The de-monetisation of society

[robbo203]

Interesting article here by Anitra Nelson

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2016.1204619?src=recsys

 

I am not too sure to what extent the idea of eliminating money was discussed let alone promoted by the Bolsheviks during the period of so called War "Communism" (1918-21),  My understanding is that the value of money was rendered virtually worthless by hyperinflation and that the application of this term to this period of soviet history was more an afterthought by Lenin.

 

At any rate, it had nothing to do with real communusm and there was no possibily of real communism being instittuted in the circumstances of that time

[ALB]

I couldn't open that but the idea of eliminating money was discussed by the Bolsheviks. Here's what Bukharin wrote in The ABC of Communism by him and Preobrazhensky:

Quote:

The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. Under communism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. In such conditions, money will no longer be required. 'How can that be?' some of you will ask. 'In that case one person will get too much and another too little. What sense is there in such a method of distribution?' The answer is as follows. At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed. There will be an ample quantity of all products, our present wounds will long since have been healed, and everyone will be able to get just as much as he needs. 'But will not people find it to their interest to take more than they need?' Certainly not. Today, for example, no one thinks it worth while when he wants one seat in a tram, to take three tickets and keep two places empty. It will be just the same in the case of all products. A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value. Our meaning is that at the outset, in the first days of communist society, products will probably be distributed in accordance with the amount of work done by the applicant; at a later stage, however, they will simply be supplied according to the needs of the comrades.

But here's what Preobrazhensky, echoing Lenin's false distinction between communism and socialis (which Bukharin didn't make here), wrote in his part on "Money and the Dying-out of the monetary System":

Quote:

Communist society will know nothing of money. Every worker will produce goods for the general welfare. He will not receive any certificate to the effect that he has delivered the product to society; he will receive no money, that is to say. In like manner, he will pay no money to society when he receives whatever he requires from the common store. A very different state of affairs prevails in socialist society, which is inevitable as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism. Here money is needed, for it has a part to play in commodity economy.

In any event, the disappearance of money was discussed by the Bolsheviks in the early days after their coup.

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

Interesting article here by Anitra Nelson http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2016.1204619?src=recsys 

..at £88 for 30 days access, I find money a barrier once more..

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

In any event, the disappearance of money was discussed by the Bolsheviks in the early days after their coup.

  Yes,  I wouldnt dispute that.  Didnt Stalin  in his 1906 work on Anarchism say something similar – about a socialist society being a moneyless society? However, the question is whether the period of "war communism" represented a genuine attempt, as some have claimed,  to institute a moneyless communist society.  Somewhere in my chaotic computer filing system I have a copy of the front page of – I think-  the New York Times dating from that time which talked of the Bolsheviks wanting to abolish money.  I will try and track it down..The conservative historian, Richard Pipes, argued that "War Communism" was not simply a 'temporary measure' but an ambitious attempt to introduce "full-blown communism."  (The Russian Revolution, Fontana, 1992).  Likewise the anarcho-capitalist,  Murray Rothbard, claimed in his essay "The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists" that: The Russians, after trying an approach to the communist moneyless economy in their "War Communism" shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, reacted in horror as they saw the Russian economy heading to disaster. Even Stalin never tried to revive it, and since World War II the East European countries have seen a total abandonment of this communist ideal and a rapid move toward free markets, a free price system, profit-and-loss tests, and a promotion of consumer affluence.(The Libertarian Forum, January 1, 1970.) Personally I think this is a load of tosh.  I dont believe  there was a genuine attempt  to institute communism although it was politically expedient for both the Bolsheviks and their opponents to suggest that such an attempt was being made.  But even if a genuine attempt had been made there is simply no way it could have succeeded – not for the reasons advanced by the likes of Rothbard and co but rather becuase the preconditions for a comunist society were wholly lacking at the time 

