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Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"



This a the continuation of the mail of September 22

In order to try to understand the possible relations between peer-production and money, I have focused on that specific moment of the transition from capitalism to a fully-developed "peer-society, (4th step in the 5-Step theory) in which a significant share of the material means of production have fallen into the commons but ampleness of produced goods is still insufficient to allow distribution following the principle: "to each according to his needs/desires". And I focused on the questions: within the peer-sector, how can be distributed the goods collectively produced? Is money necessary? During the discussion, Paul Cokcshott proposed an answer to the first question and Graham Seaman made important objections. Some comments on that interesting exchange. Paul writes: "the individual consumer would purchase them [the collectively produced goods] from the community by the performance of an equivalent amount of labour to that contained in the goods, with some system of electronic accounting keeping track of the labour each person performs and indirectly consumes." Electronic aside, Paul's answer takes up the same principle than Marx and Engels and which could be summarized by the formula: "to each according to his work". Marx's famous "Critique of the Gotha Program" reads: (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm) "the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. (...) He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another. " (...)
The "deductions" for the "common funds" are:
"/First/, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. /Second/, additional portion for expansion of production. /Third/, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc. (...) There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption. Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: /First/, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. (...) /Second/, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. /(...) Third/, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today."

Before dealing with Paul's propositions, I would like to make a few remarks about the Marxian proposition as described in the Critique of the Gotha Program. Marx's system, based on labor account, is an overtaking of capitalism since the goal of production is shifted from profit to human usefulness and that the wage system is abandoned: what the producer receives directly and indirectly is not any more the value of his labor force but "the same amount of labor which he has given to society". But, first, the system is still very close to capitalism since it remains strictly based on symmetric exchange and, second, it is hardly practicable.

About closeness to capitalism, Marx has no illusions and is very clear in that respect: "In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is /*proportional*/ to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an /*equal standard*/, labor." And labor is here understood as abstract labor, which means that the quantity received by a producer is also proportional to his own capacities, education, experience, etc.: "labor, -writes Marx- to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. (...) it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right." Marx shows also how that system is unequal at another level: "Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view (...) Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal." In modern capitalism, "Welfare state" systems have created some mechanisms that take into account the differences between individual situations (child or household benefits, unemployment benefits, etc.) If strictly applied, the system described by Marx, in some aspects, would be less "fair" than some aspects of capitalism.

About the practicability. In order to function, that system needs a complex and huge effort of measuring. On the one hand it must measure the value of each producer's "contribution", calculated in abstract/simple-labor hours. On the other hand, the value/price of each product . That poses difficulties at a qualitative and a quantitative level. At a qualitative level it poses, first, the question of making a distinction between "work" for necessity and "work" for pleasure. I agree with Graham Seaman when he objects to Paul's proposition: "This reproduces the world of job divided from life, of abstract labour. At most I can hunt in the morning and criticize in the evening, but only as long as someone is there with a stop watch to measure what I do."(13aug08) Second, it poses the difficulty to evaluate the "intensity" of supplied labor according to each producer's education, experience, etc. Not only that needs to find "objective" criteria to measure that "intensity", but further it creates a steep slope to reintroduce a labor-force value, and thus a sort of wage system. At a quantitative level, measuring how many hours everyone is working and on the other side what is the "value" of each product and each service, but also what are the values of all the "funds" that must be deducted from each labor-voucher, etc., all that implies a quantity of effort which one can wonder if its not a hindrance rather than a factor of fluency.

