I've read about proposals (especially by mutualists) suggesting the replacement of money with a labor voucher system, where exchange value is dependent on production time. (correct me if wrong)
While I like the idea, how is this going to be implemented?
Would it (only) be done on a higher level with communities negotiating between each other? And how would the problem of (commodity) scarcity be dealt with?
Other urls found in this thread:
marxists.org
en.trm.creationmonetaire.info
fr.duniter.org
twitter.com
Just implement it.
Write it and it could be on the web tomorrow.
To be more specific, I was thinking about how to make a labor-backed/labor voucher online cryptocurrency, and what I came up with was–
Solve captchas for half an hour to generate a new coin. (baseline wage)
Every transaction destroys 10% of the currency to prevent inflation.
That's like making a currency who's value is based on how fast people can shovel dirt.
Besides, the exchange rate would fluctuate as people start using it. Which is another problem I've seen no solution for except the Mutualist bank idea, which doesn't appear to be fully worked out.
Not really sure time is the best way to do it.
Look at fruit, it takes months and months of labor to make fruit. Same with meat, you gotta grow an animal up for years. If we used this system food would be most expensive while TVs pumped out of factories would be cheap as dirt.
Tbh I don't think labour vouchers are necessarily a one to one exchange, nor should they be. After all not all labour is equal, 8 hours in a coal mine is not equivalent to 8 hours sweeping floors. As long as you have a non-transferable, one-use-only currency system you can just set prices and payments based on whatever gets the best results via a vis affordability of products, adequate wages, etc without causing shortages or anything.
No. It takes months and months to produce several tonnes of fruits, and then that total cost is divided between every individual piece of fruit produced, so if you produce 10,000kg of apples for 2,000 hours of work, each kilogram of apple has a value of 1/5th of an hour. This value naturally increases when the quantity that is produced diminishes or the quantity of work increases, and vice-versa. Surely you understand that.
Now, you seem to be considering that TV's are just created when they are assembled, and thus that this is their cost in hours of work. You have to also take into account the hours of work needed to transport the primary materials from one point of the planet to another, the hours of work used at the electric plants that power the factories, the trucks used to transport the TV's, etc. etc. And that adds up to a lot of hours.
Of course, time has its shortcomings too, as points out, but not because of what you say.
Towards a New Socialism is highly recommended reading on this topic. They attempt to hash out the framework of a fully planned (but not necessarily centralised) economy that uses labour vouchers as currency. Their formulation could use some tightening up, but they propose a limited price system for gauging demand and dealing with scarcity, to be integrated into their overall production-and-consumption tracking system as a (literal) signal to increase production, and to control stock depletion of high-demand scarce goods.
Also of interest is another Holla Forums thread here: , don't be fooled by the OP, the thread provides lots of readings about implementing demand/production tracking systems in code.
Personally I think hashing out these kinds of systems is actually incredibly important to the practical realisation of socialism, since even successful revolutions have stumbled badly over the question of how to actually democratically manage an economy where production is based on need (in the rare cases that they even tried).
Having this theory worked out, possibly coding up some proof-of-concept system or, heaven forbid, actually implementing it in a real-world context would go a long way to providing the actual material basis for socialism (in the organisational sense. We obviously have such a basis in the raw productive sense, and Marxism provides the political/ideological basis for socialism, but a clear idea of how to actually implement an economically just system have always been lacking, ever since Marx croaked before finishing Capital).
The productive forces of society would have to join in on this together. Workers would need to get a "wage" with the labor certificate, and all of the retailers would have to accept the certificate. If barely anyone accepted it, no one would want to be paid in it. It has to be a system large enough for people to feel like it would benefit them.
Which is why I don't get why it would square with mutualism, or any market philosophy. It could work fine in a planned economy, because the state/commune/etc could just make labour vouchers the sole legal tender.
This is the other part of the equation that I am interested in. It seems unreasonable on its face to expect everyone to suddenly switch systems. But in this case, and even in the context of 'old-fashioned' revolutionary socialism that's exactly what's required for the plan to work.
However, that isn't how capitalism developed in Feudal Europe. You had mercantilism popping up in eg Antwerp, Lubeck, Venice, trading in stuff like wool, while at the same time grain was still produced by peasants for subsistence/tribute.
Is there a way to reconcile this? Is it possible to implement this kind of system on the scale of a town, or an industry, and spread from there? A sort of uneasy coexistence occasioning a nascent dual power situation?
Note that no theory I've read so far supports any of what I'm spitballing here
I agree this has much more use in a planned economy as a way to "ration" consumer goods. If its just little sects in the market using their own its pretty much just company scrip.
Let's say it's practically feasible to calculate the time (labor) used to produce most traded commodities.
How do you calculate this for things like art? How do you deal with scarcity? Or what about highly skilled individuals providing critical services? Would you calculate the rewards based on how much value they contribute rather than time worked?
And then there's the problem of implementing it. I don't really see a way for this to work in a market system, which would imply central planning.
At what point does mutualism end and technocracy begin?
That was the point I made earlier. I don't really think this is helpful in a market situation. I think in a transitional stage to communism this could be used for goods that are not necessities like food, housing, education etc.
this is a terrible meme
labour vouchers as you describe them does not eliminates the law of value
Do you nerds understand now why a planned economy cannot bring communism? rationing goods on the basis of labour time is still within the law of value, planned economies are literally ethical capitalism
what the hell is wrong with you?
A transitional society will still operate on the law of value, Marx prescribed labor vouchers during this transitional period so I think it may have merit.
I think mutual credit is better since you can obtain credit with informal work too.
Modern production is far too complicated to just wing it without some form of accounting and control system in place for the rational management of production though, right? So we need some system for determining how much stuff to make and where to put it once we've made it.
OK, how can we start implementing this? I feel like there's some room to develop these systems in the real world. We're currently facing a situation where we have a huge number of people forced into unemployment, with a simultaneous massive shortfall in social service and infrastructure provision.
What's stopping us from just pairing the people who want to work to the work that needs doing?
Something like Monero would be good. No central points.
Well there would be ways to deal with some of those issues. You could implement a flat rate of hourly voucher pay, plus set modifiers based on certain factors including number of hours/years of training/schooling to become qualified to do that kind of labour, average calories expended, and average annual injuries or death. That way more dangerous, physically or intellectually/technically difficult work will pay more.
I'm not sure I see the connection between a cryptocurrency and a labour voucher system. Cryptocurrencies seem to me to be fancy digital tulips for idiots to speculate on because the ongoing credit crisis has left people without good ways to get high returns on their investments. A labour voucher system would need all sorts of additional features added to it, surely? Pretty much the only thing in common between the two currencies is a requirement for high security to prevent fraud/labour theft.
Overall I agree, but I think Cockshott and Cottrell make a good point in Towards a New Socialism regarding extra pay for years of schooling required, though. They note that if you are supported by society while you are at school (which is totally reasonable, expecting students to also do paid work is one of the reasons higher education has been forced to reduce their educational standards), then it isn't reasonable to also give you a higher level of pay later in life.
what about this ?
en.trm.creationmonetaire.info
with the implementation :
fr.duniter.org
We can use barter for that, just look at alibaba, anything you need to have a modern economy, albeit maybe nuclear energy can be found there, cooperative societies can join together to mantain the division of labour, meaning one coop does one or some commodities and another does another ones, and engage in simply subjective value judgements on a site similar to it, or they could decide to simply plan one portion, barter another and gift another
Such experiment cannot happen inside a system that upkeeps national entities, currency and private property
Why not use coops instead then?? Planned prodiction has steep noticeable contradictions
Co-ops are subject to all of the same market pressures that make capitalist firms so notoriously shitty. Asking 'why not co-ops' is equivalent to asking 'why not just get nicer capitalists'
And so does central planning you glue-sniffer, do you even understand how the law of value works or are you one of those dumb dumbs who just quote luxembourg or bordiga?
Central planners still have to manage production and exchange values within the SNLT realm, commodities still have a proportionate exchange value and labour is still alienated (quoting Marx in the german ideology here)
If you want to get cucked by the same market forces AND the politburo be my guest, just dont your shitty system on me
Please, planners in the soviet union gathered demand data using labour vouchers and allocated production accordingly, its nothing but a centralized market
Alright, I agree with your characterisation of a planned market (I wasn't particularly wedded to the idea in the first place).
That doesn't make co-ops a better idea, since they're just entirely unmodified capitalism, without even the fig leaf of planning to overcome any of the problems.
Have you ever actually been a member of a co-op, or are you just talking out of your ass?
Well, why not just get nicer capitalists? Given the tremendous increase in freedom and prosperity since switching to representative democracy from various types of dictatorship, it stands to reason that applying the same system to the economic sphere would have similar benefits versus the status quo.
That'll work right up until you go out of business because the stereotypical robber baron opens up a factory next door and is able to extract much more profit from his employees' hides, profit that he then uses to eat into your market share and drive you out of business. This is basic shit dude, it's the reason why capitalism can't just be fixed by appealing to the goodwill and humanity of the capitalists - they are bound by the logic of the system just as much as we are.
Do you even Marx, bro?
Can't non-owner employment simply be banned outright, just as we've banned non-governing citizenship?
Bookmarked
incorrect, the workers control the MoP, not the bourgoisie
I started a school that works as a cooperative, have my first class tomorrow actually
because the contradictions in capitalism are the problem, not only the shitty bosses
