see any reason to want to find a way around it.


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## love detective (May 19, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> You're on record in another thread (the one on "Why We Need Communism") as wanting to retain the pope (or at least the parish priest) when you wrote, for instance
> 
> can capitalism be abolished without also abolishing money?:


 
what i've said there is entirely consistent with what i'm arguing here - i.e. if a more progressive society is ever to come about, then the essence of the current mode of organising society (the production of use values as commodities by wage labour) needs to be obliterated and not just its surface/phenomenal expressions

the pope is an expression of catholicism

money as we know it today is an expression of capitalism

getting rid of either the pope or money in isolation (if either was even possible) as expressions of their underlying essence does not confront that underlying essence and left untouched something else would crystalise/manifest from that essence to replace what was temporarily constrained

some kind of money token however which itself was a crystalisation/manifestation of an entirely different set of underlying social relations would be entirely consistent with those underlying social relations

so clearly money as we know it today (i.e money within capitalism) would also be obliterated if its underlying essence which produces it was obliterated, but there's nothing to fear from some kind of 'money like token' arising from a new set of social relations, if a problem did arise with it it would be a problem with the underlying social relations that gave rise to it


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## kenny g (May 19, 2012)

Interesting approach LD. Are you coming to share it at the meeting? My response would be that the need for a money-like-token would be a sure sign of a problem with the underlying relations.

For a blunt example, I am not sure that a "money like token" would be the best way to resolve the issue of rotting grains sitting in silos whilst people starve.

In this age where google/ facebook  use complex algorithms to identify individual's potential desires, constructing a real needs satisfaction model doesn't seem as outlandish as in the past.


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## Jean-Luc (May 19, 2012)

> If my child has a small bike and has grown to big for it, and someone down the road has a small child who wants to learn to ride a bike and someone else further down the road has a child who is nearly grown up and no use for their bigger childs bike. An effective redistribution of those originally distributed use values could take place to ensure the ongoing needs & wants of society's citizens are met. Now the effective redistribution of those bikes is not likely to happen by barter as that demands that all parties are close by each other and have things that the other wants. So some kind of money token would need to be used to facilitate the redistribution of things between these parties.


Why would you need "some kind of money tokens" to recycle old tricycles? This is not even needed under capitalism. Haven't you heard of freecycle?


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## kenny g (May 19, 2012)

There is the efficiency argument, that some means of communicating inefficiencies in production are needed so that people have sufficient information to enable them to choose not to over or wastefully consume. 

Not sure that tokens would be the best way of resolving that issue though. Tokens are very much pre-telegraph IMHO.


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (May 19, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> Why would you need "some kind of money tokens" to recycle old tricycles? This is not even needed under capitalism. Haven't you heard of freecycle?


 
What if a recycled tricycle isn't what you want, for some bizarre reason? What if you've got a city of several million people and they need food, where's it going to come from? 

The ideas behind money free systems tend to lead pretty quickly to advocating some sort of Year Zero agrarian commune system IME. Fine if you want to set up a small commune, not so much use generally.


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## phildwyer (May 20, 2012)

No need to get rid of money, just abolish interest.

Money would then become once again what it should always have remained: a means to an end, not an end in itself.

It would revert to its proper function as a means of exchange, and relinquish its unnatural and usurped function as an object of exchange.

It would be relegated to the status of a merely customary, human idea. It would stop behaving as though it were an independent, living thing, with the ability to reproduce.

Is interests and aspirations would once again be subordinated to those of the human beings whose activity it represents.

Job's a good 'un.


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## kavenism (May 20, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> No need to get rid of money, just abolish interest.
> 
> Money would then become once again what it should always have remained: a means to an end, not an end in itself.
> 
> ...


 
That's an interesting idea. Under Islamic law earning interest is banned. Does anyone know if that fact is known to have a direct effect on inflation rates? What's the comparison on rates of inflation in Islamic countries compared with the West?


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## butchersapron (May 20, 2012)

Under Islamic law earning interest is hidden - not done away with.


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## Jean-Luc (May 20, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> No need to get rid of money, just abolish interest.


How? But, more important, what would be the point? Profit would still be left and it's production for sale on a market with a view to a money profit that's the problem, not lending money at interest. In fact modern interest is just a subdivision of profit.

As to Islam, Butchersapron is right. It's just hidden and called something else just as, at the end of mediaeval times, usury was hidden and called .... interest.


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## kenny g (May 20, 2012)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> The ideas behind money free systems tend to lead pretty quickly to advocating some sort of Year Zero agrarian commune system IME. Fine if you want to set up a small commune, not so much use generally.


 
People having to live off their own production i.e  more organised form of allotments or DIY is no more a direct consequence of moving beyond money based economics than it is a result of current ways of living. Plenty of people currently subject themselves to doing DIY and allotments on their days off as they can not afford the alternatives.


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## Jean-Luc (May 20, 2012)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> What if a recycled tricycle isn't what you want, for some bizarre reason? What if you've got a city of several million people and they need food, where's it going to come from?


Same as now. Grown in fields, transported, processed and made available in stores? Why would money be needed for this? It's essentially a question of organisation. Money only comes in, under capitalism, as a measure of profitability and a means of restricting access to what has been produced. I'm sure Love Detective would agree on this.



> The ideas behind money free systems tend to lead pretty quickly to advocating some sort of Year Zero agrarian commune system IME. Fine if you want to set up a small commune, not so much use generally.


That's my experience too and the book does contain contributions by people coming from here (freegans, people retreating to rural communes and what sounds like an awful community in the US using "labour-credits" called Twin Oaks). But other contributors rejects this trying to"live without money" within the confines or on the margins of capitalism and envisage a society-wide change in which money would become redundant and in which modern technology could be used to provide plenty of what people need. One chapter , by John O'Neill, specifically answers the "efficiency argument" raised by Kenny g.


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## love detective (May 20, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> Same as now. Grown in fields, transported, processed and made available in stores? Why would money be needed for this? It's essentially a question of organisation.


 
Agree with this, there's nothing inherent in the process of production of use values that requires money or money like tokens for it to happen - it's a question of (social & technological) organisation as you say. But what you are talking about here is primarily production. When it comes to distribution it's not quite as simple.



> Money only comes in, under capitalism, as a measure of profitability and a means of restricting access to what has been produced. I'm sure Love Detective would agree on this.


 
Wouldn't agree with this though (as in both your description of money under capitalism, or the inference that the role of money under capitalism would have the same role in a non capitalist progressive society)

In a non-capitalist progressive society where productive assets are owned/managed in common and their usage is towards providing the use values that everyone needs to fulfill their potential as human beings - there would still need to be some system of restricting access to what has been produced.

Such a society wouldn't last very long if I could rock up to a farm as an individual and say i want to take their entire annual output for myself, and i don't care if everyone else starves to death as a result. So it's obvious that in such a society, there would need to be a means of restricting access to what has been produced (even more so if such a society was one which was faced with swathes of resource & environmental problems which meant it wasn't capable of producing an abundance of everything that was required).

Access to use values would of course be on a basis of need not money, however this process would still need to be managed/controlled to make sure that the primary purpose of that society was fulfilled and sustained (i.e. ensuring people get what they need). One way of doing this is that people just get a direct allocation of use values, appropriate to their need, from some central distribution centre. Another way is that they get regularly issued with some kind of money like tokens, appropriate to their need, which they can then use to pick up what they need from chains of decentralised distribution centres (shops) at their own convenience. Either way there would still involve some kind of system to restrict access to what has been produced. And 'money like tokens' would still be used (in an ideal sense) even if people got a direct allocation of output, as their allocation would represent 'money like tokens' which would represent their total 'need' that they can then use to draw down their share of what they need.

You might argue oh but what if people started trading/accumulating those money tokens etc - but you'd have exactly the same problems to face if there was no money like tokens as people could just trade/accumulate the use values instead (or see the emergence of one use value as an actual money currency itself), so the exact same issues would arise. But either way even if people did trade stuff, the fact that productive assets would be owned/managed in common and their usage directed towards the production of use values for need, would mean that these use values/money like tokens that people might start trading would never have the capacity to be used as capital. All the trading would represent was the recycling of previously produced use values around society from those who didn't need a particular use value any more to those who did. So nothing wrong with that, and i think I mentioned this before re a secondary market which would exist to further ensure that people got the use values they needed

So I don't see anything bad, in and off itself, of having a system to restrict access to what has been produced (i.e what you say is money's role). It would just not be the negative one that we have today which is through effective demand in the market and one that is designed to prevent people getting what they need, but a positive one designed to make sure that people get what they need (or if that cannot be done, due to environmental/resource issues, at least a fair share of what's been produced)


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## Jean-Luc (May 20, 2012)

love detective said:


> In a non-capitalist progressive society where productive assets are owned/managed in common and their usage is towards providing the use values that everyone needs to fulfill their potential as human beings - there would still need to be some system of restricting access to what has been produced.
> Such a society wouldn't last very long if I could rock up to a farm as an individual and say i want to take their entire annual output for myself, and i don't care if everyone else starves to death as a result.


Why would you (or anyone else) want to behave in this sort of way? Why, in conditions where you would know that the stores would always be stocked with what you need, would anyone want to take any more than they needed? Surely you don't think that humans are "naturally" greedy, do you? Even today, under capitalism, this is not how people behave when things are free at the time of use. You've probably got free phone calls or texts, are you phoning or texting all day? Or only when you need to? In other words, in established and permanent conditions of open access to what they need people take only what they need.



> One way of doing this is that people just get a direct allocation of use values, appropriate to their need, from some central distribution centre. Another way is that they get regularly issued with some kind of money like tokens, appropriate to their need, which they can then use to pick up what they need from chains of decentralised distribution centres (shops) at their own convenience.


This wouldn't be as bad as what happens now but I still don't like the sound of it (except perhaps if some temporary shortage occurs as through some natural disaster) as who is going to decide what an individual needs? In any event, you now seem to be envisaging "money like tokens" not just for "secondary markets" but for basic needs too.


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## phildwyer (May 20, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Under Islamic law earning interest is hidden - not done away with.


 
That's arguable.

