Money-free world
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Quote:we can simply let the market continue to operate while we turn over significant sectors of the economy to social use.
Can you put some meat on the bones of your argument? Does the NHS simply stop paying the pharmaceutical corporations for medicines? Then what? Again, we cannot really treat the situation in isolation or see the revolution purely as a political process.Won't the pharmaceutical industry have developed an accompanying workers' association with the rise of socialism who will enforce the socialisation of drug production by being in control of production and distribution?Or do we hold the idea that the State machine under instructions of…. hmmm…who exactly?…. Parliament or an actual government?…. will send in the armed forces to commandeer supplies. Again, to get from this UK-centric vision of socialist revolution, what if the factories are in foreign lands still in the throes of revolutionary upheaval where the socialists are not in strength to take possession of perhaps much-needed medicines? And building alternative production systems might take time. Will we invade? Or simply let people die from lack of effective medicine?
At first, obviously, they would continue to pay the pharmaceuticals firms, but after repudiation of the patent law (and any ability to enforce it), then co-ordinated actions by the workers movement could make arrangements to produce their own, the only issue then being precursor materials, which if they are needed to be obtained from outside the revolutionary polity, might need to make some form of working political trade deal. The democratic movement would have transformed the operations of state forces, preferably dismantling them, but perhaps there will be a call to put the police on the picket lines…
I think I agree more with KAZ than YMS on this but January last year the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society ran a meeting entitled "Red Scissors: the socialist case for reducing the regulatory burden on business" in which the speaker argued that when the working class won control of political power they should end all regulations and subsidies for private capitalist businesses and let them sink or swim without any state aid on the assumption that most of them would sink. Probably true, actually.
I can't believe what I'm reading here – socialists actually contemplating the continuation of market relations, post revolution albeit in some kind of attenuated form. This comes of thinking that the growth of a socialist movement prior to the capture of political power can have no significant impact on the scope and extent of capitalist relations of production. Meaning everything has to be done in one fell swoop come the revolution. Now the new revisionist line seems to be – no, lets not do it in one fell swoop. Lets string it out and let capitalism die a gradual death after the revolution because the task of getting rid of capitalism in one fell swoop is just to monumental to contemplate. Is this what some comrades are now saying?
You are forgetting that certain transactions in today’s electronic world can’t take place unless a payment is made for goods. In the days leading up to and immediately after socialism it may be necessary to go through the motions of capitalist business practices, paper exercises if you like. Rather like leaving a pile of coins beside a drinks dispensing machine to make it work.
rodmanlewis wrote:You are forgetting that certain transactions in today’s electronic world can’t take place unless a payment is made for goods. In the days leading up to and immediately after socialism it may be necessary to go through the motions of capitalist business practices, paper exercises if you like. Rather like leaving a pile of coins beside a drinks dispensing machine to make it work.What is to stop this procedure being immediately disabled? Particularly when everyone by then will know it would be quite pointless
Quote:This comes of thinking that the growth of a socialist movement prior to the capture of political power can have no significant impact on the scope and extent of capitalist relations of production.I don't think that is what i am saying, Robbo
Quote:we cannot really treat the situation in isolation or see the revolution purely as a political process. Won't the pharmaceutical industry have developed an accompanying workers' association with the rise of socialism who will enforce the socialisation of drug production by being in control of production and distribution?my own emphasisi have also nit-picked a couple of flaws as i see it in the idea that we will permit the prices system to continue. Closer we come to the avalanche or snowball effect of socialist ideas, the more people will be asking questions and developing answers. Can we at this early stage offer satisfactory responses which i think was Kaz's point?I think we can imagine various scenarios and speculations that do not demand we are shoe-horned into fixed pre-determined futures.Perhaps we will all be given a sort of UBI swipe-card that instead of pounds have points which is determined upon needs less than upon contribution…(perhaps not even points when it comes to food but on calories and i'll use my allotment on several beers!!)……increased points for heating (or air-con) for elderly and frail or families with children. Unlimited baked beans but controlled access to sirloin steak. Who really knows since it will be locally based primarily although it will eventually develop into much wider coordination.As for carrying on capitalism, it is inevitable we will use Walmart/Tesco/Cargill/Big Ag supply and distribution chains as they have more or less proved efficient logistics in determining what and where and how much to produce. Although they fail miserably to monitor the how it is made such as the use of sweat-shop conditions and unsustainable use of raw materials. What will happen we will rationalise it by eliminating wasteful competition and duplication, often commencing at the source of the chain and not the shop-shelf. But what i fear is a sort of Red Army requisition of food-stuffs from small farmers who may not immediately see the advantage of anything more than simple cooperatives to aid production and still stick to some form of exchange payment…will we barter machinery for their harvest, for instance, and thus ensure the net harvest will be an even bumper one, that they start giving it away rather than see it spoil in the fields.I once taking a leave out of Pieter Lawrence blogged on what has proved possible in British capacity to feed itself http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2011/06/war-communism.htmlWhere there is a will, there is a way
robbo203 wrote:I can't believe what I'm reading here – socialists actually contemplating the continuation of market relations, post revolution albeit in some kind of attenuated form. This comes of thinking that the growth of a socialist movement prior to the capture of political power can have no significant impact on the scope and extent of capitalist relations of production. Meaning everything has to be done in one fell swoop come the revolution. Now the new revisionist line seems to be – no, lets not do it in one fell swoop. Lets string it out and let capitalism die a gradual death after the revolution because the task of getting rid of capitalism in one fell swoop is just to monumental to contemplate. Is this what some comrades are now saying?1) The Socialist road to Guilford runs up against the facts that state rules will exist in our way up until we get political power.2) I'm assuming a very rapid rise of the socialist movement, East Germany, or Podemos style, we could get to 30% of the vote fairly rapidly, within 8 years or so from take off.3) I'm discussing dismantling the market, and suggesting that while we do this piecemeal, it's better to just continue using money for those parts of the economy we can't immediately make free, as this is more effective than building the machinery of labour vouchers. This is part of a fairly rapid transition.
