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Re: Money as a dominant social relation (was: Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money")



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[1 text/plain]
 "money is one tool of social control among many,  in social systems
where
the dominant paradigm among social elites is control and materialistic
gain,


agree with that




I'm not sure about the link you make between money and the (protestant)
ethic of delayed gratification?

This is one reason why a majority of people have gone along with a hegemonic
currency from a state in recent times.  It's not just "protestant", but
common in many cultures (The D-Q of Clare W Graves's model). Of course, fear
is a deep motivation for compliance as well.

The first part that you agree with above is why some people use technologies
like money as a tool for coercion (Desire for control and materialistic
gain).

The second ( a perceived reward later of some form, and/or fear) are some
reasons why everyone else goes along with it.








I would also disagree with you that the "money" you describe is different
than the "money" of earlier systems, and I would instead suggest that
"money" has experienced a series of emergent evolutions over the ages,
starting out as a simpler barter technology, evolving into a homogeneous
state-control device, and now evolving again into "peer currencies".



well, if it has known emerging evolutions, then it is different isn't it.
There is for example a big difference between demurrage-based money
systems,
used in almost all the great civilisations and in the first european
renaissance from the 10th to the 13th century, and the interest-based
centralized money systems.


The examples that I put forth, of neolithic era early civilizations like
ancient egypt, Catal Huyuk, and others are not hunter-gatherer cultures, and
definitely not gift economies. Archaeologists have found ample evidence of
marketplaces, barter and trade. Similar with the the Hopewell mound villages
of North America.





I also think you are wrong about 'simple barter technology'. I think that
most historians/anthropologist now say that barter was exceptional, that
tribal economies were based on gift, not barter, and that the kind of money
we are using now is not derived from barter.


We can go round and round on this, but I can prove to you that the modern
currency systems that we use are in part derived in model and practice from
earlier barter-based systems. They are in fact in part designed to control
barter-based systems. There would be no need for this control if there was
not already an existing local barter currency systems to control in the
first place :-)

So, is it "derived" from barter? It depends on exactly what you mean by
"derived". I have not been arguing this, really. I have been arguing that
the kind of money we use now is *evolved* from earlier barter-based
currencies, and that the kind of money we use now still serves this basic
human civilization role, but does so in a way that allows a few people to
control.

Peer currency ("money") economies are now emerging in response to the
problems with state money and economies (the kind of money we use now). Peer
"money" is basically a technological/creative/psycho-social statement that
the technology of money itself is useful (for barter, for representing
value, etc) but that the rules of state money do not resonate with the world
view of peoples creating peer "money". This world view is also the reason
why peer "money" is not guaranteed to devolve back into state money. These
people who are

The difference is that in the early examples I give, there was no "state"
that coerced all local people to adopt one standard barter currency. There
were local leaders who decided what would be accepted for barter, though.
The "state" basically put  a pressure on these local leaders to all use only
the "state" money.

The kind of money we use now serves many purposes, I think we can agree. One
purpose is to be the only "allowed"/sanctioned currency of barter in a
territory or domain. This is where the coercive nature of state issued money
comes into play. But it really takes some physical force to persuade a mass
of people to adopt money the way that we have. But, why did they want people
to use one (their) money? Because people were previously using their own
local monies...




I think you underestimate the break between tribal gift economies, and
predatory kingship/imperial slave-based economies characteristic of
civilisation.





This whole time, so far as I can recall, I have been talking about these
ancient towns where people used some form of token as barter. I do not see
barter as gift economy. Although, I would agree that gift economies were
very common when these early barter systems that I am referring to emerged
among humans. It is likely that only wealthy people participated in barter,
or it could be that barter in early towns was a necessity of cross-culture
exchanges.










It is my opinion that money does not equal social power, but rather
people's
willingness to recognize the implied power of state-issued money, titles,
and other state apparatus, are where the power truly rests.


Power is always a mixture of internal acceptance and external repression.
Money is a tremendous social power, that drives opportunities and
possibilities for billions of people. It is probably arguable that in
capitalist society, state power derives from money power, rather than the
other way around (unlike slave-based and feudal regimes for example)


I agree with you that it is a mixture of internal/external







Stephen Meretz
alluded to the coercion that some money systems accomplish. But the money
itself is not the coercing force, it is a technology that is
over-extended
beyond it's barter-based roots to accomplish a system of control.


system of control = system of coercion


That is not what I am arguing above. I am arguing that money (as a barter
technology) could a part of a system of coercion, control, whatever you want
to call it. But that it could also be a part of a system of sustainable
mutual governance.

That is the point I have been trying to interject. Maybe I misunderstood
what others were saying here, but it seemed to me that some people were
arguing that basically all money is bad, and that peer economies don't have
money, and that we need to do away with money to make real progress.

I disagree.








I will again also re-state that I think that there is a continuum of
possible uses of money, from the most benevolent to the most deplorable,
and
it is up to people as to how they go about using it. I don't really see
the
value in thinking about state issued money as some kind of different
order
than barter system money. People are still using state issued currency
for
barter. I use it everyday for barter. I call this barter "buying".