[Dave B]

it comes under the “Communist subbotniks” movement thing I think? There is quite a bit of it from Lenin around 1919 on it re unpaid gratis labour etc. just one link on it from Lenin below; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm

[Dave B]

 this one from Lenin was more err? interesting.https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/may/02.htm

[robbo203]

Dave B wrote:

it comes under the “Communist subbotniks” movement thing I think? There is quite a bit of it from Lenin around 1919 on it re unpaid gratis labour etc. just one link on it from Lenin below; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm

 Very interesting link Dave B.  These two passages in particular: We know that in practice such contradictions are solved by breaking the vicious circle, by bringing about a radical change in the temper of the people, by the heroic initiative of the individual groups which often plays a decisive role against the background of such a radical change. The unskilled labourers and railway workers of Moscow (of course, we have in mind the majority of them, and not a handful of profiteers, officials and other whiteguards) are working people who are living in desperately hard conditions. They are constantly underfed, and now, before the new harvest is gathered, with the general worsening of the food situation, they are actually starving. And yet these starving workers, surrounded by the malicious counter-revolutionary agitation of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, are organising “communist subbotniks”, working overtime without any pay, and achieving an enormous increase in the productivity of labour in spite of the fact that they are weary, tormented, and exhausted by malnutrition. Is this not supreme heroism? Is this not the beginning of a change of momentous significance  It would be a good thing to eliminate the word “commune” from common use, to prohibit every Tom, Dick and Harry from grabbing at it, or to allow this title to be borne only by genuine communes, which have really demonstrated in practice (and have proved by the unanimous recognition of the whole of the surrounding population) that they are capable of organising their work in a communist manner. First show that you are capable of working without remuneration in the interests of society, in the interests of all the working people, show that you are capable of “working in a revolutionary way”, that you are capable of raising productivity of labour, of organising the work in an exemplary manner, and then hold out your hand for the honourable title “commune”! Of course "working without remuneration in the interests of society" begs the question as to how then one is supposed to obtain access to the means of living.  In socialism/communism,  the corrollary of "unremunerated work" is free access to goods and services.  You can't have one without the other.  This brings us to the question – if you dont have free access, if you continue to operate an exchange economy, what then does the call to "work without remuneration" – or more specifically to "work overtime without pay" –  really amount  to?  I would suggest it amounts to little more than code on the part of Lenin to signify the desire on the part of the Bolshevik state to step up the rate of exploitation, to increase the volumne of unpaid surplus value extracted from the Russian working class for the purposes of capital accummulation All this talk of the so called "war communism" of the period 1918-21 " is just  sheer bunkum.  Yes Lenin and his associates might have discussed the idea of the abolition of money in relation to the period  we are talking but that doesnt translate into any serious attempt to introduce a communist society which was simply not possible anyway under the circumstances then prevailing,  Talk is one thing ; action is quite another.  Besides, communism signifies far more than just the "absence of money". Money was not abolished though its value was undermined by hyperinflation.  This may have contributed to the practice of paying wages in kind rather than in money and I understand that at the height of the period of "war communism" up to 90% of wages paid to Russian workers were paid in kind.   We also know from Lenin writing in 1918 that the policy of  uravnilovka or income levelling – as a political tactic to gain working class support – had to be discontinued. In an address given in April 1918 (published as "The Soviets at Work") Lenin stated:  “We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed a very high remuneration for the services of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a departure from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule" With regard to the money component of the wages Russian workers received, it is interesting to note that in the Soviet Union there was a determination on the part of the authorities for this to be paid according to the peice wage form.   This is significant because as Marx had observed: "the piece wage is the form of wage most appropriate to the capitalist mode of production” and that "piece wages become . . . the most fruitful source of reductions in wages, and of frauds committed by the capitalists."(Capital 1 ch 21) By 1933, peice work accounted for 70% of wages according to Peter Petroff  (February 1938, “The Soviet Wages System”, Labour, p.141-2) Payment in kind continued in the Soviet era though it was disproportionately skewed in favour of the political elite.   Some theorists like Howard and King have argued that a substantial proportion of the soviet workers' wages were provided outside of the market, thus providing grist to their mill that the soviet union was not really a capitalist economy.  However, that claim appears to be based on an exaggeration since according to some estmates the “social wage” constituted less than a quarter – 23.4% – of the income of the average soviet worker – though, during the seventies, this figure apparently grew   (Arnot Bob, 1988, Controlling Soviet labour: Experimental Change from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, M R Sharpe p.36)  The greatest irony of all is that since the so called "fall of communism", payment-in-kind has increased.  According to Tore Ellingsen : Recently, we have witnessed massive domestic barter at the firm level in Russia (and in several of the other former Soviet republics). In Russia, barter constituted almost fifty per cent of industrial sales in 1997, up from around five per cent in 1992 (Aukutsionek (1997,1998)). In the same five year period, Russian firms started to pay their workers in kind on a grand scale, sometimes under tragic-comic circumstances. Hungry workers were paid everything from porcelain and kitchen utensils to sex toys and fertilizer, in the form of piles of manure, instead of their ordinary money wage. Likewise, a large fraction of taxes were being paid in kind rather than cash (OECD, 1997) (Tore Ellingsen, "Payments in Kind", Stockholm School of Economics Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance, No 244,  February 10, 2000)    

