Archive for lifewithoutmoneybook.blogspot.com

Pics and Graeber

This post features some pics that comrade Peter Love took at our Readings Carlton (Melbourne) book launch on 3 February. At the left is Jeff Sparrow, who launched it.

I've just finished reading David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011, Melville House Printing, New York). I was particularly interested to read it because my interest in the concept and function of money partly evolved as I studied Mexico's foreign public debt in the early 1980s, which forced me to think a lot about debt and, by implication, money. The final chapter of Graeber's book covers the period since 1971, when the USA moved away from the gold standard. Graeber argues that our household debt generates compulsion to work for money, that say through superannuation schemes we have been 'encouraged to buy a piece of capitalism' (p. 376) and that our 'new global currency is rooted in military power even more firmly than the old was' (p. 368).

In the last few pages Graeber talks about the need for 'jettisoning of much of our accustomed categories of thought' or 'we're likely to destroy everything' and that we need 'to move toward a society where people can live more by working less', talking about the 'non-industrious poor' in much the way we have in our book 'as pioneers of a new economic order that would not share our current one's penchant for self-destruction' (p. 384). Again, in the last paragraph, the pointer is (unconsciously) in our direction, as Graeber decides that freedom is 'the ability to make real promises' determined in values of our own making rather than in abstractions, such as money (p. 391).


Gleebooks at Dulwich Hill and more

Last night we launched Life Without Money in Sydney at gleebooks at Dulwich Hill. Again we had a great turnout. However, Green Bans, environmental and union activist Jack Mundey had to pull out of launching it due to serious hearing problems. He told us to remind the punters that he was 82 years old now. So Frans read out his apology and testimonial on the book, and I, Ariel Salleh and Terry Leahy all spoke to the themes in the book and its making.

Meanwhile I have been re-reading Holloway's Crack Capitalism and thought some passages worth quoting:

It is not the state that creates the social synthesis that surrounds us, although it often presents itself as doing so... The real force of cohesion stands behind the state: it is the movement of money... More precisely, the social synthesis is established through that which is expressed in money: value.

Value is what holds society together under capitalism... Capitalism is composed of a huge number of independent units which produce commodities that they sell on the market... Value (manifested in money) constitutes the social synthesis in capitalist society, that which holds together the many different, uncoordinated activities... the state is dependent on money and can do little to influence its movement.

... Money is the fine spider's web that holds us entrapped.

John Holloway (2010) Crack Capitalism, Pluto Press, London: 65–6

Also, note the short review of our book by Roger Fletcher in the Morning Star, 'the only English-language socialist daily newspaper published in the world' and 'the only newspaper in Britain owned by its readers'. The Morning Star started out as the Daily Worker issued by the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Melbourne events


On Friday 3 February the great storyteller Jeff Sparrow spoke eloquently at our launch at Readings Carlton playing to a crowd of around 50 before we signed copies of the book and talked with friends, colleagues and others we'd just met. The next day, Saturday 4 February, Sharne Vate was MC with environmental and political activist Julia Dehm conversing with us about the main themes in our book in another packed room at the New International Book Shop discussion space. There was much lively talk about the necessity and possibility (or not) of weaning our society off money as its organising principle.



House of a Billion Euros

Stephanie Hegarty's Outlook article, 'The house that a billion euros built' is available in text and podcast through the BBC World Service News Magazine. It begins:

'This is an unlikely consequence of the Irish economic crisis. Artist Frank Buckley decided to express his anger about the property boom and bust by building a house from more than a billion euros of decommissioned notes...
'The money, which forms a pulped brick of shredded notes, is part of an art installation - and home - built by unemployed Dublin-based artist Frank Buckley.

'Mr Buckley has invited strangers into the space in the hope that it will inspire debate on the state of Irish national debt and the meaning of currency...
'He decided to create art that would bring the absurdity of the Irish economic situation to light and made paintings from the shredded notes and coins which he exhibited towards the end of last year.
'Then the idea came to him to build a house..'
It's worth a read and reminds me of a favourite Thames and Hudson book, Money (Katy Siegel and Paul Mattick), which brings together lots of examples of artworks on the topic, including a chapter on 'Alternatives'. Check it out at your local library.

On 26 March 2012 the New York Times wrote a piece on Frank Buckley's house and the issues it raises too. You can find the electronic version here.

No money/crisis in Vanuatu

On Sunday 29 January we went by train (bus/train) down the mountains to Sydney, where the SEARCH Foundation had its first Roundtable for 2012. We, as the co-editors of Life Without Money, and Ariel Salleh, as a contributor, spoke along with Steve Keen (UWS) and Graham Larcombe (Director, Strategic Economics) on non-monetary and monetary values.

There was general discussion, before participants broke up into smaller groups for discussion, reconvening for reports back and then a panel discussion. Again the engagement was rich and diverse and we felt really energised to be part of it.

One of the participants in yesterday's SEARCH Foundation roundtable (see post immediately below) was anthropologist Kirk Huffman, honorary curator of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. He left me with a Sydney Morning Herald (9 February 2009) article of his 'A palmy balm for the financial crisis', in which he wrote:
'Real poverty is almost non-existent in even the most remote areas, as everyone has land, food and culture. Only in the two urban centres — the only places where you need money to live — can you see signs of "real" poverty...

'I was at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in November to attend the annual meeting of field workers from the outer islands. Many are chiefs, and some are from extremely remote areas. I gave a rather long talkin Bislama (pidgin English) about the financial crisis and its causes...

'After the talk, one of the chiefs, an old and dear friend, came up to me and we shared cigarettes and bananas outside. He said: " We are very, very sorry to hear about all of the problems the white man is having now and our heart goes out to them. Some of us have tried to warn them before. When you go back overseas, you can tell them that if they want to learn how to live a good [sustainable] life, they can come and stay with us and we will be glad to teach them.'

