On Wed, 14 May 1997, Don Brayton wrote:

> Mr. Veeder,
>
> How about two reasons, off the top of my head
>
> 1. Coins and paper are more portable and durable than many goods:
> chicken, houses, bridges, etc.  (absurdly obvious)
> 2. It is more immediate and more easily coordinated than an exchange of
> services (I'll do your roof if you'll fix my teeth - if I live that long
> and don't move away or change my mind).  (obvious)
> But then a bit more obscurely, 3. In order to function,  these
> intrinsically valueless medallions and pieces of paper must have the
> confidence of the community from top to bottom.  This means that the
> ruling class (of whatever nature, from despotic to benevolent)  who
> needed the monetary system to control commerce, was required to support
> this confidence in order to have these conveniences.  That meant
> punishing members of their own class for monetary fraud.  What a concept
> ... equal justice for all!


You presented a pretty good analysis and summary. I should add that I am
no "expert" at this either, but if people are interested in building a
free and just society, then ALL the traditional thought which forms the
theoretical and institutional basis of our current money-system must be
brought to light and closely examined for any inconsistencies and
weakenesses.

However, what you over look in your analysis is that strategies #1 and #2
are NOT adopted because they offer supposedly obvious advantages, but
rather,they are adopted as a set of necessary social adjustments to suit
the reality of power relations present in #3. If people are able to avoid
the authoritarian power structure of world #3, there is no intelligent
reason why people must circulate money, UNLESS it can be readily shown that
it is socially advantageuos for some other (non-authoritarian) reason
not evident in #1 or #2.

People already have plenty of informal (eg. promises) and formal methods
(eg. contractual agreements) for conducting the exchange good and
services. Anarchism doesn't *need* circulating money, UNLESS economists
and social scientists can explain how each individual's UNIQUE
participation in such a system can benefit and PLEASE everyone
particpating, and not just those people who are collecting stock dividends
or expanding their "market share".

While it can be argued (and I agree with the argument) that the RAPID
expansion of industry was largely achieved by a process of systematic
exploitation, if we omit #3, there is room to wonder if the whole
money/price-system was doing something *other than* simply operating as a
tool of oppression and exploitation. Regardless of whether the industrial
system of production necessarily exploits the worker under capitalist
ownership (as argued by Marx) or does not exploit the worker under
anarcho-syndicalist ownership (as argued by Chomsky), I believe the whole
system would be practically impossible to maintain without circulating
money of *some sort* and *some kind* of banking system to regulate the
circulation and supply of money. (It follows that anarcho-syndicalists,
or any group who benefits from the use of circulating money has a job to
justify the continued use of circulating money). As I see it, problem of
explaining/discovering how the circulation of money helps to maintain an
economy, is analogous to explaining how the circulation of blood helps to
maintain the human body.

Harry Veeder