Re: [ox-en] Re: No-trade society (was: Re: herrschaft)
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:31:06 -0500 (EST)
Hi Robin
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Robin Green wrote:
On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 09:54:14AM -0500, Graham Seaman quoted:
The key question is: How can a free society be self/organized, if there is
no invisible hand at all (no exchange, no money, no market, no state)?
Woah, I recently joined this list, and I didn't realise it was going to be
some kind of anarcho-communist list! You should put up some kind of warning
sign for the unwary!
We allow all sorts in here ;-(
Just kidding ;-)
:-)
It's a good question, but I think a better question is, how are you going to>
have no exchange in the first place? My aunt is a sculptor and she makes
very nice minature 3D caricatures. Let's assume that I would like to commission
a particular piece, and let's further say that she is willing to produce works
to order. Maybe I am also an artist, and she would like for me to do a piece
for her in return. That's trade, is it not? How can you call it anything other
than a trade? In what kind of society would such arrangements never arise?
Trade is necessarily bidirectional: in this case, her sculpture <-> your
painting, but normally, her products <-> money. What about
multidirectional - someone wants sculptures from her, and if she feels
like it, she makes them. She wants to eat, and if the chef round the
corner feels like cooking for her, he cooks. Everyone is producing things
for others, but no-one is doing direct exchange (except by pure chance).
That kind of society would not need trade. Maybe it wouldn't function
either, but that's a separate question - the setup is at least imaginable.
I would go further and say that in any case where money is "abolished" it
would be quickly reinvented (through barter, if money were in some way
actively repressed).
Yes, abolishing money does not work. Cambodia was the very nasty proof of
how unpleasant that can be. Money will only go away if it's not needed.
Perhaps you are groping towards the notion of no _compulsion_ to trade to meet
basic needs (which is my current focus). But that's of course a _very_
different kettle of fish. That could in principle be met by a Basic Income,
without getting rid of capitalism at all (that's assuming a Basic Income is
sustainable under so-called "global capitalism" - I think we will soon find out,
when Brazil introduces it, as a recent law they've passed mandates them to!)
????? Are you sure? Do you have any references? (Portuguese is ok).
Basic Income would be great, the day I see a government genuinely
implement it (without a revolution or similar massive changes first) I
will eat my words and change my mind about all this...
Or perhaps you are groping towards trade being marginalised, but far from
eliminated, the opposite of today where human generosity is increasingly
marginalised (except in some contexts like Free Software!) Even then, I
find this highly implausible. Trade/money can be, but in very many ways is not,
a proxy for some kind of measure of the social usefulness or social
appreciation for a person's work. Even considering how laughably detached
today's distribution of wealth is from such a goal, I don't think the idea
should be dropped. I don't think the typical hairdresser or night bus driver
or miner wants to drop it, either. They would like to remain _rewarded_ for
the work they do, not just given the same as everyone else, I suspect.
I think the typical [name job here] might prefer not to have to turn up
for a job every day at all. Jobs are only needed because society is
organized around money. Mostly, in my experience, they are a waste of
time, energy and lives - most people I know have things they would much
rather be doing than a job - useful things, too. God only knows how much
of my own life I've wasted doing utterly pointless crap because I need a
job to survive.... The whole concept of the 'job' is becoming increasingly
outdated and unreal, IMNVHO.
To summarise, I believe in a basic income, but I also belive in significant
rewards over and above the basic income (i.e. wages and payments) for
socially useful work done.
Though I do seem to have noticed quite a large number of people doing
'socially useful work' (ie. developing free software) without money being
the incentive... Isn't the argument that 'there has to be a carrot for
people to work at all' dead now?
(Of course, the "over and above" is a bit
redundant - if the rewards are completely clawed back by the state then in
effect they are not rewards and the basic income is not a basic income,
because a basic income must be unconditional by definition, unlike today's
means-tested unemployment benefits.)
I agree in general but I'd put it a bit differently: How *does* a Free
Society organize itself.
I always used to be very against libertarianism. Now I'm finding the logic
of my own positions is pushing me in that direction. I'm not happy about
this, so would gladly be told why the following suggestion is wrong:
There is an 'invisible hand' in a free society. It doesn't work
through the medium of money, but directly through need. If I (for large
enough values of I) need some software, but that software doesn't exist
in free form, I will write it. If the software already exists in just the
form I want it, I won't bother. The supply of programmers for particular
types of program is regulated by need: this invisible hand is the hand
that scratches your own itch...
For large enough values of I? What about too small values of I? The supply
is then regulated incorrectly, is it not?
I propose Graham's law: given a large enough population, there will always
be someone who enjoys doing any purposeful task. At least for software, I
think it's already been demonstrated. It doesn't work perfectly, but it
works.
Or what about (cases exist today!) very large values of I, but none of them
have both the ability and the time to devote to writing the code / doing
any necessary prerequisite learning? Because they have more important things
to do, you see. That doesn't mean the need doesn't exist, it's just not
important enough on their scales (compared to, say, getting fed).
OK, I'll bite - what's an existing case of this? Just to make this more
explicit: the size of I in this case is the number of programmers on the
internet, and a demonstration of this problem would be a useful free
program that is not going to get written... (I'm guessing it's the
definition of 'useful' that's going to be the get-out clause...)
[snipped the rest, getting a bit too long...]
Best
Graham
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