Varuna launch


On Saturday afternoon (28 January) Lis Bastian (CEO,  Varuna, the Writers' House) launched our book in our bioregion, the Blue Mountains (Australia). It was an in conversation event with us as co-editors, which then broke out into a question-cum-answer session and general discussion.

By 4 pm when the event was due to start there was already standing room only and many latecomers had to be turned away. It was a lively affair and, what with with signing books later, we didn't leave Varuna till after 7 pm.

Some of those who we work with in sustainability networks up here — Transition Blue Mountains, Transform Australia, Slow Food Blue Mountains, our local Alternative Technology Association, PaGaian Cosmology, Permaculture Blue Mountains and more — announced a new 'Urgency' group to bring unity and improve communication between all the groups working not just for sustainability but also for our survival.

Gary Caganoff filmed the event — we now have a 100 mins DVD, which we'll edit and prepare for U-Tube. Gary worked on this in exchange for my writing a study guide a few years back for his award winning film, The Garden at the End of the World.

P2P Book of the Day

On 16 January Franco Iacamello put up Stephan Merietz's notice about our book as the P2P Book of the Day.

Response to Simon

Simon Millar posted on our Facebook Life Without Money (non-market socialism)'s Wall:
'I am vaguely interested to read this book but, from a Marxist point of view, money will only disappear when a complex and lengthy economic process is resolved. (The first step is the incredibly difficult task of workers gaining both political and economic power.)

'Money under socialism would change from its price/commodity form to being a form of account reflecting both the the labour time and availability of a product or service. A qualitative change in property relations would see the market replaced with economic planning, where the decisions on what we produce, how we produce it and in what quantities is intimately interwoven into democratic processes which begin and end at the "shop floor". The underlying motive force is no longer profit but the fully conscious expression of human need/s. Utopian?

'Workers already run all major industries some are simply paid a lot more to play managerial/technical/engineering roles. But those who actually own and reap the lion share of the wealth generated often never have to step foot inside one of their investments. So I just worry that with a title like this it leads people to believe that money is the essence of our problem.'
Like Autonomous Marxists (Harry Cleaver, John Holloway and Antonio Negri) we believe that money will disappear when people stop using it. We are the motive force in any 'complex and lengthy economic process', which, as you also say, involves the 'incredibly difficult task of workers gaining both political and economic power'. By refusing to deal in monetary values and relationships, and dealing instead directly in use values, we undercut capitalist values and activities.

Our book discusses ways that people can directly make decisions about what and how they produce. We include examples (see some posts below, and for more on the book, see www.lifewithoutmoney.info). We think that such decisions and activities need to involve everyone, not simply workers' control/councils.

We'd like to see not only 'the fully conscious expression of human needs', as you put it, but also environmentally sustainable production and exchange, which takes account of nature's needs and limits.

The kind of 'labour value' and demand–supply dynamic you refer to as existing in your ideal form of socialism is quite close to the capitalist model. In a certain sense, yes, we are saying 'money is the essence of our problem', with the qualification that 'money is not a thing' (or tool) but rather a set of relationships and dominating value.

Left Forum Panel


We have just had confirmation that the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism is sponsoring a panel, 'Occupy the World', at Left Forum, Pace University (New York) 16 to 18 March 2012, to discuss the ideas in our book Life Without Money.

The panel will be chaired by Joel Kovel (editor-in-Chief of Capitalism Nature Socialism 2003–). Panel participants are Paul Mattick (Adelphi University, author of Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism 2011, Reaktion Books), Caroline Woolard (Our Goods, NY), Mary Mellor (Northumbria University), Ariel Salleh (University of Sydney, and contributor to Life Without Money) and co-editors Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman.

Non-monetary exchange in a monetary world

I belong to the Demonetize it! discussion group. Recently David wrote, ‘I think we need to be quite assertive in certain contexts — and be aware that people will (as Frank has reminded us) try to turn gifts into profits if the opportunity arises to do so.
‘It has also become evident to me that many people interested in "open-source" — and, indeed, "ecology" — have little or no interest in alternatives to commerce. Likewise with many people who aspire to self-sufficiency, or getting "off-the-grid" — they have little or no interest in the fostering of solidarity or cooperation, or sharing, or the gift economy. Indeed, living a "green lifestyle" for many people means acquiring several acres of land, building a fence around it, and keeping it more-or-less to themselves (while charging anyone who wants to make use of it).

‘This is an issue which has struck me numerous times when discussing with people interested in self-sufficiency — lots of talk about "sustainability", but very little about sharing or cooperation.’

I responded: ‘We don't talk about self-sufficiency but rather collective sufficiency so that shared decision making over production and exchange is implicit. Even so, my experience in Australia has been that most people who are into self-sufficiency are into simple living and have a collective and mutual aid mentality. However, you are quite right that there have always been individualistic hermit and entrepreneurial hippy stereotypes who are all for themselves, the former in pure self-sufficiency and the latter in exploitative forms. For these reasons we come to the notion of supporting “collective sufficiency” so the social is at the heart of it — see our Blue Mountains Fruit and Nut Tree Network blog for event coming up this Saturday.’

In fact Frank’s and David’s discussion stresses why consciously and conscientiously moving to a money-free world is so important. Frustrations and difficulties with current sustainability and social movements (e.g. ‘fair trade’, co-operatives etc., which often contain such contradictions) pushed us into embarking on the Life Without Money book. It’s also why we have a chapter on Twin Oaks community (see post below), where the common purse becomes a way of limiting the eroding effects of the monetary economy, to show that we can transition in viable ways and steps towards a different world. Our vision of collective sufficiency embraces a common purse as a transitional strategy to a moneyfree economy where everyone and the planet’s needs are met.