Can someone explain the use of labor vouchers in a hypothetical socialist society? How would there worth be determined...

Can someone explain the use of labor vouchers in a hypothetical socialist society? How would there worth be determined? Are they exchangeable and isn't it just another form of money?

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Labour voucher/central planners are scum

Also

how would you have fully automated space communism without central planning you dumbfuck

Well, thanks for the non-explanation.

It's a bit late so I can't go into too much detail, but a few things.

Labour vouchers are essentially a proof of work, representing a specific amount of time spent laboring (usually in hours). They'd be used to exchange for non-essential goods and services, especially those for which supply is exceptionally limited (food, housing, etc would likely be provided outside this system). Unlike most forms of money, labour vouchers don't circulate: they are received at the place of work and made void upon later exchange.

In essence, it's just a means by which to limit consumption in the transitional phase between capitalism and communism, where many people will still have it in their minds that they should strive to acquire as much personal holdings as possible without regard to how much of it will actually be put to use. It's sub-optimal, but it's a pragmatic approach for necessary rationing and planned economics to be possible in a more decentralized fashion while conditions are being prepped for better things.

If its fully automated then I wouldnt have to work

Labour vouchers are different than money because they are the physical representation of the unique amount of labour that you yourself did

So what is the essential from the currency we use today?

*difference

How do you value labor without a market?

I mean some people would still have to oversee, manage, make decisions or educate other people I guess. But if you would be content with free healthcare and enough money to live in a modest trailer or something you'd be fine. Which is fine. Like why the fuck would I have a problem with that.

cast your eyes toward revolutionary catalonia and realise that its retarded

oops forgot to take off my shitposting flag sorry

I see that labor voucher system would be the transition from a market based to non-market based

Machines will fix machines

As for the rest, I have thought about a parallel system, where the thing that cannot be made by machines will be taken care by a mutual market

After all, how do you automate art, sports and so on

You forgot about it again

then who would fix machines who fix machines xd

A.I planing or organic workers councils with sub_markets "later turn into workers collective"


It is a very outdated idea, today you have the digital employee time clock, it can be used as a labor vocation in digital form "to be used just like credit card"

You guys live in the 20th century tbh

Machines xD

But seriously, the moon and mar rover can fix itself, and any fault that cant be fixed is the result of being an isolated planet rover

The maintenance workers council.

Only determined by hours and not by the social contribution of the job?

So a surgeon that works 3-4 hours a day would made less than a low skill worker that works 8 hours?

No, as the janny and the surgeon is not in the same payroll

You could always treat education as labor and pay accordingly. An AI could be used to optimize weight of labor. Also janitors probably won't exist under socialism.

They would be tied to abstract labor time.

You can exchange them for products, if that's what you mean. It's not money, because they would not accumulate the same way money does. They are destroyed upon use.

How would the transition occur, hypothetically?

you would go from a money market based system to a labour voucher market based system and then as more and more products are fully automated to slowly transition to a non-market system

Literally Hitler.

This thread reveals just how little leftypol actually reads. If you want to understand how labour vouchers would work you really need to read "critique of the gotha program" by marx, and to understand what it would it in a modern context read "towards a new socialism" by paul cockshott (yes, he's a stalinist, but he's pretty fucking awesome by stalinist standards).

I fucking drunk right now so i'm not going to try to post an in depth response on the matter (i might tomorrow if the thread still exists), but in the meantime read these fucking books.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/


The products of labour have an expiration date you utter dumbfuck.

Really, so you are for planned obsolescence then?

Nice job dummy, only consumables commodities should have expiration dates

So you still want to use a computer made in the 80's? Obsolescence doesn't need to be planned for it to exist.

Nice job dummy, obviously the labour invested in making an 80's computer never expired, as a proper 80's quality computer made without planned obsolescence could still be used today
New labour replaced old labour, but the labour invested is still valid today
The labour required to plow the fields yesterday still exist today, and it exists as the labourer that made use of the corn grown there

Labour simply transform itself, as the labour required to build and 80's computer exists as the basis of what helped us to create a computer today

Labour cant be destroyed either, because when you destroy the voucher, you are destroying the currency, not the use-value

And I forgot to add, this would mean commodities have an expiration date solely because of the product itself, not because labour expires

Apparently you live in a universe where entropy doesn't exist.

For the record, you could have labour vouchers without expiration, but it would lead to a kind of distortion similar to inflation in a monetary economy.

How about we just breath for you too you lazy motherfucker? Is your dream to be plugged into the Matrix?

The framework in which entropy fucntions is too big for a single human life to notice it

Labour vouchers could in theory expire, however they value they represent wouldnt, it would expire once they are exchanged, or once the commodity they represents expire, not by a simple determined date, as if a man wanted to save his labour, he would free to do so, if your labour voucher is valid as long as the commodity manufactired is useful, you motivate people to manufacture long-lasting, reliable commodities, discouraging overproduction

Tbh it is fam, lets analyze how the matrix would work, I would be able to impose my ego's will on anyone and anything, without facing the social repercusions of doing so, coffe without caffeine as le ideology man would say

Alse, read my post again, I am arguing about theimpossibility of automating art and sports

This doesn't really make any sense, as the kind of market incentives you're talking about no longer exist in the context of a (lower phase) communist economy. You wouldn't have multiple firms competing for market share and profit, the only real external motivation that would exist would be maintaining your position and getting paid (or possibly promoted/employed in a better position). None of these things have any relation to whether or not the vouchers/credit expires.

Money is a unit of account, but not every method of accounting means money. Money is not simply some information aggregation/compression that gives you a tool for reckoning about the relative size of heterogeneous stuff, money is leverage.

With labour vouchers, you don't have the money cycle (or maybe spiral is the better word), that is money hiring workers, selling stuff for more money than wages and other costs and the business expanding and selling stuff again for more money and the business and its money growing. And if the capitalist says >fuck it, I'm rich enough as it is, I want to keep things where they are right now
the money seeks another person playing that role.


I can actually experience entropy with my senses, I'm literally talking about changes due to entropy happening over a few seconds. Pretty cool, huh? Well, no, it's not some cool ability and you should look up what entropy means.