Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:47:07 +0200
list-en oekonux.org (Michel) writes:
What I mean is the following: if I first expropriate farmers so they can't
make a living, then of course they are forced to work for me, because,
otherwise they starve. But if we both have a guaranteed income, and we are
fairly equal, then money can be the basis of a voluntary exchange. I can
exchange, but don't have to. So what I'm saying here is that we need to
distinguish 'money as such', from its particular instantiation in a
specific
capitalist economy.
The specific capitalistic development of money revolves around the
emergence of debt (Geld als Zahlungsmittel). Money is spent and then it
becomes the centerpiece of a constraint to pay it back. Economic activity
is subdued to the absolute neccessity to re-create money. G-W-G
Of course, the constraint lies also allready in earlier functions.
If money is the Measure of Value, it means that the whole economy is
allready subdued to the purpose of creating value.
If money is Means of Circulation, then there is a constraint on every need
to be worthless without money.
But the Means of Payment function effectively establishes the dominance of
money over the whole process.
I think the dissapearance of money is a gradual process that will start
with the third function.
Capitalist production was set under the condition that production happens
when money buys its elements. Thats why logically Zahlungsmittel
dominates. The bigger the monetary investment, the more effective the
conditions of repayment (by constantly conquering the market). P2P
production challenges this central assumption. Labour does not need
capital to associate.
But the Association of Labour, which is another term I want to give to
P2P, stays extremely sensitive and vulnerable to intervention of capital.
Mutual credit is in jeopardy, when one part of producers are in danger to
loose their markets because of the market conquista - and the "burden of
dead labour" has been accumulating enormpously with the unprecedented
growth fictitious capital - capital is constantly available in any size to
destroy our peer economies by "flooding" them with "copies". (Mass
produced garbage). The speculation is keeping production alive and
postponing the crisis. But what production!
Its not simply depending on who is making the money.
I agree that peer money is a contradiction in terms if we have in mind
pure
'non-reciprocal' peer production as it applies to immaterial production.
But, peers can also loosely be used when we talk about reciprocity - gift
economy based systems, and in addition, when the production is done not by
the market or the state, but by civil society itself.
Therefore, peer money can be used in that context, as long as we know what
we mean. Money can be produced by private players, can be regulated by
public players (both are true now), can be produced by the state itself
(as
used to be the case), but there is clearly a third alternative: the direct
production of monetary value by civil society itself.
We will discover that if we really start to work for each other
consciously, every other question (quantity, quality, timeliness,
sustainability) will be more important than value. The obsession on
equivalence is something alien to any rational production system. Thats
something known inside any capitalist firm. Thats why the "profit center"
idea is the death of coherence within organisations.
But as the emergence of money, its demise will be a long and painful
historical process.
What I find immoral may not coincide with someone else, but the peer
production of terrorism is clearly incompatible with my survival.
Therefore,
it is incorrect to put money as totally alienated, and peer production as
purely unalienated, as there are many hybrid possibilities.
Good point. But is terrorism really peer production?
Franz
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