Quote:it's better to just continue using money for those parts of the economy we can't immediately make free,How do we acquire this money?I think you state it will be fiat money issued via some sort of UBI. Is this related to helicoptering in money as on the other thread? Didn't the Bolsheviks justify the worthlessness of their inflated rouble to abolishing money?So it isn't earned as wages? Do we still receive monetary wages? Or as some suggested in the past, we will be paid in labour-time vouchers and non-workers receive some sort of agreed allotment? I raised the possibility of black-market – and we know rationing created the spivs of WW2. Are prices going to be indicative prices as in Parecon? I don't think you mean that but just want to clarify. You mean more that a pound of sausages was 50 pence pre-revolution – it will be 50 pence post-revolution, regardless of availability.
alanjjohnstone wrote:How do we acquire this money?I think you state it will be fiat money issued via some sort of UBI. Is this related to helicoptering in money as on the other thread? Didn't the Bolsheviks justify the worthlessness of their inflated rouble to abolishing money?So it isn't earned as wages? Do we still receive monetary wages? Or as some suggested in the past, we will be paid in labour-time vouchers and non-workers receive some sort of agreed allotment? I raised the possibility of black-market – and we know rationing created the spivs of WW2. Are prices going to be indicative prices as in Parecon? I don't think you mean that but just want to clarify. You mean more that a pound of sausages was 50 pence pre-revolution – it will be 50 pence post-revolution, regardless of availability.UBI fiat money is one option, gold is another. What i'm suggesting is that instead of a black market, we just have a market. Indicative prices would work like prices, but if we're going down the fiat money route, then something would be done to interupt the circulation of money (perhaps time limits, perhaps firms just burn the cash on receipt, etc.).
"Keep it simple" absolutely. Clearly, you all disagree with this. Could I remind those present, that "keep it simple" is exactly the view of the Founders of 1904. They did not even talk openly of the abolition of money! Let alone in which top down bureaucratic or geeky gradualist way to do it. We do not benefit from this sort of fruitless speculation. Free Access can be cute. I always found Jack Bradley's stuff particularly endearing, even if I didn't agree with it. How it's done is SLP embarrassing. US not Scargill.
To be more direct: I find an alarming strain of substitutionalism in the previous discussion. It really does seem that there is a strain of thinking that views the revolution as merely the seizure of state power by the SPGB through the electoral process! Or, just as bad, the permeation of 'socialist thinking' as a result of SPGB-type propaganda. We are talking of a social revolution for crying out loud! Not just poxy LETS schemes! Or some nice clean administrative reorganisation by the 'democratically elected delegates'. The workers themselves are going to sort this stuff out. If you really must speculate on how distribution will take place, take some concrete historic examples of how, when left to themselves, workers organise this sort of thing.
Quote:They did not even talk openly of the abolition of money!So we Communists didn't disdain to conceal their views and aims?When did the abolition of money begin to feature prominently in out case for socialism? When did the term "free access" come into common SPGB usage? How did we first begin to promote the idea of the end of buying and selling?If many think our case for the abolition of money is our Unique Selling Point – as it is also with Zeitgeist. What should it be repaced with if we don't wish to discuss the complications of implementation? What Jack Bradley material – can you offer some links, for futher reading Kaz?
Socialism/ communism is not the same as the moneyless society. You started this discussion with that very admission. The abolition of money is a (probable) product not the aim. The Aim is stated before the D of P (I's so old school).I think the history of the evolution of the money meme in SPGB circles will have to be my subject. I have sent a great file to Mike Foster dealing with this but not sure if he intended anything but a display. Timeline: Off hand, late '60s, but was always tacitly understood.USP: It is not the complications of implementation but the geekiness of the concept of the abolition of money I object to. We put ourselves in the same category as Zeitgeist? Head geeks of Geek City. USPs are a capitalist concept rooted in the bourgeois ideology of marketing, catering to the lowest common denominator, accepting the derogatory notion of the eight second attention span.Socialism is simple but requires a certain amount of mental working out. Robbo might use the word cerebration. We make it over-intellectual at our peril. But over-simplification, the boiling down into a series of "thou shalts" (such as "thou shalt have no money") is far worse and is the cause of all the problems the Partly is currently experiencing.Jack Bradley: Alas not online. I can send you some stuff from the archives or scan it and ask someone to put stuff on the web. Technically it was (Enfield and) Haringey branch rather than individual activity. Surprised you don't know. You bin around yonks.
We did mention "the abolition of money" in the early days, as in this article the July 1913 Socialist Standard:
Quote:With the abolition of private property, wages, and money, it will be very easy to assure that each person shall perform his or her share of the necessary labour of production, and the "problem" of distribution then would be no problem at all — as we shall see in a future contribution.And there's this article from May 1910 entitled "Tariff Reform, Free Trade or No Trade? The fiscal fraud exposed" which ends:
Quote:Economic development has made trade an anachronism, and the next step in social evolution, that is Socialism, means a system where trade “free” or “protected”, is rendered impossible by the fact of the common ownership of the means of wealth production. Socialism therefore – a society wherein we have the free and equal association of the wealth producers, operating the means of production they commonly own, making everything for use and for use alone – is the next stage in social progress. Onward! Speed the day!This article from 1934 makes it quite clear that, in our view, socialism involves the disappearance of money:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1934/no-354-february-1934/money-business
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