Once you have it, you can use it for different things, but that doesn't
change systemic of structural characteristics, the underlying protocol that
will drive human choices one way or another



Yes, to use the language of McLuhan, the medium of "money" has become
overextended in many states. Overextended meaning that people have pushed it
beyond it's basic barter utility to become the value for almost everything:
"Time is money", "Everyone has a price", etc

Incidentally, we are coming closer to the limits of this overextension. I
think we are coming close to collapse of financial systems.





Privilege needs a state apparatus to maintain itself, in today's terms, so
that it can make 'more money' at the expense of others, there is mutual
dependency between the state and privilege. The neoliberal regime for
example, has seen an extraordinary extortion of money from the poorest to
the richest. Of course, that does not exhaust the matter, i.e. the state as
exemplifying a balance of forces, therefore also reflecting other
interests,
and the relative freedom of using money in the interstices of the system.













It is the culture that possesses the coercive nature, and that empowers
money with it's generality. Older money systems could not have the same
gemerality because they lacked accompanying technologies of
communication,
control, and data/information gathering and storage.

I disagree that it is a "myth" that older/neolithic cultures had
economies
that included money. I take this hypothesis from Archaeologists, not myth
creators.


Sam, I think you are contradicting yourself, saying that money 'evolves and
emerges', but now arguing it's the same. All societies had to deal with
value, and with the stream of necessities, but the minor use of money-like
tokens in a gift economy cannot be compared with the use of money today.
The
control system is there for a reason now, and was absent for a reason
before
the advent of 'class'.


Michel, first of all, the examples I gave were not gift economies, they were
early trade/,arket economies with early currency forms. What I am saying is
that those early forms emerged in those earliest towns, and then evolved
into the "state" issued monies of later early civilizations like Ancient
Egypt, Ancient China, Rome, Greece, etc, then evolved along with humans
through time into the money we use today. Surely you must know that I
realize the early primitive currency that I talk about is not the same. That
is exaclty I state "Older money systems could not have the same generality
because they lacked accompanying technologies of communication,
control, and data/information gathering and storage." If you would like
references to the work I am referring to from University of Michigan,
Egytologists, and others, I can get these for you.

This whole argument came about because I asserted that many times where
humans began to create a village, town, or city, that a form of currency
emerged. I still say this is correct, and relevant to what was discussed
here.

I think you are contradicting yourself, saying that money 'evolves and
emerges', but now arguing it's the same

I really also don't see how I contradict myself. I think the problem may
that I am not explaining what I am talking about clearly enough. I am trying
to do that now. This above is not what I was saying before or now.

Money evolves and emerges. Everything in this universe evolves and emerges.

The money of today evolved and emerged (in part) from state need/desire to
control diverse groups in a geographic region. That is what I have been
describing with "evolved and emerged" as it relates to "the money of today".











Instead, I think we are arguing around in circles about what can be
defined
as "money".

The power comes from the people and what they believe and
will go along with, not the money.


One question for Paul now. Let's assume that current money was indeed
state-created or derived. However, today, money is largely created by the
banks, not the state, with central banks only indirectly regulating the
amount of money that can be created. In addition, countless monetary system
exist in parallel with the mainstream monies (mostly privatized money
systems).

This is why many people believe, including myself, that we have achieved a
state, where civil society itself can create money-based systems, which
obey
to different logics than both state-created and commercially-created money

What do you think of such a general proposition?




This was adressed to Paul. Although, I agree that banks/corporations have
now surpassed the state as the controllers of money (and people).

If you look back at what I have been trying to say, I think that ivil
society itself could have created money-based systems, which obey to
different logics than both state-created and commercially-created money
systems all along, but that people chose to instead accept state, and
commercial money systems because they resonated more with their world-views.


I think that now, world-views are emerging on a larger scale that are more
accepting of the notion of money systems created and maintained as a commons
by civil society. I have been saying that people are becoming more and and
more ready to start seeing different things as a "commons" (using the
Charlotte Hess, Elinor Ostrum definition of commons) for about 2 years now.

Peer currencies are commons-based currencies. transparent, mutually
co-governed, and afford participation to anyone who is solving probles in an
individual or groups centric way that acknolwedges/understands the "commons"
that the money represents. It is a "commons" derived currency.





Michel






On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:59 AM, Paul Cockshott <wpc dcs.gla.ac.uk>
wrote:

[1  <text/plain; iso-8859-1 (quoted-printable)>]
The point is that money is a social power, the power as Adam Smith put
it
to
command the labour of others. As such this power of command derives
from
the
sovereign -- either the actual monarch in the case of a country like
Britain,
or from the Republic in the case of the Dollar. The power is delegated
to
who ever holds the money, in a way similar to the way the power of the
sovereign
was delegated to dukes and barons under feudalism. Bill Gates, is in
this
sense a modern prince.

What you are talking about is a system of barter, which, would lack the
generality
of money, and lack also its coercive power.