The point however is that interest (_riba_) is unambiguously recognized as sinful in principle.  Regardless of how often the principle is transgressed in practice, that nevertheless constitutes an important theoretical and ethical advance on the West.  Modern Western society recognizes no ethical objection to interest even in principle.


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## phildwyer (May 20, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> As to Islam, Butchersapron is right. It's just hidden and called something else


 
That's not entirely true.

Of course, nothing is absolutely forbidden to a Muslim except idolatry.  As with all issues, there is a huge range of opinion and practice within Islam over what constitutes _riba _(though there is no dispute that _riba _is sinful).  Broadly speaking though, it's fair to say that the ethical strictures against interest generally act as a safeguard against the kind of "financialization" of capitalism in which the West has indulged over the last 30 or so years, with its endlessly more arcane and perverse forms of usury--derivatives of derivatives etc.  That whole way of thinking goes against deeply-ingrained Islamic assumptions and habits of thought, and I doubt whether that kind of capitalism could have emerged out of Islamic culture.


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## phildwyer (May 20, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> at the end of mediaeval times, usury was hidden and called .... interest.


 
Not really: usury was practiced on a whole new scale in Renaissance Europe, compared to Medieval.


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## rorymac (May 20, 2012)

Personally I just wanted credit to continue forever .. the crunch has done me like a kipper
I was living within my means

Like I wasn't gambling or anything tbf

When you look out of an aeroplane you see oceans and countryside .. there's no way there's too many of us that we can't all make a decent living/wronguns aside imho


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## SpineyNorman (May 20, 2012)

Unfortunately I don't need to _imagine_ life without money


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## love detective (May 20, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> Why would you (or anyone else) want to behave in this sort of way? Why, in conditions where you would know that the stores would always be stocked with what you need, would anyone want to take any more than they needed? Surely you don't think that humans are "naturally" greedy, do you?


 
there's no way given the raft of energy, resource & environmental issues that the world faces today that any kind of society is going to have the means to create an abundance of every imaginable good so that 9 billion people will be fully satisfied in the entirety - so like it or not the 'stores' are never going to be always stocked with what you need (unless of course what you need is determined independently of you)

you've also got a somewhat idealised/utopian and overly determined notion of how consciousness is formed - to think that there will be no greedy people in this utopian society we're discussing is somewhat crude and overly deterministic. Today we live in one of the most greedy, neo-liberalised societies the world has ever seen and yet there are plenty of people who have characteristics that are the complete opposite of the society that produced them - there's nothing to suggest the same thing would not be the case in any other type of society.



> In other words, in established and permanent conditions of open access to what they need people take only what they need.


 
yes, primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession never happened, we still have the commons, imagine thinking someone might try and take more than their fair share - you'll be telling me there won't be any racism or sexism or murder or crime in this great new society either next



> This wouldn't be as bad as what happens now but I still don't like the sound of it (except perhaps if some temporary shortage occurs as through some natural disaster) as who is going to decide what an individual needs? In any event, you now seem to be envisaging "money like tokens" not just for "secondary markets" but for basic needs too.


 
This is where you keep missing the point - in a world that cannot produce an abundance, whether this idealised society uses money or not, there is going to have to be some restriction on access to what is produced - this is to ensure that the system itself continues to do what its objectives are. So this question of who gets to decide what an individual needs, is not connected to or relevant to the question of whether money like tokens or a direct allocation from the store is used. As that decision as to what an individual needs (or gets) would need to be made regardless - as it relates to something much deeper

Of course if you're just saying that there will be magically 9 billion fillet steaks produced every week and so on and there will be no problems with energy etc, then yes everything would be great and we could all get what we want and not have to worry about anything, but that's never going to be the case, it probably never was the case in the 19th century and its certainly not the case now


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## phildwyer (May 20, 2012)

love detective said:


> Access to use values would of course be on a basis of need not money, however this process would still need to be managed/controlled to make sure that the primary purpose of that society was fulfilled and sustained (i.e. ensuring people get what they need). One way of doing this is that people just get a direct allocation of use values, appropriate to their need, from some central distribution centre. Another way is that they get regularly issued with some kind of money like tokens, appropriate to their need, which they can then use to pick up what they need from chains of decentralised distribution centres (shops) at their own convenience. Either way there would still involve some kind of system to restrict access to what has been produced. And 'money like tokens' would still be used (in an ideal sense) even if people got a direct allocation of output, as their allocation would represent 'money like tokens' which would represent their total 'need' that they can then use to draw down their share of what they need.


 
God preserve us from the day this loon and his totalitarian fantasies have anything to do with determining what we need.


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## SpineyNorman (May 20, 2012)

How's it any more "totalitarian" than capitalism? Most of us have little choice in what we consume anyway, don't really have much real choice - Tesco value vs Aldi - doesn't really matter cos it's basically the same stuff. And in the above system at least we'd be guaranteed a minimum amount. And on the one with central organisation of distribution - it's perfectly reasonable to say that the way this is done, what is distributed and at what quantities - in other words what constituted need - could be decided democratically and with scope for individual choice between different use values depending on taste.

The second one, with money like tokens, sounds far, far less totalitarian than capitalism to me, even without direct democratic control.

Or is this just a continuation of a grudge against ld?


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## Jean-Luc (May 20, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Not really: usury was practiced on a whole new scale in Renaissance Europe, compared to Medieval.


That's what I said.

In the Middle Ages the dogma of the Catholic Church banned usury, defined as charging money for a loan. But not quite. Here's how RH Tawney put it in his classic _Religion and the Rise of Capitalism_:



> No man, again, may charge money for a loan. He may, of course, take the profits of partnership, provided that he takes the partner’s risks. He may buy a rent-charge; for the fruits of the earth are produced by nature, not wrung from men. He may demand compensation - interesse - if he is not repaid the principal at the time stipulated. He may ask payments corresponding to any loss he incurs or forgoes. He may purchase an annuity, for the payment is contingent and speculative, not certain.


 
So, what was banned was only the certainty of being paid a pre-fixed sum of money for the loan. As Tawney pointed out, the very word “interest” derives from one of the ways of getting round the ban on usury.

Islamic theologians have proved to be just as a subtle as their end-of-Middle Ages Catholic and Protestant counterparts. Islam, too, allows partnerships as well as a number of other arrangements which allow the payment of a pre-fixed sum of money for advancing money. For instance: _salam_ (“sale contract with deferred delivery”), _arbun_ (“sale contract with a non-refundable deposit”) and _murabahah_ (“deferred sale financing”). _Arbun_ sounds the best 

So, while Islamic banks do not borrow money on the money market, they can still make what are in effect loans which bring in money for them. In any event, Islam is not opposed to profits and profit-making since these are regarded as non-certain rewards for advancing money.


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## phildwyer (May 20, 2012)

SpineyNorman said:


> How's it any more "totalitarian" than capitalism? Most of us have little choice in what we consume anyway, don't really have much real choice - Tesco value vs Aldi - doesn't really matter cos it's basically the same stuff. And in the above system at least we'd be guaranteed a minimum amount. And on the one with central organisation of distribution - it's perfectly reasonable to say that the way this is done, what is distributed and at what quantities - in other words what constituted need - could be decided democratically and with scope for individual choice between different use values depending on taste.
> 
> The second one, with money like tokens, sounds far, far less totalitarian than capitalism to me, even without direct democratic control.
> 
> Or is this just a continuation of a grudge against ld?


 
Yes and no, to be frank. Obviously we have a beef but on my side anyway, it is entirely political. I don't like his politics at all. I strongly suspect that following any revolution directed towards the ends he advocates, these "central distribution centers" would soon be in the hands of a small group of highly organized fanatics. I doubt that under such circumstances the "system to restrict access to what has been produced" would be chosen by anything resembling democratic procedures, as you suggest it might.

I do agree with you that capitalism is a totalitarian system, in an economic sense at least. I think that very fact often causes anti-capitalism to take a totalitarian form, as the dialectical antithesis or mirror-image of its ostensible opposite.


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## love detective (May 20, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> That's what I said.
> 
> In the Middle Ages the dogma of the Catholic Church banned usury, defined as charging money for a loan. But not quite. Here's how RH Tawney put it in his classic _Religion and the Rise of Capitalism_:
> 
> ...


 
Exactly. A child of five would understand this - send someone to fetch a child of five!


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## goldenecitrone (May 20, 2012)

love detective said:


> Exactly. A child of five would understand this - send someone to fetch a child of five!


 
As Marx once famously said.


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## love detective (May 20, 2012)

famously


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## Jean-Luc (May 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> there's no way given the raft of energy, resource & environmental issues that the world faces today that any kind of society is going to have the means to create an abundance of every imaginable good so that 9 billion people will be fully satisfied in the entirety - so like it or not the 'stores' are never going to be always stocked with what you need


Who's talking about an abundance "of every imaginable good' -- apart from authors of econmics textbooks which say that scarcity will always exist because wants are infinite and that therefore we need money, prices, etc to allocate resources by priority (look at page 1 of any economics textbook)? You're just relaying their argument here. The real question is whether or not the world can produce enough to satisfy the likely needs of everyone on the planet. The evidence here is that it can -- we have the knowledge and capacity to do this, but this is being prevented by the fact that the world's resources are monopolised by capitalist corporations, states and rich individuals who only allow them to be used when there's a profit in it for them. Eliminate the profit barrier and we can end world poverty and the diseases associated with it and ensure that every man, woman and child on the planet has decent housing, healthcare, education, etc., especially with the elimination of the waste of capitalism (arms, advertising, competition and all the resources devoted to money counting).


love detective said:


> you've also got a somewhat idealised/utopian and overly determined notion of how consciousness is formed - to think that there will be no greedy people in this utopian society we're discussing is somewhat crude and overly deterministic. Today we live in one of the most greedy, neo-liberalised societies the world has ever seen and yet there are plenty of people who have characteristics that are the complete opposite of the society that produced them - there's nothing to suggest the same thing would not be the case in any other type of society.


