Charles, what kind of Marxist are you? Abolish interest without
abolishing the profit system? Print money to fund infrastructure
investment? This is classic populist snake oil!
Doug
^^^^^^^
I'm wondering if the below is German-Argentinian populism. I had some
contact with a Waldorf school and Rudolph Steiner. Didn't strike me as
populism.
CB
^^^^^^
Sylvio Gesell. Natural Economic Order.
Available online at http://www.systemfehler.de/en/neo/, this is a
classic book on Monetary Reform.
This is the classic non-Marxist critique of capitalism by an economic
and monetary reformer which profoundly influenced Keynes.
Michel Bauwens:
This is an important aspect of research for P2P Theory. Following the
relational typology of Alan Page Fiske, there are four
intersubjective modes which have existed cross-culturally and
historically: equality matching (gift economy), authority ranking
(feudal-type structures), market pricing, and communal shareholding
(according to us: P2P). Societies have always been a mix, but it can
be argued that historically we have seen a succession of dominant
forms: the gift economy in the tribal era, authority ranking in
feudalism, market pricing in capitalism, and my hypothesis is that
communal shareholding forms may dominate in a future 'P2P-oriented era'.
But if they have always co-existed, it may be illusory to aim for a
stateless and marketless society, rather, we should expect states and
markets informed and dominated by P2P principles. A current example
is fair trade, a form of market that aims to become independent of
pure power relations by negotiating with both producers and consumers.
The open questions is therefore: can we have markets without the
unsustainability of the capitalist format and its attendent
biospheric destruction and social and psychic dislocation?
To answer this question, we can also look to theoreticians of the
past, such as Silvio Gesell.
The Author
Silvio Gesell is one of the main thinkers of this tradition. Gesell
was briefly finance minister in Karl Liebknecht?s German-soviet
republic and was greatly appreciated in his time by figures as Keynes
and Martin Buber.
?In 1891 Silvio Gesell (1862-1930) a German-born entrepreneur living
in Buenos Aires published a short booklet entitled Die Reformation im
Münzwesen als Brücke zum sozialen Staat (Currency Reform as a Bridge
to the Social State), the first of a series of pamphlets presenting a
critical examination of the monetary system. It laid the foundation
for an extensive body of writing inquiring into the causes of social
problems and suggesting practical reform measures. His experiences
during an economic crisis at that time in Argentina led Gesell to a
viewpoint substantially at odds with the Marxist analysis of the
social question: the exploitation of human labour does not have its
origins in the private ownership of the means of production, but
rather occurs primarily in the sphere of distribution due to
structural defects in the monetary system. Like the ancient Greek
philosopher Aristoteles, Gesell recognised money's contradictory dual
role as a medium of exchange for facilitating economic activity on
the one hand and as an instrument of power capable of dominating the
market on the other hand. The starting point for Gesell's
investigations was the following question: How could money's
characteristics as a usurious instrument of power be overcome,
without eliminating its positive qualities as a neutral medium of
exchange ? He attributed this market-dominating power to two
fundamental characteristics of conventional money: Firstly, money as
a medium of demand is capable of being hoarded in contrast to human
labor or goods and services on the supply side of the economic
equation. It can be temporarily withheld from the market for
speculative purposes without its holder being exposed to significant
losses. Secondly, money enjoys the advantage of superior liquidity to
goods and services. In other words, it can be put into use at almost
any time or place and so enjoys a flexibility of deployment similar
to that of a joker in a card game.
Gesell's theory of a Free Economy based on land and monetary reform
may be understood a reaction both to the laissez-faire principle of
classical liberalism as well as to Marxist visions of a centrally
planned economy. It should not be thought of as a third way between
capitalism or communism in the sense of subsequent "convergence
theories" or so-called "mixed economy" models, i.e. capitalist market
economies with global state supervision, but rather as an alternative
beyond hitherto realized economic systems. In political terms it may
be characterised as "a market economy without capitalism"?Gesell's
alternative economic model is related to the liberal socialism of the
cultural philosopher Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) who was also
influenced by Proudhon and who for his part strongly influenced
Martin Buber (1878-1965). There are intellectual parallels to the
liberal socialism of the physician and sociologist Franz Oppenheimer
(1861-1943) and to the social philosophy of Rudolf Steiner
(1861-1925), the founder of the anthroposophic movement?An
association called Christen für gerechte Wirtschaftsordnung
(Christians for a Just Economic Order) promotes the study of land and
monetary reform theories in the light of Jewish, Christian and
Islamic religious doctrines critical of land speculation and the
taking of interest. Margrit Kennedy, Helmut Creutz and other authors
have examined the contemporary relevance of Gesell's economic model
and tried to bring his ideas up to date." (http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de/~roehrigw/onken/engl.htm)
Books to explore this tradition:
