It sounds like an interesting idea, but it has a few drawbacks I think.
A quick example: If you wanted to move to another city, you may not want to keep every piece of furniture and instead “sell” it. You could just gift them to your neighbors or the next person moving in but you paid for it with vouchers and you don’t want to waste the hours worked after all. How would you get rid of the furniture while still keeping its value? With a currency it’s trivial - just sell it. But you can’t really do this with vouchers, since they can’t be transfered by design. You could perhaps trade it, but what if no one has anything you need?
And that’s ignoring the glaring privacy issues of a centralised, personalised labor voucher system. Sure, it prevents fraud but it also allows the government a lot of insight into your life.
Presumably, you would gift the unneeded and unnecessary goods. Considering Socialism is designed in a more equitable way, people wouldn’t struggle, assuming the industry is sufficiently developed.
As for privacy issues, we already have absolutely no privacy, and work in a mostly cashless system anyways.
I don’t know, just because you don’t struggle doesn’t mean you don’t want to keep the value of something you worked for. And the value of the furniture (or any product) would be determined by the voucher cost. Something costing a lot of vouchers will be seen as valuable because it takes a lot of time and effort to acquire it.
And I would say there’s quite a lot of privacy you’re able to achieve, it’s just not the default. I live in a country where cash is still the default, often times you’re unable to pay with card at all. Plus, there are a few ways to pay anonymously online using certain crypto currencies - although this has a ton of drawbacks and is mostly used for illegal purposes.
You’re still thinking in terms of a Capitalist system though, with Capitalist living standards. In a more equitable system, donation would be even more common.
If you go by the definition of money : “The primary functions which distinguish money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.” (Wikipedia, but it’s a workable definition).
It’s a medium of exchange, because people can use them to buy things. It’s a unit of account, because it will be used as a metric for economic calculation (ie accounting). It’s a store of value too, because people don’t have to spend it at a particular time. And the “standard of deferred payment” part is also fulfilled, as it quantify the work-time debt society (or simply a company) owe to a worker.
I honestly fail to see what difference you are trying to make.
The distinction is necessary because when Marx refers to Communism as a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, Labor-Vouchers aren’t the money he is referring to as abolishable. They mechanically work entirely differently as they are used up, rather than transferred.
Meh, this distinction seems largely artificial to me. Modern fiat money is already created and destroyed through use of debt, and I hardly think that’s what communists think of. And a strict “non-transferability” would beg the question of why would the “productive forces” (companies, cooperatives, or whatever) try to do produce things if they can’t accumulate value based on consumers spending preferences (which is an issue which happened in the USSR).
Even worse : if vouchers don’t fulfill the roles people want, you’re still going to have a kind of informal money (gasoline, tobacco, seashells, etc… as said above), just with vouchers in parallel.
That being said, I never had much respect for Marx’ political theories, so I would totally understand if you wanted to drop the point.
Marx advocated for everyone to own all of the Means of Production collectively. The government would handle production, with no profit motive.
If you don’t have much respect for Marx yet also don’t understand the basics of what he advocated for, then does that just mean you believe propaganda, or perhaps he suggested something so outlandish to you that you didn’t bother learning why? Genuine question, not trying to be condescending, just want to dig into this point as I think it’s important.
In that case, that means that the only workable economic system for Marx is a centrally planned economy (which, from what I know, is not the position of the majority of communists). Otherwise, you’re going to have severe information transfer/cooperation issues at the system boundaries. Which is already historically what happened in the USSR and most strict application of central planning. And unless I’m mistaken, they still had money.
As for Marx… It’s more that I read a subset of Marx works, found too many issues within the theories themselves, and honestly don’t have unlimited time to see if he corrects it in some other works. And despite looking a bit for it in other forms (including discussion with some very left-leaning friends), I never found any answer I found really satisfactory.
And to be honest, I understand why you assume this is a propaganda issue : communist/socialist/anarchist theories are largely misrepresented in common discourse. That being said, don’t make the mistake of believing that all critics don’t know what they’re talking about. Or even that mainstream theories are immune to this type of misrepresentation (because they most certainly are not).
Yes, Marx advocated for central planning to an extent, though he didn’t pretend to know how a hypothetical Communist society would operate. He advocated for a process to get there, but understood that it would take time and people would build on his work. The USSR was State Capitalist, a Socialist state attempting to economically become Socialist and then eventually Communist, as is the Marxist-Leninist format. The USSR planned everything by hand, and still managed to develop rapidly and provide for their people, even if their focus on Heavy Industry led to less developed light industry, which led to their downfall as people wanted more luxury goods as time went on.
Fun fact: the USSR did in fact try to abolish “money,” but went about it poorly and it failed.
Which aspects of Marx had issues? Do you have any actual examples I can look at?
I don’t assume that all critics don’t know what they are talking about, but no offense, you did not in fact know the information required to understand Marx’s Labor Voucher system.
Marx suggested Labor Vouchers, which are paid based on time worked and destroyed upon first use.
