>I've only just joined this list after being told there was a bit of a raging
>discussion on money, with LETS implicated in some of that discussion. Having
>just written some chapters on LETS and marxist theory (I'm doing a thesis on
>LETS) I found Bill's comments useful and interesting. But I disagree.
>
>> LETS is not a money-system, it is a system for bartering labour.
>
>Barter is very specific - usually use value for use value, direct commodity
>exchange. In LETS (and money - which LETS is) you exchange use value for an
>exchange value to be realised at some later stage.

Yes, you're right. But my larger point does not suffer from that quibble -

>> Unfortunately the labour being bartered is usually unaccompanied by the
>> tools of production which are required for potential labour to be made
>> fully productive. Most people would still prefer to be paid money for their
>> labour, as opposed to the promise of receiving labour in return, because
>> (as most people control none of the means of production) money is more
>> useful.
>
>What scale of 'tools of production' do we have to talk here? Are we talking
>factories?

Yep, I'm talking factories - recording studios to your trumpet.

Or can we talk at a scale that might be the beginning of something
>different? My account in LETS is about -900 at the moment. Singing telegrammes
>hasn't
>worked too lucratively (for which I take my trumpet - is that a tool?)

Sure. But you're just illustrating my point - your trumpet is a marginal
threat to the capitalist entertainment industry. Hollywood is not panicking
I assure you.

>so I'm
>now buying environmentally nice laundry powder in bulk at the factory and
>reselling it in yoghurt containers etc for zacs (bendigo LETS' currency name)
>(plus a dollar to retrieve my cash outlay). The 'profit' I'm taking in zacs.
>Am I being capitalist? I think the tendency is there.

No. your 'profit' is derived from your own labour, capitalism involves
extracting profit from the labour of others.
>
>> Since capitalists are the ones who DO
>> own the means of production, LETS can only ever be marginal in the context
>> of a capitalist system. Socialists are not looking for crumbs, we say the
>> working class CREATED all wealth, including the means of production. We say
>> we need to own and control it also.
>
>But it has been nigh on impossible to bring about the revolution - No?

If we accepted the pricinciple that, because it has never been done before,
it must be impossible to EVER do we would never make ANY progress. Is that
your point, if not what is your point?

David
>Harvey (geographer, social theorist) digs around in Marx and Lenin to come up
>with a theory that capital *needs* to be spatially mobile in order to
>survive.  It needs to be able to exploit places. But what if those places are
>*more* (not totally) self-reliant because they have a local currency system?

My argument is that LETS does not displace capitalist mode of exchange, it
merely fills in some of the cracks. Whether it could exist without those
cracks, and I'm thinking particularly of the main fault line - unemployment
- is the interesting point. We need to derive the answer to that from some
practical questions:

     - Can you sell your re-packaged soap for cash, instead of "zacs"?
        If not, why not?
     - If you could, which would you prefer to do? And Why?
     - What is your main purpose in deciding to re-package soap (just an
        example, substitute any other LETS exchange)?
     - Why do people want to buy soap packaged in yoghurt tubs? How
        does this add value?

>If such a network of local currencies was employed in many many places what
>would be the impact on capitalism? The theory as I see it would be have that
>'spatial fix' reduced, and hence will be more prone to crisis, bringing about
>the conditions more likely for social change.

You are assuming that capitalism would tolerate such a threat, as we can
see from the way capitalism deals with just that sort of barrier, (local
economies with their own (non-capitalist systems) of production and
exchange, in many places around the globe - it simply does not.

The classic example is from European history, the enclosures of common land
used by peasants for self-sufficent agriculture. The rising capitalist
class, through the state, simply confiscated or "enclosed" the common lands
for private commodity production, forcing the peasants, against their will,
to become wage labourers. A similar process is still going on throughout
the third world. A large part of the work of the United Nations is the task
of undermining self-sufficient production in the third word and replacing
it with commodity production. It is euphemistically known as "modernising"
economies.

The economy of the LETS, if they were to be successfull, would likey be
'modernised' also if they were to become a serious nuisance, so don't kid
youself. Your professor is right, capitalism is not a beast which can long
co-exist with other human systems. It devours all.
>
>I'm not saying that this is the case (particularly given the state of many
>LETS), but could be, if the idea was successful across the globe on many local
>scales.
>
>  ===========================================================
>Mark Jackson, PhD student       |
>in geography                    |Email: [log in to unmask]
>Department of Social Sciences   | Ph: 61-54-447503 (uni)
>La Trobe University Bendigo     |     61-54-396460 (hm)
>PO Box 199 Bendigo              |     61-54-447970 (fax)
>Victoria 3550                   |
>Australia                       |
>
>If you would like more information about my work on LETS please visit my home
>page at http://luff.latrobe.edu.au/~lssmoj/index.html

I have downloaded your thesis, will critique it later if I get time.

Bill Bartlett
Bucolic bludging bootlegger from
Bracknell Tasmania