Here again you are reflecting the dominant ideology of existing society.  Yes, today, greedy behaviour does make sense because each individual has to fend for themself and even those who have accumulated some wealth can never be sure that they might not loose it. Everybody is struggling not so much to become rich as to avoid falling into poverty. But this is not part of human nature. In the different circumstance of enough being permanently available behaving like this will not make sense. What you are in effect saying is that while you personally wouldn't behave in a greedy manner, it's "the others", who would therefore have to be disciplined by your "money like token" system (which itself would divert resources from satisfying people's needs).


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## love detective (May 22, 2012)

i'll leave you to your simplistic idealised and aburdly utopian view of the future which in reality will be characterised by resource depletion, energy crisis and environmental catastrophe, wars and zero sum games. But don't mind them, things will be fine as long as we don't think about reality too much



Jean-Luc said:


> The real question is whether or not the world can produce enough to satisfy the likely needs of everyone on the planet......The evidence here is that it can
> 
> In the different circumstance of enough being permanently available behaving like this will not make sense


 
I also agree that if everything was OK then everything would be OK - which is all your saying here. But this kind of ostrich like head in the sand view of the future is pure idealism, not particular befitting of a supposed materialist approach

You also seem to suggest that human wants are capable of not being infinite (in an attempt to get round the basic fact that scarcity will exist, even in the most progressive form of organising society). This is also absurd, humanity is (or should be) all about constant development and progress, it's this infinite nature of humanity's wants that drives humanity forwards, that distinguishes us from all other animals. More often that not this is negative progress through modes of organisation like capitalism, but to suggest that post-capitalism we will become animal like with static needs & wants is to deprive humanity of what makes it human. And all so you can continue to fit in this fuckwitted idea that the world will produce 9 billion fillet steaks every week

And it's a tedious argument from you that just because i don't agree with your extreme utopianism/idealism of the future that this means i'm just parroting mainstream ideas or the dominant ideology of the existing society (something which adds further evidence to what i said earlier about you having a somewhat idealised/utopian and crudely overly determined notion of how consciousness is formed )

Answer me this simple question though? If you agree that non-greedy people exist in, and to an extent are produced by, a society which is based on greed, why is the inverse of this something you write off as impossible? You justify this assertion on the basis that it would not make sense for people to behave like that, but we can equally say that it doesn't make sense for non-greedy people to behave like how they do in the greedy world we live in off today. Yes they may be doing this because they want to live in a different world, but this equally applies to greedy people in a non-greedy world

And i'm a greedy bastard by the way, so not sure where you got what you suggested about me in your last sentence


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## Jean-Luc (May 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> i'll leave you to your simplistic idealised and aburdly utopian view of the future which in reality will be characterised by resource depletion, energy crisis and environmental catastrophe, wars and zero sum games. But don't mind them, things will be fine as long as we don't think about reality too much


These are real problems, but that's where we differ. I think they are caused by capitalism and could be dealt with rationally and scientifically in a world in which the Earth's resources had become the common heritage of all humanity. You think they are endemic to the human condition and so something we've got no alternative but to adjust to, sharing the resulting scarcity and misery more or less evenly or unevenly. It's a pessimistic, misanthropic view I thought anti-capitalists rejected, though it's common enough amongst the Green movement. It also reflects bourgeois economics, defined in the 5th edition of Economics by Ralph T. Byrns and Gerald W. Stone:


> Economics is the study of how individuals and societies allocate their limited resources to try to satisfy their unlimited wants.


That's your starting point (and that of all defenders of capitalism) but it's not mine.


love detective said:


> this fuckwitted idea that the world will produce 9 billion fillet steaks every week


I don't know whose idea this is but it's not mine. But I have heard it used many times to suggest that there is no alternative to the present system.


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## youngian (May 22, 2012)

The Bank of England has almost abolished interests rates to the banks (in Japan it is zero). Many people therefore are asking the question as to what would happen if they cut out the middle man and gave the loans directily to businesses and public sector projects.


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## love detective (May 22, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> That's your starting point (and that of all defenders of capitalism) but it's not mine.


 
No, this is my starting point:-




			
				love detective said:
			
		

> Rubin/Perlman best sums up for me what political economy in general and marx's political economy in particular is about:-
> 
> "Political economy deals with human working activity, not from the standpoint of its technical methods and instruments of labor, but from the standpoint of its social form. It deals with production relations which are established among people in the process of production."
> 
> In terms of this definition, political economy is not the study of prices or of scarce resources; it is a study of social relations, a study of culture. Political economy asks why the productive forces of society develop within a particular social form, why the machine process unfolds within the context of business enterprise, why industrialization takes the form of capitalist development. Political economy asks how the working activity of people is regulated in a specific, historical form of economy.


 
I'm not going to dignify the rest of your crap with a response


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## Jean-Luc (May 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> I'm not going to dignify the rest of your crap with a response





love detective said:


> ... simplistic idealised and aburdly utopian view ... this fuckwitted idea ... extreme utopianism/idealism.


I see you can dish it out but not take it.

Fredy Perlman was a good bloke but I think you'll find that he stood for a society in which money would not exist. As did Marx and, I imagine, Rubin. Pity none of them are around to reply to your rejection of this perspective on the grounds of "scarcity" and "infinite needs". A couple of chapters, by Anitra Nelson, in the _Life Without Money_ book explain that Marx stood for a moneyfree, socialist society.


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## love detective (May 22, 2012)

Marx also stood for making derogatory comments about jewish niggers - so should I just because I find his analysis of existing capitalist social relations useful?

I presume you have some vested interest in this book given how religiously you're sticking to the incorrect idea that money, not wage labour and the capital/labour relation, is the root of the problem


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## Jean-Luc (May 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> the incorrect idea that money, not wage labour and the capital/labour relation, is the root of the problem


I never said money as such was the root of the problem (remember, there's no point in abolishing the pope but retaining catholicism?). The root of the problem is that the means for producing useful things are monopolised by a privileged minority and used to produce things for sale with a view to making a money profit for them. And the solution is to make these means of production the common heritage of all so that we could produce things directly to satisfy people's needs and not for profit as today.

How could the wages system be abolished without at the same time abolishing money? They are both signs of the same basic social productive relationship of a minority monopolising the means for producing useful things and the rest of us having to work for them for money to buy the things we need. Or are you saying that if we were paid in "money like tokens" instead of present-day money that would mean the abolition of the wages system?

Here's another case for a moneyfree world:


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## love detective (May 22, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> The root of the problem is that the means for producing useful things are monopolised by a privileged minority and used to produce things for sale with a view to making a money profit for them. And the solution is to make these means of production the common heritage of all so that we could produce things directly to satisfy people's needs and not for profit as today.


 
Couldn't agree more



> I never said money as such was the root of the problem


 
If you agree money is not the root of the problem why is the solution that you are backing called a 'life without money' - why is the solution focussed on something that you admit is not the root of the problem?



> How could the wages system be abolished without at the same time abolishing money? They are both signs of the same basic social productive relationship of a minority monopolising the means for producing useful things and the rest of us having to work for them for money to buy the things we need.


 
In your first paragraph you gave a (passable) description of capitalism and why it should be abolished. Here however you equate capitalism (i.e. wage labour, etc.) with money as though they are two sides of the same coin (lol) and assert that the existence of money must signify the existence of capitalism. Money has been around for thousands and thousands of years yet capitalism has only been around for a few hundred, so how can you say that money, in terms of money in and off itself is a sign/manifestation of the same social relationship as capitalism? Something that existed for thousands and thousands of years is somehow a sign/manifestation of a social relationship that has only existed for a few hundred years? How does that work then? And what where did it manifest from in the thousands of years of its existence before capitalism existed?

Sure the way money is used under capitalism and the form money takes (money as capital for example) gives it a character which reflects the social relations of capitalist production. But this is no different from lots of other things which predated capitalism and will continue to exist when capitalism is gone (whatever system replaces it)



> Or are you saying that if we were paid in "money like tokens" instead of present-day money that would mean the abolition of the wages system?


 
Can you stop making up stupid stuff and suggesting that I have said them



> Here's another case for a moneyfree world:


 
Despite what it's called and how it articulates itself, it seems more like a case for a non-exploitative world where use values are not produced as commodities using wage labour and instead are produced through a common ownership of the means of production and distributed according to need (or in times of shortage, i.e. in the weeks where 9 billion fillet steaks for some reason can't be produced, some form of equitable distribution). Money in this kind of world would not be in contradiction with those principles, in fact it would probably be very useful in ensuring those principles were adhered to.

By the way, you avoided my question about what vested interest you have in this book?


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## phildwyer (May 22, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> That's what I said.
> 
> In the Middle Ages the dogma of the Catholic Church banned usury, defined as charging money for a loan. But not quite. Here's how RH Tawney put it in his classic _Religion and the Rise of Capitalism_:
> 
> ...


 
You seem to be suggesting that the medieval and Islamic prohibitions against usury are somehow invalid because they were/are routinely evaded.  As I said to BA the principle that usury is sinful--which is universal to virtually every system of morality except our own--is important, regardless of how often it is followed in practice.

In any case, it isn't really true that usury was widely practiced before the discovery of America.  And interest wasn't exempted from moral opprobrium until well into the C18th, around the time that the concept of the 'economy' began to take form, providing an arena in which ancient ethical critiques of avarice and usury could be suspended.


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## Wilf (May 22, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> These are real problems, but that's where we differ. I think they are caused by capitalism and could be dealt with rationally and scientifically in a world in which the Earth's resources had become the common heritage of all humanity. You think they are endemic to the human condition and so something we've got no alternative but to adjust to, sharing the resulting scarcity and misery more or less evenly or unevenly. It's a pessimistic, misanthropic view I thought anti-capitalists rejected, though it's common enough amongst the Green movement. .


 As well as being utopian, this shows an uncritical approach to Enlightenment science as a way of solving problems. Even if a planet of 9bn threw off capitalism, questions of resources, wants and needs wouldn't become simply 'the administration of things'. There would still be scarcity and, in terms of the environment, growing problems when you try to increase production.  There would still be different perspectives, politics and _interests_ (theoretically interests would no longer be linked to class, but still interests none the less).  Also, in a tightly packed, urbanised planet there would still need to be complex planning, interlocked systems and sophisticated ways of transmitting preferences.  Getting rid of capitalism gets rid of a systematic bias that runs the planet in the interests of a few, but it doesn't get rid of the problems of _running a society. _Neither does it inherently, change human nature.  Might create scenarious where people are more likely to avoid anti-social routes, but it doesn't reconstruct whole personalities.