It sounds like an interesting idea, but it has a few drawbacks I think. A quick example: If you wanted to move to another city, you may not want to keep every piece of furniture and instead “sell” it. You could just gift them to your neighbors or the next person moving in but you paid for it with vouchers and you don’t want to waste the hours worked after all. How would you get rid of the furniture while still keeping its value? With a currency it’s trivial - just sell it. But you can’t really do this with vouchers, since they can’t be transfered by design. You could perhaps trade it, but what if no one has anything you need?
And that’s ignoring the glaring privacy issues of a centralised, personalised labor voucher system. Sure, it prevents fraud but it also allows the government a lot of insight into your life.
Presumably, you would gift the unneeded and unnecessary goods. Considering Socialism is designed in a more equitable way, people wouldn’t struggle, assuming the industry is sufficiently developed.
As for privacy issues, we already have absolutely no privacy, and work in a mostly cashless system anyways.
I don’t know, just because you don’t struggle doesn’t mean you don’t want to keep the value of something you worked for. And the value of the furniture (or any product) would be determined by the voucher cost. Something costing a lot of vouchers will be seen as valuable because it takes a lot of time and effort to acquire it.
And I would say there’s quite a lot of privacy you’re able to achieve, it’s just not the default. I live in a country where cash is still the default, often times you’re unable to pay with card at all. Plus, there are a few ways to pay anonymously online using certain crypto currencies - although this has a ton of drawbacks and is mostly used for illegal purposes.
You’re still thinking in terms of a Capitalist system though, with Capitalist living standards. In a more equitable system, donation would be even more common.
That’s money too.
Not exactly. Money is transferable. If you mean a representation of Value, then yes, it’s the same, but can’t accumulate.
If you go by the definition of money : “The primary functions which distinguish money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.” (Wikipedia, but it’s a workable definition).
It’s a medium of exchange, because people can use them to buy things. It’s a unit of account, because it will be used as a metric for economic calculation (ie accounting). It’s a store of value too, because people don’t have to spend it at a particular time. And the “standard of deferred payment” part is also fulfilled, as it quantify the work-time debt society (or simply a company) owe to a worker.
I honestly fail to see what difference you are trying to make.
The distinction is necessary because when Marx refers to Communism as a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, Labor-Vouchers aren’t the money he is referring to as abolishable. They mechanically work entirely differently as they are used up, rather than transferred.
Meh, this distinction seems largely artificial to me. Modern fiat money is already created and destroyed through use of debt, and I hardly think that’s what communists think of. And a strict “non-transferability” would beg the question of why would the “productive forces” (companies, cooperatives, or whatever) try to do produce things if they can’t accumulate value based on consumers spending preferences (which is an issue which happened in the USSR).
Even worse : if vouchers don’t fulfill the roles people want, you’re still going to have a kind of informal money (gasoline, tobacco, seashells, etc… as said above), just with vouchers in parallel.
That being said, I never had much respect for Marx’ political theories, so I would totally understand if you wanted to drop the point.
Marx advocated for everyone to own all of the Means of Production collectively. The government would handle production, with no profit motive.
If you don’t have much respect for Marx yet also don’t understand the basics of what he advocated for, then does that just mean you believe propaganda, or perhaps he suggested something so outlandish to you that you didn’t bother learning why? Genuine question, not trying to be condescending, just want to dig into this point as I think it’s important.
In that case, that means that the only workable economic system for Marx is a centrally planned economy (which, from what I know, is not the position of the majority of communists). Otherwise, you’re going to have severe information transfer/cooperation issues at the system boundaries. Which is already historically what happened in the USSR and most strict application of central planning. And unless I’m mistaken, they still had money.
As for Marx… It’s more that I read a subset of Marx works, found too many issues within the theories themselves, and honestly don’t have unlimited time to see if he corrects it in some other works. And despite looking a bit for it in other forms (including discussion with some very left-leaning friends), I never found any answer I found really satisfactory.
And to be honest, I understand why you assume this is a propaganda issue : communist/socialist/anarchist theories are largely misrepresented in common discourse. That being said, don’t make the mistake of believing that all critics don’t know what they’re talking about. Or even that mainstream theories are immune to this type of misrepresentation (because they most certainly are not).
Yes, Marx advocated for central planning to an extent, though he didn’t pretend to know how a hypothetical Communist society would operate. He advocated for a process to get there, but understood that it would take time and people would build on his work. The USSR was State Capitalist, a Socialist state attempting to economically become Socialist and then eventually Communist, as is the Marxist-Leninist format. The USSR planned everything by hand, and still managed to develop rapidly and provide for their people, even if their focus on Heavy Industry led to less developed light industry, which led to their downfall as people wanted more luxury goods as time went on.
Fun fact: the USSR did in fact try to abolish “money,” but went about it poorly and it failed.
Which aspects of Marx had issues? Do you have any actual examples I can look at?
I don’t assume that all critics don’t know what they are talking about, but no offense, you did not in fact know the information required to understand Marx’s Labor Voucher system.