Demonetize it!

On future (and current) lives without money …

Justin Morgan has a short summary of certain arguments, themes and projects in the developing solidarity economy that all recogise the importance of substituting monetary values, relationships and structures with non-monetary economic institutions. If you're a Marxist or anarchist — I am both and other things besides, such as a womens' liberationist — you might ignore some of the simplistic references to your position, especially in the introduction but do read on: The solidarity economy as a strategy for revolution.

Also, published online earlier this month for a future edition of Capitalism Nature Socialism (2014) is Andreas Exner's Degrowth and demonetization: On the limits of a non-capitalist market economy. Again, if you're an advocate you might take issue with the definitions and description Andreas has for degrowth, but the discussion is well worth a read. Andreas is a very active member of the demonetization movement, see Demonetize it!

Digitising the Revolution: Cheap Life Without Money eBook

Recently Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies has been digitised and is now available as an eBook. You now buy it for your e-reader and for a limited time — just until 31 March 2014 — it is on sale via the Kindle Store, Kobo and Nook at a special introductory discount price of just £10 (i.e. Pluto’s RRP).

This release is one of the first thirty back titles to be digitised by Pluto Press, under the banner 'The revolution will be digitised'. To see these classic and recent books, all available cheaply as an introductory offer, access the Ebook Backlist Catalogue — and Pluto Press's other catalogues — here.

Digital editions have unique ISBNs. The ones for Life Without Money are: 9781783711000 (ePub) and 9781783711017 (Kindle).

Third World examples of life without money

Terry Leahy, the author of one of the chapters in Life Without Money, and his sister Gillian Leahy recently produced a documentary film on a project in villages in Zimbabwe that Terry has been involved with for many years.

Terry has written an article, 'The Chikukwa project', analysing the transformation of these villages as an example of a hybrid of the gift economy and capitalism. The article, along with a slide show of photos and PowerPoints about the project, is available free at his site:

http://www.gifteconomy.org.au

There have been numerous screenings of the doco in Australia and you can download it here (for $12):

http://thechikukwaproject.com

A World Without Money

libcom.org has English translations of the first two of the three 1975–1976 French pamphlets — Un Monde Sans Argent: Le Communisme (A World Without Money: Communism) online for reading, printing or downloading. In fact these English translations have been made from a Spanish translation (Un Mundo Sin Dinero: El Comunismo). Here, the pampleteers argue that money must disappear under genuine communism:

http://libcom.org/library/world-without-money-communism-part-two-les-amis-de-4-millions-de-jeunes-travailleurs

Part Two begins:

Communism is a world without money.

Later its authors write:

Money is the bearer of a profound mystification. It conceals the original nature of the expenditure that really created the product. Behind wealth, even mercantile wealth, are nature and human effort. Money seems to produce interest, it seems to breed. The only source of value, however much it appears to derive from commerce and all the more so the more it does derive from commerce, is labor.

Review in Capitalism Nature Socialism

A book review of Life Without Money has just been published online by the Capitalism Nature Socialism journal. The reviewer, David Barkin, is an economics professor at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Xochilmilco, who investigates and supports community-based economies with strong social and environmental values. David has been the reviews editor of the Review of Radical Political Economics for a very long time. Here are some excerpts of his review of our book:

Grounded in a long history of people critiquing the role of money as an instrument for social and economic denomination, this book brings together a broad range of participants, all of whom are convinced that money is a central part of the problem for reorganizing society and some of whom are actively engaged in groups attempting to function without money as it is commonly used and understood ... A useful and enlightening feature of the book is the inclusion of short vignettes at the end of all but one of the chapters by well-known advocates for the construction of alternatives, beginning with excerpts from Thomas More’s Utopia at the beginning.

While there is a surfeit of books sprouting with proposals for building alternative societies, there are a precious few that purport to be informed by strands of Marxist theory. This collection of essays offers an insight into one (decidedly not monolithic) approach to this end. It is firmly grounded in the world of the “advanced” capitalist world and draws on thinking and examples that are deliberately nonviolent and focused on small-scale change (with the possible exception of the Yugoslav case).

... this is a valuable collection of essays that will spark classroom discussions of the possibilities for implementing change without massive social movements.

Demonetisation

I would say that nonmarket socialism is a money-free, state-free, class-free society where peopleʼs needs are still met. And theyʼre met by people sharing in decision-making and sharing and doing all of the work of production and exchange. So you just cut out there being the principle of money and monetary flows in exchanges. And you also cut out there being big bureaucracies so that we all have representatives who have representatives, and the kinds of communist experiments in the 20th century of China, Russia and Cuba, which were all highly state-organized communism. Nonmarket socialists see it being highly problematic to have the state. We see the state as being an important part of capitalism. The state as we know it today, it has actually grown along with capitalism. Itʼs sort of a way of limiting it; itʼs a way of actually supporting it; and itʼs also a way of ameliorating it. So it has very complex kinds of functions. But we think that in order for people to have their basic needs met, it would make more sense if people themselves were making a lot more decisions about what they needed and how it was produced and doing it themselves.