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## Jean-Luc (May 22, 2012)

love detective said:


> If you agree money is not the root of the problem why is the solution that you are backing called a 'life without money' - why is the solution focussed on something that you admit is not the root of the problem?


Basically, I suppose, because the idea of a moneyfree world is easier to get across than talking about a world without "commodity fetishism" or "value" or "wage-labour/capital relationship". It's a sort of shorthand to be more easily understood, to get the basic idea over more easily, like the video did.


love detective said:


> Money has been around for thousands and thousands of years yet capitalism has only been around for a few hundred, so how can you say that money, in terms of money in and off itself is a sign/manifestation of the same social relationship as capitalism?


Fair question. Money in previous societies was only marginal and these were private-property societies and buying and selling, through the medium of money, is an exchange of ownership rights. On the other hand, money didn't exist in past societies which were not based on private or class property. Capitalism is a society where money touches everything. Any and everything can be bought and sold and so has a price, in particular people's working skills. Capitalism is where money really comes into its own and dominates our lives as if was an uncontrollable force of nature. I suppose it is possible to imagine a hypothetical non-capitalist society where money would still be used, but this wouldn't be a society based on the common ownership of resources since common ownership rules out buying and selling between separate owners (since these don't exist) and money as a medium for this. Buying and selling is replaced by giving and taking (what one 19th socialist summed up as "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs").


love detective said:


> Can you stop making up stupid stuff and suggesting that I have said them.


Ok, but, in using the "greedy person" argument to justify restricting people's access to what they need because some people would abuse this and take too much, you overstated your case. Because this would have to mean that nobody could have free, open access to anything, not to public transport, not to health care, not to phone calls, not to the internet, not to utilities any more than to a filet steak every day.


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## Wilf (May 22, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


>




'A free world can be created through technology and by abolishing money' - without any reference to capital, social relations or power - Just plain embarrassing.


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## stuff_it (May 22, 2012)

Weirdly enough I am better off financially living as I do now with not much money or prospect of any soon as I have to be a lot more careful.


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## love detective (May 22, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> Basically, I suppose, because the idea of a moneyfree world is easier to get across than talking about a world without "commodity fetishism" or "value" or "wage-labour/capital relationship". It's a sort of shorthand to be more easily understood, to get the basic idea over more easily, like the video did.


 
I think if you have a desire to see a transformed society, and hope to do so in a democratic and inclusive manner, to treat people like they are incapable of understanding the real reason why existing society needs to be changed is not a great starting point. What else should be kept back from people in this quest? What else should be retained and discussed only amongst a clever cloggist vanguard?

And even taking your argument on its own terms (even though i completely reject such an approach), I don't even think it's an easier thing to get across. The idea of a world without money is probably a harder concept to grasp immediately than a world that still has money but this money is issued in amounts that are sufficient for everyone to satisfy their needs, wants & desires (or at least issued in a fair & equitable manner if output is not enough to meet everything)



> I suppose it is possible to imagine a hypothetical non-capitalist society where money would still be used, but this wouldn't be a society based on the common ownership of resources since common ownership rules out buying and selling between separate owners (since these don't exist) and money as a medium for this.


 
Sorry but this is absolutely garbage. You are conflating productive property and personal propert/possessions. To say that a society that used some money like tokens in order to facilitate the smooth & efficient distribution of the output from society's productive assets in a fair & equitable manner and based on need, is incompatible with a society which is based on common ownership of the means of production is absurd. I really don't think you've thought this through at all.



> Ok, but, in using the "greedy person" argument to justify restricting people's access to what they need because some people would abuse this and take too much, you overstated your case.


 
Face it, if society is not able to produce enough to satisfy every human beings wants & needs (which it won't be), then access to the output of society will have to be restricted. This issue will be faced whether money is used or not. Likewise to suggest that some care & oversight would not be required to make sure the system is not gamed so that greedy individuals (who will still exist, despite your see no evil, hear no evil outlook) can satisfy their greed, is also absurd. To not have such a system of oversight would risk undermining the foundational basis and ongoing existence of the society you are supposedly in favour off.

You seem to be suggesting that me pointing towards these basic facts, which would require some kind of addressal in this utopian society of yours, means I am some kind of reactionary who supports capitalism and the status quo. People need real world solutions to real world problems (which incidentally none of this utopian dreamy stuff from both you and by extension me comes even close to doing), not this ostrich like head in the sand utopianism where everything is predicated on everything just being fine, so no need to think about anything, it'll be grand.

Humour me with a consideration of these two scenarios though:-

1) The month or so after your glorious new society is ushered in on a world wide basis. Society would still largely be geared up to produce on existing capitalist lines in terms of what is produced and in which locations. At this point in time say 6 billion people would like a fillet steak for their tea on the weekend as it's been a hard few weeks revolutionising and they now apparently live in a society where capitalism doesn't exist so all their needs & wants are to be met. 6 billion fillet steaks don't exist though. 6 billion fillet steaks are requested though. What does this society do? According to you there would be no need to restrict access to society's product as we are no longer in a capitalist society and the need to restrict/limit access to society's output doesn't need to happen anymore. Problem is you don't have 6 billion fillet steaks this week (nor will you the next, or the next etc..). Now assuming your not Jesus, then there is no way you are going to square this circle. No matter how you word it, this situation would require society to come up with some way of restricting access to ensure that at least what was produced was distributed fairly & equitably over time and as much according to need as is possible.

2) In the same week, there's a lot of dispossessed capitalists still roaming around. They'd quite like to get their hands back on some of the wealth they've lost. They also know that there's shortages as society is not producing enough to satisfy society's wants (and in all likelihood it never will), so they know if they could get some stuff and stockpile it to create even more shortages they could get themselves in a strong position by having a load of stuff that people really wanted. So under your world, you'd support their right to rock up at some food distribution centre and take all the fillet steaks that had been produced. Because, man, it would be reactionary like to try and stop them wouldn't it.

How long do you think such a society would last before it descended into chaos and reverted back to some kind of capitalist social relations (or worse) to ensure some level of stability?

Have you really sat down and thought through any of this?

Also you still refuse to answer my previous question - what is your vested interest in this book?


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## love detective (May 22, 2012)

Wilf said:


> 'A free world can be created through technology and by abolishing money' - without any reference to capital, social relations or power - Just plain embarrassing.


 
If you abolish money now i guarantee you will get an underwater city


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## Wilf (May 22, 2012)

These are the people who did the film:
http://www.freeworldcharter.org/en/more

It is apparently the next step in 'human evolution' and they see it being adopted just by individual nations at first. After that the UN may well take it up:



> The first step in implementing the Charter is promotion and awareness.
> These principles can only be adopted when they are seen, understood and supported by a sufficient number of people. When enough people see the Charter and accept it as the next logical step in human evolution, change will come about automatically. Politicians and people of influence will have no choice but to accede to the will of the people.... It won't take long until people begin to realise that their neighbour is no longer their competitor; that everything they own and use has an environmental cost; that acting together as a community - and not only for oneself - is infinitely more productive and rewarding.
> It may happen that the Charter will be first adopted in a single country or bloc of countries that is naturally resource-rich and self sufficient. (Australia and the South Seas would be a good example) Once other countries see it working, they would be quick to follow.
> Perhaps in the interim, a special provision for 'money-free' status in pioneering countries could be applied through a body like the UN, to maintain and protect the borders of such 'free zones' until no longer necessary.


 
1.  2.  3.


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## phildwyer (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> Capitalism is where money really comes into its own and dominates our lives as if was an uncontrollable force of nature.


 
Precisely correct. Capitalism is when money is treated and behaves as though it were part of nature (_phusis) _as opposed to custom _(nomos)._

Living things that are part of nature can reproduce: this is their distinguishing characteristic. So when money is regarded as a part of nature, it appears to reproduce autonomously, without any human intervention.

Once it has acquired the defining feature of life, money inevitably acquires its own interests, which generally conflict with the interests of _all _human beings, including those who putatively possess the money.

And so we see that the problem is not money (a token of exchange will obviously be necessary in any conceivable society) but usury.


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## phildwyer (May 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> Also you still refuse to answer my previous question - what is your vested interest in this book?


 
Spare us your tinpot interrogator act.


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)




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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> The idea of a world without money is probably a harder concept to grasp immediately than a world that still has money but this money is issued in amounts that are sufficient for everyone to satisfy their needs, wants & desires (or at least issued in a fair & equitable manner if output is not enough to meet everything)


That puts the issue facing critics of present-day society rather well: either redistribution of money or abandoning it altogether? Either mend it or end it? I see you place yourself firmlyl in the first camp, but just how like money are your "money like tokens". Do they circulate? How will depreciation and inflation be avoided? Can they be saved? Will there be banks? Will there be interest (or are you with Phildwyer on this?)


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

Wilf said:


> These are the people who did the film:
> http://www.freeworldcharter.org/en/more It is apparently the next step in 'human evolution' and they see it being adopted just by individual nations at first. After that the UN may well take it up:


But what is your objection to: their goal of a moneyfree world of abundance or their rather (well, extremely) naive view of how to get there? Would you agree if they advocated it be introduced by a world working-class revolution or mass democratic action or something like that?


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> That puts the issue facing critics of present-day society rather well: either redistribution of money or abandoning it altogether? Either mend it or end it? I see you place yourself firmlyl in the first camp, but just how like money are your "money like tokens". Do they circulate? How will depreciation and inflation be avoided? Can they be saved? Will there be banks? Will there be interest (or are you with Phildwyer on this?)


 
You repeatedly miss the point that the crux of the issue is not about money - you have the tail wagging the dog throughout this whole discussion

Do you want to have a go at responding to the main points in my post? Presumably you have an answer to them that does not contradict anything you've previously said here?

Also you still refuse to answer my previous question - what is your vested interest in this book?


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## Fuchs66 (May 23, 2012)

Look if anyone here really wants to live without money I would love to help you out. Just send it to the bank account that I will gladly provide the details of and I shall guarantee it gets put to good use.


