Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 22:51:45 GMT From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org> Subject: M-I: LOV and labour time vouchers Lew: ---- Since you do not say, I have to ask what is it that you think this shows? Gray wanted to retain the production of commodities in conjunction with the introduction of labour vouchers but did not face up to the consequences of generalised commodity production. The mode of production determines the mode of distribution and not vice versa. In other words, commodity production - market forces - still dominated. Owen didn't make that mistake and was (so Marx thought) clear on the need to get rid of commodity production, and money as the measure of value then has no role. Chris: ------ I think the passage from the Critique of Political Economy about "Honest" John Gray, (quoted in Capital as a criticism of the Utopians) shows clearly that Marx thought the early introduction of labour time chits in place of money, was naive because the production of commodities could not be abolished in the earlier stage of communism, as it emerges >from capitalist society, not in pure form. (That is the difference between the paragraph you quote from Critique of the Gotha Programme and the main bulk of the quote which Andrew gives. Although such labour chits would not serve as money available as capital, neverthess because commodities and bourgeois right persist in the lower phase of communism (socialism) would have in practice serve to some extent as money. However Lew's interest is not in labour chits but in direct abolition of money, for which he thinks the advanced West, unlike Cambodia, is ready. We have a problem of radically different readings of the same texts. Lew is convinced that Marx so hated money, that the abolition of money was "central" to his programme. I would reply that a) to impose that principle would be an example of the sectarianism which he criticised. [Of communists] "They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement." (Manifesto Part 2) b) If complex economic analysis boiled down to the simple assertion of the political need to abolish money, then Marx's economic writings could have been very brief. c) While Lew seems to have been a bit stung by my references to Cambodia, such insensitivity to what ordinary people want and expect, is exactly what leads to other progressive humans acting arbitrarily in enforcing policy, and even killing people who are so anti-social as to trade with what ia actually money. If Lew is so confident he could abolish money in the early phase of communism, how would he suppress the black market that would spring up, without human rights abuses. While there were serious problems of violations of socialist legality in the early decades of the soviet union, it is not convincing to propose that this is fundamentally linked to a failure to abolish money. Chris Burford --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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