Small is … small

LETS, or local exchange trading systems, boil down to being localised barter clubs each of which has its own purely digital or recorded currency or credit system. Participants keep their own individual accounts which are, in effect, a register of the credits they earn or spend depending on the goods or services exchanged.

An important difference between this and a conventional money system is that we are not talking about a quid pro quo exchange being effected between participants. In some ways it resembles or aligns with a model of generalised reciprocity which lies at the heart of a socialist society but there are important differences as well.

Timebanks, unlike LETS schemes, do not have their own local currencies as a metric for keeping tabs on transactions. The only metric used is time spent in making a labour contribution. Moreover, and again unlike LETS schemes, the way in which labour time is evaluated is strictly egalitarian. Thus, one hour of labour performed will equal one ‘time credit’, regardless of the type of service performed.

By contrast, in the case of LETS schemes, there is some scope for negotiation over the price of the service or good offered in terms of the local currency (and hence, also, the possibility of a degree of transactional inequality). This makes such an arrangement somewhat closer in certain respects to a conventional market economy than is true of Timebanks.

Both LETS schemes and Timebanks are examples of highly circumscribed, or localised, ‘exchange rings;’ by their very nature they cannot be implemented on the large-scale society-wide basis. What that means, in the case of both LETS schemes and Timebanks, is that they will be rather restricted with regard to the range of activities individuals can engage with these arrangements.

Since they basically involve face-to-face interactions, this suggests that the forms of activities this might entail would be more along the lines of some form of personal service such as repairing someone’s car or computer or tidying up their garden. Obviously, you could not really operate a modern railway system or a power station on the basis of a LETS-type arrangement.

However, this is not to detract from the value of such arrangements as a means of coping within existing capitalist society. There are also certain benefits to be gained in terms of fostering a kind of outlook more conducive to a post-capitalist society. In these cases, the emphasis is very much on forging relationships with other individuals and building local communities. Thus, the underlying logic is radically different from that pertaining to market transactions which are quid pro quo by nature and socially atomising in their consequences.

Workers’ co-ops
Most of the advocates of so-called ‘market socialism’ have seen its basis as the state ownership of the means of production. However, that particular version needs to be distinguished from earlier versions, such as ‘Proudhonian socialism’ or ‘mutualism’, that go back to the 19th century and which have enjoyed somewhat of a revival following the collapse of Russian state capitalism

These versions envisage a role for the market in ‘socialism’ but emphasise, instead of state ownership, various kinds of worker-owned institutions – such as co-operatives and credit unions – as the instruments through which such a system of ‘market socialism’ would operate.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to see quite how they connect with the basic ideas of socialism as a post-capitalist society. The classical or Marxian concept of socialism derived from the observable fact that the process of production was becoming increasingly socialised. There is nothing that is produced today that does not involve, directly or indirectly, the labour inputs of countless numbers of workers right across the world. Hence socialism – at least as it was traditionally conceived – entailed bringing the pattern of ownership of society´s productive resources into line with the character of modern production itself.

In other words, social ownership of the means of production is the logical expression of the social character of production. But social (or common) ownership also, of course, logically entails the complete exclusion of buying and selling since the latter implies private, or sectional, ownership of these means.

It does not matter that the members of a co-operative, say, might own it in common amongst themselves (and hence, to the exclusion of everyone else). It is still a form of sectional ownership. The relationship of such a co-operative to the world around it is, essentially, a capitalist one since it has to purchase its inputs and sell its outputs – not to mention, generate profits in order to effectively compete as well as compensate its workforce in the form of wages. These are all, needless to say, the tell-tale indicators of a capitalist mode of production.

In effect, what the exponents of this form of ‘market socialism’ advocate is the continuation of private, or sectional, ownership of the means of production as far as the wider world is concerned — even if one might grant that, internally, the set-up pertaining to a co-operative, say, may well be a lot more equitable compared to a conventional business and that working for such an institution may likewise be a lot more congenial.

There is also the point to consider that the scope for co-operatives is quite limited in the context of the pattern of capital ownership within the larger capitalist society and may even diminish should the increasing concentration of capital in the hands of a few giant corporations become more pronounced than it already is.

ROBIN COX

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