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## Wilf (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> But what is your objection to: their goal of a moneyfree world of abundance or their rather (well, extremely) naive view of how to get there? Would you agree if they advocated it be introduced by a world working-class revolution or mass democratic action or something like that?


 No, no it looks grand. In fact I'd like to sharpen up the manifesto:

Oh the buzzin' of the bees
In the cigarette trees
Near the soda water fountain
At the lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
On the big rock candy mountain

There's a lake of gin
We can both jump in
And the handouts grow on bushes
In the new-mown hay
We can sleep all day
And the bars all have free lunches
Where the mail train stops
And there ain't no cops
And the folks are tender-hearted
Where you never change your socks
And you never throw rocks
And your hair is never parted


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

underwater cities of gold


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## imposs1904 (May 23, 2012)

Wilf said:


> No, no it looks grand. In fact I'd like to sharpen up the manifesto:
> 
> Oh the buzzin' of the bees
> In the cigarette trees
> ...


 
no fillet steak in the manifesto?


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## Wilf (May 23, 2012)

imposs1904 said:


> no fillet steak in the manifesto?


There's still some debate in the steering group, but so far I've managed to hold them to a vegan line. Our 'rational scientists' support me on this, so we'll only be dishing out free quorn.  Yer money's no good here.


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

This is quite funny too:


> In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!


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## imposs1904 (May 23, 2012)

Wilf said:


> Yer money's no good here.


 
I've already forwarded it to fuchs.


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## Wilf (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> This is quite funny too:


In many ways it is - and perhaps 20% as naive as the stuff you are posting (inolved with? Come on, tell us). But at least Marx does have a theory of history and notion of agency.


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> This is quite funny too:


 
at least he didn't fanny around trying to make out money was the reason for the enslaving subordination of the individual 

and also in the 2,500 odd pages of Capital he makes fleeting reference to a post capitalist progressive society only a handful of times - i.e. he focuses at the proper start point, how does our existing mode of organising society function, what are its fundamental & essential properties, what manifestations do they produce, what is the impact of all this both at the individual and social levels, and what would need to be obliterated if we were ever to move beyond that society

this is in stark contrast to this arse about tit stuff on money - that both totally misses the point about the fundamental essence of capitalist society and also pays no attention to the material process that would be required for any transformation of society to take place - it's like john rawls only worse


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## butchersapron (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> This is quite funny too:


Nice one Jean-luc - you've produced one of the bits of Marx that distinguishes between what he saw as socialism and what he saw as communism. Which he didn't ever do right?


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

This is even funnier:


> The words Socialism and Communism have the same meaning. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common, production being for use and not for profit.
> 
> Socialism being an ideal towards which we are working, it is natural that there should be some differences of opinion in that future society. Since we are living under Capitalism it is natural that many people’s ideas of Socialism should be coloured by their experiences of life under the present system. We must not be surprised that some who recognise the present system is bad should yet lack the imagination to realise the possibility of abolishing all the institutions of Capitalist society.
> 
> ...


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

Jean-luc are you by any chance fucked in the head?


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## butchersapron (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> This is even funnier:


Not _that_ funny tbh


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## butchersapron (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> This is even funnier:


She was much better when she was proclaiming Hailie Selassie to be a god. Great choice.


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> Jean-luc are you by any chance fucked in the head?


No more than Karl Marx or Sylvia Pankhurst. Love your style of arguing.


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## Wilf (May 23, 2012)

From the world without money website:



> If you can help financially, then please consider purchasing adverts for the Free World Charter on Facebook. It's very easy to set up and you can decide exactly how much you want to spend. You can use either of these two images here as your graphic.
> 
> Click here


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> No more than Karl Marx or Sylvia Pankhurst. Love your style of arguing.


 
It wasn't an argument, it was an observation

i've given up arguing with you as you seem to want to avoid addressing the difficult questions


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> i've given up arguing with you as you seem to want to avoid addressing the difficult questions


That makes two of us then:


> just how like money are your "money like tokens". Do they circulate? How will depreciation and inflation be avoided? Can they be saved? Will there be banks? Will there be interest (or are you with Phildwyer on this?)


Was this one too difficult?


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

generally in discussion its considered appropriate to answer the points made to you before advancing new questions - if they were too troublesome for your idealism then fair enough, but you could at least admit that

in answer to your questions though:

i) yes, as previously set out with regards to facilitating the smooth and equitable distribution of either recently produced or previously owned goods

ii) if this society is so resource abundant as you say it is then these will not be issues

iii) what would be the point of saving them? if you didn't have enough to get by or ended up with too much there would clearly be something wrong with the resource/use value allocation process of the society (which is a problem that would be faced whether electronic tokens were used or not)

iv) as above, with no need to save or lend why would there be a need for banks?

v) why would there be interest? interest, in capitalism, is primarily a form of distribution of surplus value or a means to appropriate value in the sphere of circulation. As such a society would not be based on such things why would interest exist?

Now, might you turn your attention to the 9 billion missing fillet steaks?


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

OK, I'll answer in due course (it's sunny outside). In the meantime you should find some of the answers as to how to organise the smooth allocation and distribution of resources and use-values in a moneyless, communist society in this pamphlet.


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## love detective (May 23, 2012)

sorry i didn't ask for you to post links to shit youtube videos and point me to dusty haired pamphlets and shite books

i've managed to respond to all your questions using my own words, why can't you

i asked a specific question, either answer it in your own words or admit that you can't


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## Jean-Luc (May 23, 2012)

I'm back, as promised. Amusing as exchanging arguments and insults here is I do have a life.

Your reply shows that, since they won't circulate and would be cancelled on use, what you call "money like tokens" aren't money in the usual sense (nor in the sense of that "fuckwit" Karl Marx). They are consumption vouchers. So you too are advocating a moneyless society . But the question is which is more practical: free distribution and open access or issuing everybody with these non-circulating vouchers? The problem with your scheme is that it requires not only deciding how many vouchers should be issued to individuals but also what "price" to put on the goods made available for individual use (a huge, bureaucratic task). This is no easy calculation and if you get it wrong the vouchers could depreciate and/or a black market in some goods develop. I don't think it could last for any period of time but would sooner or later break down and real money re-emerge.

Now to your two questions which, if I remember, were (1) what if not enough can be produced and (2) will, during the changeover, those opposed to it be allowed open access to resources to oppose the changeover.

As to the first, I think the evidence shows that, with modern technology and the elimination of the artificial scarcity and organised waste of capitalism, it should be possible to very rapidly produce enough to satisfy the likely needs of everybody. In any event, this should be the aim, to be reached as soon as possible. It is possible that, right at the beginning, this might not be possible for all goods. In which case, there'd have to be some form of rationing. It would be up to the people around at the time at the time to decide. Personally, I'd favour some form of direct rationing by product rather than the general-purpose voucher system you seem to favour. But I can't see this having to last for long, nor to all goods. I would think most goods and services could be made free from the start (eg. transport, housing, utilities, laundries, restaurants (not necessarily serving filet steak every day), etc).

As to the second, I doubt it.


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## Wilf (May 23, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> I would think most goods and services could be made free from the start (eg. transport, housing, utilities, laundries, restaurants (not necessarily serving filet steak every day), etc).


 Who would own these goods - and who would be doing the deciding?


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## Jean-Luc (May 24, 2012)

Wilf said:


> Who would own these goods - and who would be doing the deciding?


The general pinciple of socialism/communism is that the places where useful things are produced and useful services are provided should belong to society as a whole (ie no individual or individuals should have ownership rights over them) with the day-to-day running being under the democratic control of those working in them and wider decisions being taken by the wider community. I would think LD would agree on this too.


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## SpineyNorman (May 24, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> As to the first, I think the evidence shows that, with modern technology and the elimination of the artificial scarcity and organised waste of capitalism, it should be possible to very rapidly produce enough to satisfy the likely needs of everybody.


 
You're having a laugh mate. As it stands we could probably produce enough food for everyone, provided people aren't bothered about having fillet steak etc. but with resource depletion - that is peak oil, peak gas, shortages of metal and other mineral deposits - we'll be lucky if we can even do that before long. We'll certainly never be able to produce enough consumer goods for everyone to have everything they want/need. When Marx was writing the idea of super-abundance made sense - we were nowhere near the earth's limits in terms of carrying capacity - but now, when we're already at the absolute limit in terms of hydrocarbons extraction, and these limits will reduce over time - it's not even on nodding terms with reality.

I doubt full communism can ever be achieved, there will always have to be some kind of rationing. The question is how is this done?


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## love detective (May 24, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> I'm back, as promised. Amusing as exchanging arguments and insults here is I do have a life.
> 
> Your reply shows that, since they won't circulate and would be cancelled on use, what you call "money like tokens" aren't money in the usual sense (nor in the sense of that "fuckwit" Karl Marx). They are consumption vouchers. So you too are advocating a moneyless society .


 
I specifically said they would circulate - but putting that aside, i've said from the very start that money like tokens which would have some of the features of existing money (e.g. means of access to use values) but not the features that money assumes under capitalism (e.g. ability to be used as capital, to 'earn' interest etc.)



> But the question is which is more practical: free distribution and open access or issuing everybody with these non-circulating vouchers? The problem with your scheme is that it requires not only deciding how many vouchers should be issued to individuals but also what "price" to put on the goods made available for individual use (a huge, bureaucratic task). This is no easy calculation and if you get it wrong the vouchers could depreciate and/or a black market in some goods develop. I don't think it could last for any period of time but would sooner or later break down and real money re-emerge.


 
The problem of what to issue to individuals will arise whether money is used or a direct allocation from the 'store' is used. You continually slip back into this argument even though you don't realise it applies regardless of whether money like tokens are used to aid the distribution of use values to those that need them or not. This is because, like it or not, scarcity will still exist in a non-capitalist society.



