File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-05.230, message 19


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




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