[ALB]

Our comrade Binay Sarkar in India has written an article about "The Bolsheviks and the Abolition of Money":https://www.academia.edu/24449687/THE_BOLSHEVIKS_AND_THE_ABOLITION_OF_MONEY

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

ALB wrote:

In any event, the disappearance of money was discussed by the Bolsheviks in the early days after their coup.

  Yes,  I wouldnt dispute that.  Didnt Stalin  in his 1906 work on Anarchism say something similar – about a socialist society being a moneyless society?However, the question is whether the period of "war communism" represented a genuine attempt, as some have claimed,  to institute a moneyless communist society. 

It's not the simple issue of 'the disappearance of money' that is at issue – the real issue is 'what replaces money after its disappearance'.The only answer which allows us to equate a 'moneyless society' with 'socialism' is democratic production.There can be a 'moneyless society' which is not 'socialism'.From this Marxist perspective, "war communism' was nothing whatsoever to do with 'socialism'. The associated producers never democratically controlled production in Russia, pre- or post-1917.

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Our comrade Binay Sarkar in India has written an article about "The Bolsheviks and the Abolition of Money":https://www.academia.edu/24449687/THE_BOLSHEVIKS_AND_THE_ABOLITION_OF_MONEY

 Thanks for that very interesting and useful link I dont know if you have come across an article by Paul Gregory and Mark Harrison, entitled, “Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archives” (Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XLIII , September 2005, pp. 721–761). They make the point that while, in theory, “money was relatively unimportantin the Soviet command system”, in practice this was far from being the case.  In theory, what was supposed to happen was that the planners would set about the task of drawing up their plans, directly allocating producer goods and fixing controlled prices for such goods with the banks supplying “money and credit to ‘follow’ the physical plans”.  This was a process dubbed “planned autonomism”. Money, from this perspective, was purportedly just a means for “monitoring financial flows to detect departures from physical directives”. However: as they put it: "A major surprise from the archives is that money played a much larger role than we expected. Allocation actually began not with physical supply plans but with nominal budgetary assignments to investment and other government uses such as military orders. The Politburo gave much more time and energy to how rubles would be spent than to consideration of the “control figures” for output in physical units (Davies 2001a; Gregory 2001; Davies, Iliˇc, and Khlevnyuk 2004). Budget outlays usually came first because broad-brush supply plans could not fix the detailed assortment of physical products or their final uses. Plans in rubles of output were then calculated at “fixed” plan prices. Plan targets had to be fixed in rubles because most producers supplied many products and output was too heterogeneous to be planned any other way" This last point is highly revealing for it demonstrates all too clearly the underlying capitalist rationale that justifies the need for a single universal unit of accounting – namely, money – to facilitate market exchange