> Now to your two questions which, if I remember, were (1) what if not enough can be produced and (2) will, during the changeover, those opposed to it be allowed open access to resources to oppose the changeover.
> 
> As to the first, I think the evidence shows that, with modern technology and the elimination of the artificial scarcity and organised waste of capitalism, it should be possible to very rapidly produce enough to satisfy the likely needs of everybody. In any event, this should be the aim, to be reached as soon as possible. It is possible that, right at the beginning, this might not be possible for all goods. In which case, there'd have to be some form of rationing. It would be up to the people around at the time at the time to decide. *Personally, I'd favour some form of direct rationing by product rather than the general-purpose voucher system you seem to favour.* But I can't see this having to last for long, nor to all goods. I would think most goods and services could be made free from the start (eg. transport, housing, utilities, laundries, restaurants (not necessarily serving filet steak every day), etc).


 
So in your ideal utopian world, you'd have some central body deciding exactly what use values people would get issued. There would be no capacity for choice in this world. You'll get what you're given and that's it is it? Just because concepts like freedom & choice have been hijacked and contorted by neo-liberalism, it doesn't mean the base ideas should be chucked out. This is the kind of situation where your blinkered binary view of money (i.e. money is used in capitalism so it must be completely bad, can't have it in a progressive/non-capitalist society) gets in the way of actually properly thinking about how such a system could work (not that thinking about it does any good, it's all irrelevant).

So if I like Coffee and don't like Tea and someone else likes Tea and don't like Coffee. But we all in your rigid stalinist system get given a ration of coffee & tea - what does this imply? Either one portion of both coffee and tea goes to waste, or the people with excess tea/coffee have to devise amongst themselves some method of exchange in a direct barter method so that they simply get the use values they desire. Or do you mean that this central body would keep that much information on us all so that they knew exactly what we liked and didn't and would distribute accordingly? That would mean the 'state' (which it would be) would keep more information on us than they do at the moment, hardly a progressive development, and also a huge bureaucratic task, something you seemed adverse to above, but now call for here a few sentences later.

Whereas on the other hand if people were simply issued their electronic tokens they could use them to draw down the tea and coffee that they needed directly. Making it a much more efficient means of distributing use values to those who want them and not to those who don't. And also allowing people to be treated like adults in allowing them to decide what they want to do with their share (or equivalent) of society's product. The signals that would be sent by the usage of the tokens in acquiring use values, could also form part of a democratic market system where the signalling effect of these tokens would feed into future production plans, to make sure the right amount of things were produced and distributed to the right places at the right times (as much as this could be possible of course given resource constraints etc.)

As for your general idea that everything that would be required/wanted could be provided purely by getting rid of the (considerable) waste that capitalism creates - well this has been done to death a million times before. Your assertion does not reflect any kind of reality and all you're saying is that if everything was OK then everything would be OK



> As to the second, I doubt it.


 
So you agree there would need to be some restriction of access to the output of society - something you jumped up & down about me stating that this would be required earlier in the thread - have you changed your mind about that now then?


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## Jean-Luc (May 24, 2012)

What has genuinely surprised me about this discussion is that the attacks (and the mocking) on communism as a moneyfree world of abundance have come not from open supporters of capitalism but from critics of capitalism.


love detective said:


> I specifically said they would circulate


My apologies for misunderstanding you, but that makes your scheme worse : if your tokens circulate they would be money and all the problems associated with money would arise (hoarding, saving, lending, borrowing, stealing, counterfeiting, depreciation, inflation, etc, etc).


love detective said:


> So in your ideal utopian world, you'd have some central body deciding exactly what use values people would get issued. There would be no capacity for choice in this world. You'll get what you're given and that's it is it?


 No, not at all. What you have overlooked is that I was talking about how to deal with the exceptional case of the shortage of some goods, as might be the case right at the beginning or as a result of some big natural disaster. In such a temporary emergency, direct allocation of what there is would seem to be the obvious solution. Since any shortage would only prove to be temporary what would be the point of going to the trouble of designing, printing and distributing plastic cards? In normal circumstances, I would imagine people would do what you envisage -- choose Tea or Coffee or whatever according to their individual choice -- except that they could leave the store without having to hand over vouchers or swipe a plastic card.


love detective said:


> if people were simply issued their electronic tokens they could use them to draw down the tea and coffee that they needed directly. Making it a much more efficient means of distributing use values to those who want them and not to those who don't. And also allowing people to be treated like adults in allowing them to decide what they want to do with their share (or equivalent) of society's product. The signals that would be sent by the usage of the tokens in acquiring use values, could also form part of a democratic market system where the signalling effect of these tokens would feed into future production plans, to make sure the right amount of things were produced and distributed to the right places at the right times (as much as this could be possible of course given resource constraints etc.)


But why couldn't what people actually took under conditions of open access also be used as signals as to what to produce or keep on producing?


love detective said:


> all you're saying is that if everything was OK then everything would be OK


 All you are saying is everything won't be okay because you've swallowed the ideological justification of capitalism that money is necessary because resources are scarce and wants infinite. The point at issue is whether or not the resources, the technology and working skills exist to provide enough to satisfy the likely needs of everybody on the planet. I say "yes", you say "no" and so defend rationing. You don't even hold out the possibility of humanity ever being able to get beyond having to use money.


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## Wilf (May 25, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> What has genuinely surprised me about this discussion is that the attacks (and the mocking) on communism as a moneyfree world of abundance have come not from open supporters of capitalism but from critics of capitalism.
> .


This is a communism you want governments to bring in, yes?


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## Jean-Luc (May 25, 2012)

SpineyNorman said:


> When Marx was writing the idea of super-abundance made sense - we were nowhere near the earth's limits in terms of carrying capacity - but now, when we're already at the absolute limit in terms of hydrocarbons extraction


You're wrong about the "absolute limits" of hydrocarbon extraction. Even way-out doomsayers admit that there are enough coal deposits to last for centuries (not that burning them would be the most rational way to use them; they could be better used as raw material for plastics). And there are alternative sources of energy, such as nuclear power and solar power (which has hardly been tapped yet), let alone wind power, tidal power, geothermal energy, etc.

Actually, with regard to Marx, it's the opposite to what you say. When he was writing in the 1860s and 1870s technology was, though immensely productive compared with what went before, relatively backward compared to today being based on coal and iron. The electric motor and the diesel engine were unknown; transport was by steam locomotive or horse-drawn carriage; houses and streets were lit by gas. The thirty years following Marx's death saw the electrification of industry, the invention of the internal combustion engine, the coming of radio and other technological developments which clearly showed that the problem of production had been solved, that the knowledge to finally conquer scarcity had been acquired. Since then of course there's been plastics, nuclear power and electronics, with nanotechnology and genetic engineering on the horizon.

Here's how the technological prospects are summed up in a recent book:


> Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standard of living for every man, woman and child on the planet. Within a generation, we will be able to provide goods and services, once reserved for the wealthy few, to any and all who need them. Or desire them. Abundance for all is actually within our grasp.”


OK, the authors think this is going to happen within capitalism. They're wrong, but it does show what could be done if we had a world in which the Earth's resources were the common heritage of all Humanity instead of the monopoly of rich individuals, corporations and states they are today.


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## SpineyNorman (May 25, 2012)

I don't even know where to start with that


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## Jean-Luc (May 25, 2012)

SpineyNorman said:


> I don't even know where to start with that


Well, you could start by taking your hands away from your eyes and looking at the facts.

Then, you could produce the evidence to back up your claim that "we're already at the absolute limit in terms of hydrocarbons extraction".

Then, you could produce the evidence to show that we could not use solar energy and nuclear power as non-C02 producing substitutes for the burning hydrocarbons.

Then, you could consider how many resources could be saved to produce what people need if there was no arms production.

Then, you could ponder the dilemma you face from claiming that the Earth cannot provide enough decent food, clothing, housing, health care and education for all its inhabitants:

Do you support the actual position where a majority of people in Western countries have their needs in these fields met to some degree while one-quarter of the world's population suffer from starvation? or
Do you support a sharing out of what limit resources you think there are to satisfy these needs amongst the whole world population, ie. involving a further reduction in living standards in the West?


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## love detective (May 25, 2012)

You and Dr Jon are like two sides of the same blinkered coin

Sorry but got no more time to go round in circles with you on the detail of this one - your stock response to anyone who doesn't agree with you that they must then be a supporter of capitalism (or can't see past money) gets a bit tedious after a while. Especially when they bear no relevance to the point that you are supposedly addressing with them

There's nothing wrong with a bit of utopian dreaming to inspire a progressive move forward in humanity's way of organising society, but your extreme utopianism does not help that cause one bit.

I'd suggest you take a step back from this, have a go at reading marx's capital so that you get a better grasp of the various categories that you're currently conflating, and then revisit the topic in light of that. Preferably with a more materialist outlook on the resource, energy and environmental problems that will face any kind of future society, however they may be organised


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## Jean-Luc (May 25, 2012)

Retired hurt.


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## love detective (May 25, 2012)




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## SpineyNorman (May 25, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> Well, you could start by taking your hands away from your eyes and looking at the facts.


 
No U.



Jean-Luc said:


> Then, you could produce the evidence to back up your claim that "we're already at the absolute limit in terms of hydrocarbons extraction".


 
Very long thread with plenty of debate on the subject here: http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/peak-oil-was-petroleum-geolgist-explains-us-war-policy.1506/



Jean-Luc said:


> Then, you could produce the evidence to show that we could not use solar energy and nuclear power as non-C02 producing substitutes for the burning hydrocarbons.


 
In addition to the above thread, there's plenty in here: http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/systemic-collapse-the-basics.234281/



Jean-Luc said:


> Then, you could consider how many resources could be saved to produce what people need if there was no arms production.


 
Nowhere near enough is the answer to that one.



Jean-Luc said:


> Then, you could ponder the dilemma you face from claiming that the Earth cannot provide enough decent food, clothing, housing, health care and education for all its inhabitants:
> 
> Do you support the actual position where a majority of people in Western countries have their needs in these fields met to some degree while one-quarter of the world's population suffer from starvation? or
> Do you support a sharing out of what limit resources you think there are to satisfy these needs amongst the whole world population, ie. involving a further reduction in living standards in the West?


 
The facts are the facts - seems a bit daft to ignore reality just its consequences get in the way of utopian dreams. Something about looking reality in the face and pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

By the way, the "centuries of coal" ignores the fact that those calculations were made years ago, when consumption was far lower and did not project for increased demand. It also completely ignores carbon emissions.

And the problem with using solar energy etc. is that a complete new infrastructure would need to be built, and this would mean using vast quantities of fossil fuels. Not exactly easy when we're already running at capacity.

You can keep dreaming if you want, I'd rather take reality as it actually is as my starting point and work out what the best steps toward a more progressive society might be in the here and now - with an eye to the long term. You can't legislate against reality Jean-Luc. Sorry but it's true.


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## Jean-Luc (May 25, 2012)

love detective said:


>


If LD would take his head out of the sand and read the reports of the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the WHO lying around him he'd realise he is wrong to claim that the Earth could not provide enough to decently feed, clothe, house, educate, provide healthcare, etc the whole world's population.

In the meantime I've followed his advice and re-read Marx's _Grundrisse_ (I'm a fast reader) and have come across this passage:


> The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis.


But first you have to plough through pages and pages devoted to refuting LD's idea that you can abolish commodity-production ("production based on exchange value") while leaving money intact. What a fuckwit!


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## love detective (May 25, 2012)

the quote you post is all about the appropriation of surplus value through the existence of wage labour - which I agree is the main issue that needs to be confronted if a capitalist society is to be overturned (unlike you who believes the crux of the issue to be the existence of money).

why are you quoting something that contradicts what you've been arguing for on this thread?

if you'd actually read the texts you're referring to rather than just desperately googling around trying to get some quote that you think backs up your case, then you'd be able to approach this discussion in a much more productive fashion


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## SpineyNorman (May 25, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> If LD would take his head out of the sand and read the reports of the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the WHO lying around him he'd realise he is wrong to claim that the Earth could not provide enough to decently feed, clothe, house, educate, provide healthcare, etc the whole world's population.
> 
> In the meantime I've followed his advice and re-read Marx's _Grundrisse_ (I'm a fast reader) and have come across this passage:
> But first you have to plough through pages and pages devoted to refuting LD's idea that you can abolish commodity-production ("production based on exchange value") while leaving money intact. What a fuckwit!


 
Nobody has said there isn't enough food for everyone _now_ Jean-Luc - In fact I explicitly said the opposite.

Although even as it stands now there's not enough luxury food for everyone. Which means rationing of some kind.

LD knows way more about Marxist economics than I do so I'll leave it to him to refute your misrepresentation of the Grundrisse.


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## Jean-Luc (May 25, 2012)

love detective said:


> the quote you post is all about the appropriation of surplus value through the existence of wage labour - which I agree is the main issue that needs to be confronted if a capitalist society is to be overturned (unlike you who believes the crux of the issue to be the existence of money).


No, that's not what it is "all" about. It's also about the degree of labour productivity eventually, thanks to modern technology, reaching such a high degree that individual commodities would have so small a labour-content as to have a near-zero price. At that point, says Marx, production for sale ("commodity production") no longer makes sense as these products could be given away free. But to realise this the means of production would first have to become the common property of society (the "associated producers").

In any event, to imagine that a circulating currency could survive the abolition of wage-labour is to misunderstand completely Marx's "critique of political economy". Political economy claimed (on the basis of limited resources and infinite needs) that commodity production, money, wage-labour, capital, profit, etc were natural, eternal categories. Marx's critique was that they were only categories peculiar to one particular phase of historical evolution and which would disappear in the next (communism). You are just plain wrong to assume that he would have evisaged some of these categories (commodity production, wage-labour for instance) disappearing while another (money) would continue.

As we have already agreed, in the end it does not really matter what Marx may or may not have said, but historical accuracy and intellectual honesty require recognising that Marx did stand for the abolition of money (as well as of wage-labour and commodity production).


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## butchersapron (May 25, 2012)

That passage talks about that situation happening in capitalist conditions, of a sort of communism of capital, not after common ownership of the means of production has been established.


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## love detective (May 25, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> No, that's not what it is "all" about. It's also about the degree of labour productivity eventually


 
It touches on it yes - but as you were quoting in response to you being ridiculed that there would be no shortages and no environment/resource/energy problems in your utopian society, it hardly seemed worth mentioning this as it done nothing to support the point you continually keep asserting



> In any event, to imagine that a circulating currency could survive the abolition of wage-labour is to misunderstand completely Marx's "critique of political economy". Political economy claimed (on the basis of limited resources and infinite needs) that commodity production, money, wage-labour, capital, profit, etc were natural, eternal categories. Marx's critique was that they were only categories peculiar to one particular phase of historical evolution and which would disappear in the next (communism). You are just plain wrong to assume that he would have evisaged some of these categories (commodity production, wage-labour for instance) disappearing while another (money) would continue.


 
you mix up a lot of things here

firstly, i don't think anyone here (you, me or marx) would claim that money did not exist prior to wage-labour/capitalism. So for you to then assert that it is absurd to suggest that money could exist in a non-capitalist society (in the senses that money is joined at the hip with capitalism) is not just rationally/logically incorrect but empirically absurd also. (you also automatically assume that the breakdown of a capitalist society would be followed by something more progressive, which again shows there are no limits to your utopian assumptions, even where there is no basis for those assumptions). Money in various forms has existed for thousands of years in societies based on all kinds of different modes of organisation, so for you to tie it in this tightly to a mode of production that has only existed for a couple of hundres years shows a woeful ignorance of what has went before us - as you suggest further on in your post a certain amount of _historical accuracy and intellectual honesty_ is required here.

Secondly, while you're on the whole correct about Marx's critique in regards to the categories of wage-labour and capital. You misread him in regards to other categories such as money and commodity production. A commodity producing society is not the same thing as a capitalist society. A society with markets is not the same thing as a market society. And a society with money is not the same things as a capitalist society. So while you were correct in general about Marx's approach - you've either dishonestly brought in a few other categories to which it did not apply in the sense that you assert it applies, or you've just genuinely misunderstood him. Either way, getting it wrong (either intentionally or mistakenly) doesn't do much to progress your case here

Thirdly, I've not even been using Marx to support any of the arguments i've been making here about how use values would be distributed in a progressive non-capitalist society. I've used him to the extent that I see the productions of use values as commodities by wage labour as the fundamental/critical thing to overcome if society is to ever progress beyond capitalism (the reason i urged you to understand his work more coherently so you would get off this focus on surface money as the problem). A lot of my ideas about how things could work are informed from my reading of Marx, but as you should know if you have read his work in any detail - he largely focuses on a critical analysis of existing capitalism and gives little time or attention (in the scientific sense) to creating blueprints as to how some future society might function. In a sense, he's the exact opposite of you. He concentrated on trying to understand the society we are living in, in order to be better placed to try and change it - you concentrate on imagining a society you'd like to live in with no consideration given to either how it woud work or how you would get there. Idealism personified.



> As we have already agreed, in the end it does not really matter what Marx may or may not have said, but historical accuracy and intellectual honesty require recognising that Marx did stand for the abolition of money (as well as of wage-labour and commodity production).


 
see above


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## Jean-Luc (May 25, 2012)

Although this discussion is becoming a bit more civilized, it is also becoming more esoteric and marxologist, but the fact is, LD, that you are just plain wrong about Marx and money.

In his _A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy_ (which was published in his lifetime and is in fact largely devoted to an analysis of money) he says that "money, though a physical object with distinct properties, represents a social relation of production", ie a relation "of people to the productive activities of one another". Later he refers to "money, the universal form of labour in bourgeois society". From this it is clear that he regarded money as an expression of the same social relation of production as commodity-production and wage-labour.

In a draft published after his death he deals with the specific point you raise:


> Money may exist and has existed in historical time before capital, banks, wage-labour, etc. came into being. In this respect it can be said, therefore, that the simpler category expresses relations predominating in an immature entity or subordinate relations in a more advanced entity; relations which already existed historically before the entity had developed the aspects expressed in a more concrete category. The procedure of abstract reasoning which advances from the simplest to more complex concepts to that extent conforms to actual historical development.


From which I take his point to be that in pre-capitalist societies money (as a social relation) existed only in an immature form which only becomes fully developed in capitalism.

In any event, your argument that because commodity production and money existed before capitalism this means that they are not specifically capitalist economic categories and so could exist in a post-capitalist society is a two-edged sword. (Incidentally, this was the standard argument of defenders of the old USSR being socialist despite the continued existence there of production for sale and of money.) It's that wage-labour too existed before capitalism.

In his classic _The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World_ G.E.M de Ste. Croix devoted a 25-page section to discussing "hired labour" in Ancient and Hellenistic times, showing that, though marginal, wage-labour did exist. So, on your logic, a case could be made out for saying that wage-labour too could survive capitalism .....


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## love detective (May 25, 2012)

so your Marx quote basically back up what i'm saying (once again) - money has existed both prior to and therefore has the ability to exist after a capitalist society - i.e. they are not joined at the hip - and that money in any particular mode of production takes on the characteristics of that underlying mode of production

no one is saying that money does not take on a different form (to that which it has in other types of society) when it manifests itself as a specific form from within capitalist social relations - in fact that has been my argument since the very first post on this thread - that money as we know it under capitalism is nothing but an expression of those social underlying social relations - and therefore what needs to be attacked & destroyed is the underlying social relations that produce it, not the expression in and off itself (which is what you advocate in your world without money)

you seem to think that this thing money (which under capitalism is an expression of capitalist social relations) has the capacity to retain the same characteristics even though the underlying social relations which give life to those characteristics no longer exists - that is why you are so anti-money in a non-capitalist society. I can't see why you think this, but I can see why if you did think this you would be wary of money existing in a post-capitalist society, but the simple fact is that you are wrong, completely and utterly wrong to think that something that is but an expression of something else will exist in the same way if the underlying social relations which gave rise to it no longer exist. I may have to have someone send for a five year old child as this is so blatantly obvious

I'll say it once again, you really should take the time to properly read, in context & methodically,the things you're trying to use to back up your points - then you might be able to actually back up your points with them, instead of backing up the points of those you are arguing against

edit: also re your quote from the critique - of course he was talking about money under capitalism so it's no surprise that he sees it as a manifestation of underlying wage-labour social relations - as to how you get from this to posit that money represents these things independently of the social relations that produce it is really beyond me - i can't believe you actually put that quote forward thinking it backed up your point - you numpty


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## Random (May 25, 2012)

Jean-Luc said:


> on your logic, a case could be made out for saying that wage-labour too could survive capitalism .....