Paul Cockshott
Dept of Computing Science
University of Glasgow
+44 141 330 1629
www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/<http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/>
<http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/><
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/>



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-list-en oekonux.org on behalf of Samuel Rose
Sent: Mon 7/14/2008 9:31 PM
To: list-en oekonux.org
Subject: Re: Money as a dominant social relation (was: Re: [ox-en]
There
is
no such thing like "peer money")

[Converted from multipart/alternative]

[1 text/plain]
In the case of what we are talking about in the orginal subject of the
email
("peer money" ) I am talking about anything that is recognized by other
people as a subsitute for value of physical items, whether issued by a
state
or not.

In fact, your example of a definition of "money" as being something
that
must orignate with a state cofirms that there is such a thing as "peer
money", which I would call money that does not orginate with a
self-declared
state.

The shells of Catal Huyuk are very similar in this regard to the peer
currncy of today. Is it "money"? To me this definition of "state money"
really, really doesn't matter and the only distinction worth not to me
is
state vs. non-state currency.

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Paul Cockshott <wpc dcs.gla.ac.uk>
wrote:

[1  <text/plain; iso-8859-1 (quoted-printable)>]

Depends what you mean by money.

If you mean coinage or banknotes and all that follows, these have a
clear
origin with Lydia in the west in the 8th C bc and with the spade and
hoe
tokens
issued by the chinese empire.

The origin of money is closely linked with state finance. It is a
myth
that
it originates with barter.

Inghams book 'The Nature of Money' gives a good account, see also the
work
of the economist Randall Wray.
A summary is in
http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/papers/Arestis-Sawyer-Chapter%2005.pdf
Paul Cockshott
Dept of Computing Science
University of Glasgow
+44 141 330 1629
www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/<http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/>
<http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/>
<http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/><
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/>



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-list-en oekonux.org on behalf of Samuel Rose
Sent: Sun 7/13/2008 5:56 PM
To: list-en oekonux.org
Subject: Re: Money as a dominant social relation (was: Re: [ox-en]
There
is
no such thing like "peer money")

[Converted from multipart/alternative]

[1 text/plain]
Christian,

While I agree with your point, I probably should clarify mine to
state
that
where human civilization has emerged, money of some form has quite
often
if
not usually emerged. Some colleagues of mine that are Archaeologists
argue
that "human civilization" (ie humans living in towns with markets
etc)
goes
back as far as 10,000 years. This includes recent work that a friend
has
done on the very earliest known Egyptian civilizations, plus work on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk where things
like
obsidian and shells were used for trade tokens, etc.

it's a technology of convenience. I do agree with you that it hasn't
emerged
universally (until recent times).

I agree that it wasn't really dominant until 300-500 years ago, this
is
when
in the West the paradigm of people "expressing self for materialistic
gain"
(rf Clare W Graves) really started to emerge on a wide scale.

So, the point that people once used money in ways that did not
over-extend
the medium of money proves the point that money is not always
inherently
in
and of itself, but that it is the assumptions people have about
money,
and
their shared understanding of how it is best used that is the
problem.

Once again, I will re-suggest that for p2p systems, that money can be
pushed
out to the periphery of systems (which is basically what is already
happening).

I do agree that humans could theoretically live without money. But, I
also
contend that it is unlikely that humans will do so in our lifetimes
(as
I
stated previously).

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 6:28 AM, Christian Siefkes <
christian siefkes.net>
wrote:

Samuel Rose wrote:
Money has been around for at least ten thousand years or more
among
humans.
Money has naturally emerged among almost every culture that ever
existed.

When we talk about money, we should remember that money as a
_dominant
social relation_ is a fairly new phenomenon. In most cultures,
money
did
not
play a very important role, since most economy relations where
based
on
direct dependency (slaves producing for their master, serfs
producing
for
their feudal lord etc.) and/or on direct, money-less cooperation in
small
groups (subsistence production in tribes, farmer families, or serf
families--except for the parts that went to the lord and the
church).

Most production took place for direct consumption by the producers
community
(subsistence) and/or their masters (direct dependency). Possibly
surplusses
(not needed for other purposes) were exchanged, but production _for
exchange_ was rare and existed mainly "at the fringes of society",
as
Marx
puts it.

Money only became a dominant social relation when production _for
exchange_,
production with the explicit purpose of getting money, became the
norm
rather than an exception. That happened only about 500-300 years
ago,
with
the emergence of capitalism.

Sadly, I don't know of any good English-language references to
these
developments--if anybody can fill them in, I would be grateful.
(Maybe
Raoul
Victor, who has studied so closely the transition from feudalism to
capitalism?)

Also, I believe that there have been many cultures who didn't know
money
at
all, though they might have used different systems that might seem
similar
to, but cannot be considered money since they served a different
purpose,
such as the Kula system [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kula_ring].
(Wikipedia
writes: "The Kula exchange system can be viewed as reinforcing
status
and
authority distinctions".) That Kula cannot be considered money has
been
pointed out before by Gregers Petersen, if I remember correctly.

So, let's not be rash about the role of money. Electricity has been
with
us
for millions of years (think of lightning), but the use of
electricity
as
a
major source of energy is rather new.

Best regards
       Christian

--
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes ---------
christian siefkes.net---------
|   Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/   |   Blog:
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http://peerconomy.org/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID:
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--
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
       -- Rich Kulawiec




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Social Synergy
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