On the side of labor "input", the measurement of labor contributions, is supposed to create (or maintain) a motivation for participating in social production. But as such, this "motivation" is based on the old bourgeois principles: if you do not work, you do not eat; if you don't work enough, you won't have enough, and this, regardless of the social possibilities. During the discussion that was questioned: " Why does labour have to be the measured? ", says Graham ( 13aug). "The thing is: can we do without 'contribution measurement'", asks Franz Nahrada (28aug). I also think that these principles can and must be questioned. To learn to participate to the social production in a different way than under the whip and the blackmail of individual starvation seems a basic need as soon as we have the possession of the main means of production. The certainty that people will work, which is supposed to be warranted by the obligation to work and the proportionality between labor and the access to products, does not compensate for the negative aspects induced by the coercion spirit that such a system requires. Who would have said only 20 years ago that products like Linux or Wikipedia, representing millions of hours of "work", could be realized without any economical coercion? Why would it not be the case with material production? The social atmosphere created by the fact that the means of production are on the hands of society, in the commons, should engender an enthusiasm and a collective spirit which could be the most powerful motivation to participate to production, without individual economic coercion. What about the idlers? Even in birds groups there are "idlers" who, when the group are eating in the ground, eat all the time, instead of keeping regularly an eye on possible predators, as the majority of the group does. They are not condemned by the others to starvation for that. But most important: in a society where the means of production are not privately owned any more, the organization of production in every place can be the task of the producers themselves. Further, the design of the produced means of production can be essentially specified according to the pleasure they can offer to their users. Transforming the world of production in order to make it a pleasant one should be a top priority since the beginning of a post-capitalist transition. As far as things will depend on humans will, we should rather bet on such a method than on individual economic coercion as an incentive to participate to production.

On the side of the "output", Marx and Engels do not consider it as commodities. The produced means of production circulate directly, taking into account only their usefulness. The means of consumption are sent to "the social stock of means of consumption" and from there they can be taken with labor vouchers. They specify that these vouchers "are not money. They do not circulate." "They are no more 'money' than a ticket for the theater" (Engels, Anti-Duhring). In that sense, they do not envisage a market mechanism. Paul's proposition differs from that vision for some specific kind of consumption goods. He sees two types of distribution according to the kind of good, one is free distribution, the other through markets: "I specified that I thought that the role of a consumer goods market was limited to
those goods whose labour of reproduction remained considerable, and
for which no objective assessment of need can be arrived at.
Where either of these criteria are absent, a market is not appropriate.
(...) Goods that require substantial labour input but for which need can
be objectively assesed, should be free but not ad libitum..."

Graham, objected: "Who would the people be doing this 'objective assessment' of my needs if not a new set of rulers? (...) This kind of separation of 'need' and 'want' is only possible by sleight of hand: take current family, number of tvs per head, cars per family etc as given, and you can claim that this presupposed existing system shows what people objectively 'need', and anything else is just 'desire'. The British will then have lots of needs, and most of Africa mere desires." (26aug08) I agree with Graham that the distinction between needs ans desires is dangerous, especially if its evaluation is made by a "set of rulers". But the question remains: is a market, and thus money, necessary during such a period of transition?

In order to justify the need of markets concerning some consumer goods, Paul writes: "If we assume generalised public ownership the issue arises whether markets can be completely abolished. I think no. I think that some residual indicative function remains for certain consumer goods markets in order to match output to community tastes." (13aug08) I am not sure I understand correctly Paul's thinking. Here he talks of an "indicative function" and "tastes" to be "matched". That appears as a sort of "opinion poll", concerning a marginal ("residual") share of goods. But if we consider the amount of goods which could correspond to Paul's criteria to be distributed through market, it is a real system of distribution. In any case, Paul's justification relates to the capacity of markets to allow output to match consumers wants.

As increasingly men did not produce all the goods they consumed, the market and symmetric exchange developed as a necessity. Markets appear as the most efficient way to match production with consumption, and reciprocally. This is one of the main arguments of people defending the forever inevitability of markets and money. But one may distinguish in markets a double aspect corresponding to two functions they fulfill. One is at the level of use-value, of usefulness of goods: producers are informed of the needs (and tastes) of consumers, consumers are informed of what is available from the producers. Even if this informations are distorted by the the exchange-value mechanisms, (needs are only "solvent" needs, production is only "profitable" production), production and consumption can confront each other and products circulate. The second function is at the level of exchange-value. Here the quantitative aspects of circulation, how much a producer effectively "gives" (sells), how much a consumer "takes" (buys), are ruled by symmetric exchange, abstract labor serving as measure. In fact, this function simply allows the concrete expression of the conditions in which production was realized and purchasing power distributed. The access to goods by wage-earner workers, for example, will be as small as the wages they get for their labor. These two functions, "matching-information" and regulation of exchange have always been closely linked and seem to be intrinsically inseparable. Without markets, men were blind. But the IT revolution brings the means to destroy that interdependence. Internet, and more generally P2P networks allow to fulfill the "matching-information" function without market mechanisms nor money, on a simple usefulness basis. And that fulfillment can be realized in a much more perceptive way since the market-induced distortions (solvency, profitability) are absent. We can already see that reality today for free digital goods. In that sense, we don't need any more markets to know where to find a product or what is to be produced.

But what about the second function of markets: regulating the quantity of goods that each human can take? As far as there is still not a sufficient ampleness of goods and capacities of production in order to allow free and unlimited distribution, how to restrict the consumption to the prevailing possibilities of production? If we abandon the wage principle: "to each according to the value of his labor force"; if we refuse the principle: "to each according to his work", what principle to use?
I only see one possibility: to each according to the social possibilities.
It is a sort of "to each according to his needs/desires" limited, restricted by what is really possible, as in the household/domestic economy, or as in a fishers village where after drawing collectively the net, fishes are shared between the population... But, this time, on a world scale. This is a conscious, direct way of dealing with scarcity. It is not anymore through fetish filters and mechanisms (financial, for example) which escape to human control. It is the logic consequence of the fact that the means of production are collectively possessed (in the Commons). If we participate to production as collective possessors, production can be distributed collectively, taking into account permanently and dynamically what is possible and what is needed. As already said, P2P networks make possible instantaneous and ubiquitous availability of the necessary information for such a system. The question is then: will consumers respect voluntarily the restrictions when they exist? Is not such a system going to collapse because of multiple abuses? Such a system means a great degree of collective consciousness, of self responsibility. That may seem wishful thinking when envisaged from the point of view of the capitalist social jungle. But we should not underestimate the change in mentalities which would be induced by a society where production is oriented directly and exclusively towards human needs, where orientation of production is permanently collectively agreed. One of the most important contributions of Free Software and peer-production has been to prove with facts that humans can cooperate, share and produce the most complex things without money profit incentive and without State coercion. Some people thought that Wikipedia would never develop because it would be permanently destroyed by "vandals". The intelligence of Wikipedia has been to have confidence in the collective spirit of contributors, to base its rules on the needs of that confidence and not on the danger represented by vandals. Vandals exist since the beginning of Wikipedia, but they remain a small minority and the care of the majority has allowed to neutralize their negative action. Collective consciousness will be a key element in managing the transition into a post-capitalist society.

But, what about money? If symmetric exchange is absent from the main economic mechanism in the peer sector, is it absent from the whole society in transition? As I said in the first part of this text, there will be inevitably a coexistence of the peer sector and the remaining of capitalist and even pre-capitalist forms. The exchange between the different sectors will certainly tend to be, at least at the beginning, a symmetric exchange. And thus, a mean of exchange, a sort of money will be required. But also, inside the peer-sector, we cannot exclude the possibility of the need of more or less marginal symmetric exchange. For example, between consumers wishing to exchange products that have not been produced in sufficient quantities. If symmetric exchange is needed, money is required. And if money is needed we must assume it and try to find the ways to prevent all its most negative aspects, and in particular the possibility to accumulate money and the power of the issuing organs. I don't know much about what Michel calls "newly designed money" but electronics and P2P open here a lot of possibilities By the way, answering to Michel, Stefan Meretz wrote "Gesellian approches are **really**dangerous."(14aug08) I would appreciate to know longer about his criticisms. In any case, any money should disappear as these two needs of symmetric exchange vanish. The dynamic should be one of progressive marginalization of exchange.

Historically, symmetric exchange developed first not at the center of the primitive communities but at their fringes, through the trade between them. Its movement was from the periphery to the center. The disappearance of exchange and money should follow the reverse process, from the center to the periphery.
Raoul Victor


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