Harry Cleaver's new book

[ALB]

Robbo posted this under “Off Topic” but I don’t think it is:

Harry Cleaver’s new book reviewed here https://andreasbieler.blogspot.com/2018/09/rupturing-dialectic-harry-cleaver-on.html

I am not a fan of Cleaver’s excessive voluntarism as if Marx didn’t hold that the operation of capitalist economic system was governed by economic laws that acted as if they were laws of nature and which could not be controlled or overcome by governments let alone by the workers’ class struggle (which is actually the basis of our view that capitalism can’t be reformed to work in the interests of the majority).

But the book does seem worth reviewing as, according to the table of contents, it does discuss getting rid of money (though probably gradually). A “participant” has drawn attention to this page:

This idea of getting rid of money was not new with Marx, but he demonstrated more clearly than any before him how a fully developed money system was an inextricable part of capitalism. Indeed, many who would “revolutionize” (i.e., abolish) capitalism have conceived of its replacement by a society in which the things and services people need would be produced and distributed directly without the mediation of money and markets. Some years back Maximilien Rubel and John Crump edited a collection of historical essays about such visions that they grouped under the rubric of “non-market socialism.” The abolition of money is only one of many ideas touched upon in those essays, but they situate that idea among others in useful ways. Moreover, these surveys of the ideas and platforms of individuals and groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are detailed and well footnoted. As such, they provide a useful point of departure for anyone interested in exploring the history of the intellectual battle against money within the context of the struggle against capitalism.

More recently, the objective of freeing society from the bonds of money has been placed center stage in another collection of essays—Life without Money (2011)—designed to contribute to the “building of fair and sustainable economies.” The editors of that collection, Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman, explicitly associate their ideas with Rubel and Crump’s “non-market socialism” and anchor their critique of money in Marx’s analysis. In a similar manner, Andreas Exner has recently surveyed support for “demonetization” while critiquing ideas supporting “market socialism” or the effort to create “non-capitalist market economies” through such means as local currencies. He too roots his critique in a reading of Marx that focuses on the inextricable link between money and capitalism.

[ALB]

Just finished reading this book. I am afraid it’s no good. Apart from 6 pages where he outlines and defends the view (and does it quite well, actually) that

I think getting rid of money and markets entirely is not only a necessary condition for getting rid of capitalism but also desirable in its own right. I think that many utopians have been quite right to imagine worlds without money. I reject all programs that propose to transcend capitalism but retain money and markets as supposedly efficient methods of allocating resources in a new and better society – whether they be of socialist or anarchist or libertarian inspiration.

But then, as I expected he would, he goes on to outline various ways in which the use of money can be gradually “restricted” and “marginalized” under capitalism. These are common or garden reforms such as free and subsidised services, price and rent controls, lower taxes on consumer goods, limits on interest on consumer credit, etc, a whole programme of reforms identical to what the traditional Left have always proposed but to be achieved not through parliament but by “autonomous” working class action.

Still, in agreeing that getting rid of capitalism involves getting rid entirely on money and markets, this is shifting the debate back from one about ends to one about the means to get there. Which must make our task easier.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by ALB.

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