Re: [jox] A response to Michel and Jakob
- From: Toni Prug <tony irational.org>
- Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:52:30 +0000
good illustration why we have to transcend any kind "value" and
"accounting", thus "exchange" with coupled giving and taking:
http://keimform.de/2011/pattern-1-beyond-exchange/
Let us say we transcended the notions of value, accounting and exchange.
How do we run a city without accounting? A region? A state? How do we
collect contributions, as we do in the forms of tax and money today? We
ask for tax to be voluntarily donated and hope for the best?
Yet, without the day-to-day accounting (exchange dogma), how do we know
the amount of wealth contributed to a person or entity/firm (expressed
in money today)? OK, if it's all volunteer, we do not need to ask the
known quantity (tax as percentage) from everyone. Still, if not money,
what do we hope for these contributions to common funds to be?
If we drop the idea of a city budget (common funds), what do we build
new infrastructure and core services with, if not with common funds and
command over labour?
Once we decided we need a new hospital, or a new school, how do make
sure it gets built? We wait for people to turn up, organize themselves
on their own (this is not a separate set of questions since in societies
with "exchange dogma" this is achieved through exchange that is
accounted for and command over labour as commodity), give "unconditional
voluntary contributions" in labour and hope that those who are giving
their unconditional voluntary contributions towards materials necessary
for the building of a new school or hospital would also contribute
voluntarily materials?
All those contributing materials would also have to hope that what they
need to reproduce and continue doing their work (food, energy, their raw
materials) would be volunatrily contributed.
All of these contributors of labour would have to hope that food
producers would also unconditional voluntary contribute to everyone -
since by contributing their labour unconditionally to building of a new
school or hospital, they cannot simultaneously grow food, they depend on
division of labour and product of labour of others.
Perhaps i'm in minority on this list, but i can't stretch my imagination
far enough to see how would above problems (developing cities, having
common funds, building hospitals and schools) be addressed with peer
production that depends on unconditional voluntary contributions and
that rejects the use of commodities, exchange and concept of labour in
totality (that is how i understood, perhaps wrongly, Pattern 1: Beyond
Exchange and bunch of other linked patterns that i read). Such total
rejection could be called p2p dogmatism.
This, of course, is a just small subset of problems that would have to
be solved to give us a system that can be postcapitalistic while
maintaining the high level of social and productive development.
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