John Holloway

John Holloway is a prominent communist rallying against the money-form. Take a look at this article, printed a few years ago in The Guardian: 'Today's march is a challenge to the rule of money' and his motif of saying 'No' and taking control of our own lives. This quote comes from that commentary:

... we rage against the rule of money. Not against money itself, necessarily, because in the present society we need money to live. We rage rather against the rule of money, against a society in which money dominates. Money is a great bulldozer tearing up the world. It is an insidious force penetrating ever more aspects of our lives. Money holds society together, but it does so in a way that tears it apart.

Much of John Holloway's work, including u-tube links, can be found at his website: http://www.johnholloway.com.mx/

Freeconomy

The 'moneyless man' Mark Boyle has been well promoted in popular media. A recent opinion piece appearing on ABC online, 'Moneyless man finds happiness', summarises his views and the kinds of activities recorded in books he has written. Here are some quotes from the opinion piece on his response to the 2008 GFC and current levels of alienation:

... money is the most potent tool we possess in creating and perpetuating this illusion of separation and independence.
 
Through its function as a medium of exchange, money allows us to consume products with components or ingredients from all over the Earth. On a short-term and often superficial level, this can seem like it has many benefits... Apart from its widely ignored psychological, emotional, spiritual and physical effects on us personally, it also affords us an unwise buffer from the abuses and massacres that occur throughout the supply chains of the products we consume, and all the social and ecological problems associated with that...
 
... there are no end of ways you can meet your needs without money, and more than one way of being human in this world. The gift economy has since become the only booming economy in the world...

We've also just begun setting up a three acre small-holding in Ireland. We've called it An Teach Saor, meaning The Free House in my mother tongue. Here we plan to merge fossil-fuel free permaculture principles with gift-based values. We're integrating everything from forest gardening to pedal-powered washing machines and humanure composting systems, no-dig perennial crops to rocket stoves and wormeries, into one holistic culture. Augment that with music, storytelling and art and you have the potential to create truly sustainable ways of living. Our aim, apart from living free and happy lives, is to create closed loop systems that require no ongoing external inputs. It hasn't got all the glamour and glitz of urban life, but I feel it gives me a great sense of freedom, peace, meaning and connection to the entire community of life mine is dependent on.

Art & money & money freedom

Max Haiven recently interviewed us on a life without money and Marx's concept of money for his 'A people's Bank' project:

http://www.academia.edu/4761348/_A_Peoples_Bank_

Assistant Professor in Art History and Critical Studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada, Haiven researches money and its dissidents from the framework of art.

His Reimaging Money site outlines his approach and progress.

To quote Haiven, in summary his research:

aims to explore the incredible power and terror of money over global affairs and our lives, including questions of globalization, austerity, debt, economic literacy, poverty, finance and power.  It also seeks to open up spaces and times for thinking about money, and for fostering discussion and meditation about how we might transform money and the world towards the values social justice, peace and equality.

The site includes a collection of art about the concept of money. Amongst other publications and projects, Haiven has a book coming out from Zed Books in March 2014 Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power.

Transitional models towards sharing economies

Sharing (non-monetary) economies are becoming more broad spread as talk, networks and tools for sharing production and exchange expand.

Mid-August The Guardian ran an item by Hal Niedzvieki 'Are you ready to embrace the apocalypse?' with the comment that 'Facing up to the slow collapse of our planet is hard, but thinking apocalyptically could help us prepare for the crises to come'. The item promoted a gathering, Uncivilisation 2013, in Hampshire (UK) attended by hundreds of people. Sessions included wild-food foraging and moving beyond a monetary-based economy. The event was run by the Dark Mountain Project:

a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself. We see that the world is entering an age of ecological collapse, material contraction and social and political unraveling, and we want our cultural responses to reflect this reality rather than denying it.

In the capital city and country towns of Victoria (Australia), groups such as the Darebin Food Harvest Network, which promote food swaps and harvesting for direct use and donation, sharing information, skills, resources, goods and services. In Castlemaine, the Harvest Group of Growing Abundance focuses on fruit plants and fruit growing. Both show transitional models for moving towards non-monetary production and exchange. 

An online tool for sharing goods — just involved with household exchange — has been started at/by TuShare.