[Dave B]

Well I obviously wasn’t endorsing the Bolshevik Subbotnik position.  But is interesting that in the middle of 1920 he was actually “saying” stuff like;  We shall work to do away with the accursed maxim: “Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost”, the habit of looking upon work merely as a duty, and of considering rightful only that work which is paid for at certain rates. We shall work to inculcate in people's minds, turn into a habit, and bring into the day-by-day life of the masses, the rule: “All for each and each for all”; the rule: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/may/02.htm  something that would “requires decades”. It is connected to the excellent description of communism by Lenin in April 1920, with context.  V. I. LeninFrom the Destruction of the Old Social SystemTo the Creation of the New   ………..During these two years we have acquired some experience in organisation on the basis of socialism. That is why we can, and should, get right down to the problem of communist labour, or rather, it would be more correct to say, not communist, but socialist labour; for we are dealing not with the higher, but the lower, the primary stage of development of the new social system that is growing out of capitalism.  Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.  It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale…………."  http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm    After all the state capitalism stuff from late 1917 to 1919? The state capitalism stuff did dry up in 1919 to be substituted by this kind of subbotnik rhetoric. But obviously it made its return again from late 1920 onwards with ‘socialised state enterprises’ being run on a ‘for profit basis’ and a categorical restatement of the state capitalist thesis in the state of the union address of 1922. As endorsed and explained to the international young communists by Trotsky himself in the same year.  The Mensheviks were somewhat more cynical and explained it away as a opportunistic ruse to get more dedicated and general ‘leftist’ support and volunteers to fight the Bolsheviks civil war when they had their backs to the wall. Ie Letter to Sylvia Pankhurst "…. the struggle for Soviet power, for the Soviet republic, which is able to unite, and today must certainly unite, all sincere, honest revolutionaries from among the workers. Very many anarchist workers are now becoming sincere supporters of Soviet power, and that being so, it proves them to be our best comrades and friends, the best of revolutionaries, who have been enemies of Marxism only through misunderstanding, or, more correctly, not through misunderstanding but because the official socialism prevailing in the epoch of the Second International (1889-1914) betrayed Marxism, lapsed into opportunism…." https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/28.htm The result was that the membership of ruling class Bolshevik swelled to a staggering 400,00 which must have been getting close to or even above 1% of non peasant population. They obviously thought the a ruling class of 1% was unsustainable and there were plans then, which were enacted later to trim it down to something more like a 99.9% to 0.1%  ratio. "….The idea is suggested by the Central Committee of a party with from 100,000 to 200,000 members (I assume that that is the number that will remain after a thorough purging; at present the membership is larger)…" https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm The ignoramus L bird is still babbling away about ‘power’ relationships and the technocratic class thing and democratic control of scientific truths etc etc. Obviously completely oblivious to the fact that this debate raged and developed from the late 1920’s hitting its Zenith in the 1940’s. And even Orwell’s ‘1984’. With the Bruno Ritzi thing near the beginning that Adam has had transcribed for us on Marxist Org etc. Which we, me included, did some time again with the Burnham and also ignorant Michael Albert Parecon thing. I mention it because they are running with it with a series of four articles on Truthdig at the moment.  Part four is at; http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_final_stage_of_the_machiavellian_elites_takeover_of_america_20170427   With a very contemporary neocon and deep state and populism slant on it. There was a really excellent 20 page essay on it all by Mattick in 1943. It is a bit heavy but it sort of gets better toward the last third of it. https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1943/machiavellians.htm I think Richard Pipes is tied up into all this kind of stuff. His book on the Russian revolution was well worth a read I thought. Even though he didn’t understand the Bolshevik ideological ‘Marxist’ heritage which I think is necessary to make sense of it.

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