 Surely this must be true in theory. Unless you think ancient Greece and Rome were capitalist societies?

A society dominated by wage labour, commodity production and blah de blah all the rest is what we loosely call a "capitalist" one. A society dominated by from each according to ability, to each according to need could still involve some wage labour or even use of money, but it would be marginal to how society would be reproduced.


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## Jean-Luc (May 26, 2012)

This is turning from a discussion as to whether or not there can be money in a post-capitalist communist society based on the common ownership of the means of production into whether or not Marx stood for the end/disappearance of money.

LD may or may not be right in thinking that money could/should survive capitalism (I think he's wrong) but his case rests on its merits (or demerits) and not on what Marx said. It so happens, though, that he is wrong about Marx.

If Marx was not "against" money, how explain:

1. His passionate denunciations in his early writings of the corrosive effect of money on human relations and his characterisation of it as one of the main incarnations of the alienation of the species-being?

2. The pages and pages in the _Grundrisse_ (and passing references elsewhere) criticising those who wanted to abolish money but retain commodity production (production for sale on a market) if he didn't himself agree with the abolition of money and was making the point that to do this you'd have to end commodity-production too.

3. As is well known, Marx mentioned "labour-time vouchers" as the way to overcome shortages in the earlier days of communism pending it becoming possible to go over to "from each according to their ability, to each according to the needs". But he made it clear that such vouchers were not money. Why would he say they weren't money if he thought that money could exist in a communist post-capitalist  society?


> I have elsewhere examined thoroughly the Utopian idea of “labour-money” in a society founded on the production of commodities. On this point I will only say further, that *Owen’s “labour-money,” for instance, is no more “money” than a ticket for the theatre. *Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely in consistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption. But it never enters into Owen’s head to presuppose the production of commodities, and at the same time, by juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary conditions of that production.(_Capital_, Volume 1, chapter 3)





> In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. *These vouchers are not money.* They do not circulate.(_Capital_, Volume 2, chapter 18).


 
But, as I said, the case against LD's scheme is not that it's not what Marx envisaged, but that it doesn't make sense. Money arises from exchange (the buying and selling of commodities) and implies exchange; exchange implies separate owners; communism means that production is organised socially so there are no private producers producing goods to be exchanged; communism means that what is produced is socially owned; so the problem is not how to sell what has been produced, but how to share it out amongst the members of society. One method of doing this could be consumption vouchers (whether based on work done or general entitlement), but not money because money implies exchange and "within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products".


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## love detective (May 26, 2012)

you could have saved yourself a lot of time and paid attention to my post 102 which said:-




			
				love detective said:
			
		

> I've not even been using Marx to support any of the arguments i've been making here about how use values would be distributed in a progressive non-capitalist society.


 
You still clearly have no idea what you're talking about though - the fact that you now talk about the fact that you would be 'ok' with consumption vouchers which pretty much describe what I have been talking about all along (i.e. tokens that are issued to people to allow them access to the use values they need, and by extension restrict free & unlimited access to society's output - and i have no problems with the fact that these would 'circulate' as they would help to efficiently redistribute use values already produced) - yet you are still wedded to this idea that the charactersitics of money under capitalism would remain the same when the social relations that give rise to those characteristics are no longer present. You really should try and understand Marx in context, not take what he says about money (or any other aspect of life )under capitalism and project that meaning onto a non-capitalist society

Notwithstanding the above, once again your quotes from Marx do more to back up my point than make yours - for example the quote from vol1 is in relation to the idea of labour money - something I have not argued for here, in fact I have argued the opposite of it. Can you show me anywhere on here where I have said that the issuance of these money like tokens would be linked to labour? No you can't. And the quote from volume 2 pretty much shows that Marx is in agreement with me that some kind of token would be used to both restrict and allow access to the fruits of society's labour - something you were shitting your pants with rage about earlier when i mentioned the necessity of such a thing. You should also note that this quote talks about money-capital being eliminated when production is socialised, which is something I have also been saying all along, i.e. the ability for money to function as capital will not exist in a progressive non capitalist society, leaving any kind of money that did exist as a benign thing, something subordinate to humanity's needs, not the other way around as it is now. So once again your quickly googled and poorly understood Marx quotes that you haven't read in context actually sit more comfortably with my arguments than yours. You haven't read any of these books (vol1, vol2 etc..) that you are randomly mining for quotes have you?



> The pages and pages in the Grundrisse (and passing references elsewhere) criticising those who wanted to abolish money but retain commodity production (production for sale on a market) if he didn't himself agree with the abolition of money and was making the point that to do this you'd have to end commodity-production too.


 
You've got this upside down as well - his point about criticising those who wanted to abolish money but retain commodity production is exactly the very first point I made on this thread about the pointlessness of getting rid of the pope and retaining the system of catholicism - once again your hastily scrambled together points about Marx, support my arguments against you. Marx agree with me that the crux of the problem is the production of use values for sale by wage labour. Thereby to focus on the problem as being one that requires the abolishment of money as the main objective (which the OP does in this thread), entirely misses the point about what makes capitalist society exploitative



> His passionate denunciations in his early writings of the corrosive effect of money on human relations and his characterisation of it as one of the main incarnations of the alienation of the species-being?


 
again you're projecting an ahistorical view on what marx says about a historically specific set of social relations and the expressions of those relations (i.e. the use of money under capitalism)


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## Jean-Luc (May 26, 2012)

love detective said:


> the fact that you now talk about the fact that you would be 'ok' with consumption vouchers which pretty much describe what I have been talking about all along (i.e. tokens that are issued to people to allow them access to the use values they need, and by extension restrict free & unlimited access to society's output)


Actually, I'm not really ok with consumption vouchers (except under temporary and exceptional circumstances) but my point was that Marx did not regard them as money. I gave you a chance to say that your "money like tokens" were consumption vouchers (that would be cancelled on use and so would not circulate any more than a ticket for the theatre after it's been used) and not money, but you didn't take it. You said your "money-like tokens" would circulate, ie would be money not a mere consumption voucher. If you want a second chance to correct yourself on this I'll give it you. Then we can discuss whether, under what circumstances and for how long consumption vouchers might be needed (a different debate as to whether money could exist in a society based on the common ownership of the means of production). Or you can dig yourself deeper into the hole by insisting that they will circulate and explain how (presumably through the stores and then on to their suppliers, etc?).


love detective said:


> Can you show me anywhere on here where I have said that the issuance of these money like tokens would be linked to labour? No you can't.


No, I can't. And I never suggested you did since I guessed that you didn't. I was more concerned with the second part of those two Marx quotes: that the vouchers Marx mentioned would give the holder of them a "right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption", entitling them "to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods", which Marx specifically said were not money.


love detective said:


> again you're projecting an ahistorical view on what marx says about a historically specific set of social relations and the expressions of those relations (i.e. the use of money under capitalism)


I don't many people who have read Marx's passionate denunciations in his early writings of money and its effects on human relationships will agree with you that he was just objecting to money under capitalism.

I think your basic difference with Marx is that you regard money as a sort of neutral tool while he regarded it as a social relation of production.


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## love detective (May 26, 2012)

em - my quote in full for the first point was




			
				love detective said:
			
		

> the fact that you now talk about the fact that you would be 'ok' with consumption vouchers which pretty much describe what I have been talking about all along (i.e. tokens that are issued to people to allow them access to the use values they need, and by extension restrict free & unlimited access to society's output - and i have no problems with the fact that these would 'circulate' as they would help to efficiently redistribute use values already produced)


 
I edited this shortly after posting it to include the bit about circulating but that was a long time before your reply above

so i specifcally address the point that i have no problems with them circulating to help in the efficient distribution of use values to those who need them

As for the rest I really can't be arsed with your fuckwittery - you continually conflate marx's analysis of a set of historically specific social relations with an ahistorical universal determination of things

you're really tying yourself in knots here - any kind of society will have an underlying set of social relations which the reproduction of that society is based on - these can also be looked at as the relations of production. You seem to think that relations of production is a specifically capitalist thing, and point towards money being an expression of those relations of production and therefore a bad thing. You don't seem to get it that the relations of production is a general phrase, and relations of production could be capitalistic or socialised/progressive. So devoid of any consideration of underlying social relations and relations of production, these money like tokens to which I refer cannot be anything other than neutral, because until you bring into consideration a specific set of social relations/production relations, you cannot pass judgment as to what this society would be like. yet you continually conflate and prioritise the expressions/phenomenal manifestastions of those underlying social relations with the actual social relations that produce them. You adopt exactly the kind of upside down approach to political economy that Marx detested - which is why your attempts to use him to back up your points always leaves you on your arse

It might be useful here to draw on another category and look at Marx's comments about it to demonstrate how poorly you are using him here. Take the act of labour for example, work. Now throughout Capital there are countless passages where Marx demonstrates how labour/work under capital is the antithesis of humanity, it is debilitating exploitative etc. Does this mean we can take Marx's comments about labour under capitalist social relations and say that labour in any society will have these characteristics? of course we can't, that would be absurd. Because Marx's critique was a critique of these things as they are under capitalist social relations. You cannot take these things out of the social relations which condition them and say those things would apply under a completely different set of social relations (while we're here, and given your misunderstanding of Marx's critique - I bet you would even argue that there won't be any need for surplus labour in your great new society - again because you think because Marx critiques surplus labour under capitalism you think that it won't or shouldn't exist in a progressive/non-capitalist society. But it will, the existence of surplus labour in a society tells us nothing about the nature of that society - what tells about the nature of that society is the way in which the surplus labour is extracted, the form in which it takes and the manner in which it is distributed)

In short, you don't understand the topic matter your attempting to use - you haven't read any of it in context or as part of a methodological attempt to understand it. This is apparent both from your initial contributions on this thread and latterly your increasingly poor use of Marx to contradict the points that you're trying to make

I'm going to leave you to it now - you money first clown


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