Demonetize it!

The End of Money @ Vienna Solidarity Economy Congress 2013

Franz Nahrada has provided us with the following report of exciting developments in Europe, specifically Germany:

The Vienna Solidarity Economy Congress 2013 had almost 1000 visitors, and was very significant in bringing various streams of people together — people from different movements and backgrounds, gathering around the idea of cooperation and commons as the main pillars of any future economy. This was not a real mass event, but almost a must for activists and networkers in Central Europe, allowing them to forge new relations, become informed about other initiatives, bringing forward their agenda. They were confronted with a plethora of offerings in two days: 120 lectures and workshops in the framework of the beautiful old Vienna University of Agriculture and, in particular, the modernist, bright Schwackhöfer building, plus booths and social events.

In the preparation for the congress, several initiatives merged their planning meetings with this event. Amongst them was Demonetize it! and the Solidarity Economy Winter School, who jointly ran parallel tracks on moneyless practices and theories of demonetization. It became obvious that demonetization is a discourse of its own and attracted at least 200 people following one or other of the 18 lectures/presentations/workshops focusing on the End of Money. When the demonetize tracks called for a final plenary, about 50 people were present and showed their dedicated support for the idea of 'networking our way towards demonetization'.

The spectrum consisted of many people with many different 'trades'. People who distribute free music, farmers who engage in community supported agriculture, people who want to build tractors and other open hardware, people who educate children, people who create maps, and so on. It was consensual that building demonetized alternatives consisted of the practical coming together of complementing activities: 'If you truly want to make it complimentary, you have to complement each other'. This is an exciting new phase. Every single person in the room agreed that the logic of exchange and LETS is not enough or even obsolete, that 'paying back' is an obstacle and that the real future rather lies in 'paying forward'. This works on the basis of agreements and reliable cycles of cooperation and the enormous productivity that comes from people doing what they really want.

To form cycles of cooperation is primarily a local task. You can only cooperate with people you have easy access to. This was the reason and the rationale of creating a new mailing list, which was aptly named 'miteinander' (together), and which is meant to promote immediate cooperation and the know-how for establishing long-lasting, successful cooperation. The new list will be in German mainly and focused on practical issues of establishing cycles of cooperation, whilst the discussion list should continue to focus on theory and fundamental issues of demonetisation.

The central themes of locality, networking and production/exchange based on needs and use value parallel the 'compact society' and 'collective sufficiency' concepts in our Life Without Money book.  

Sharing stalls and gift economies

Vic Button and Frank Bowman refer to themselves as a 'working partnership'. They have worked in peace, justice and green movements. These and their own life experiences awakened them to the competitive culture we all live in. They advocate that: ‘we need to live within a Gift Economy, the Earth's Economy’. What follows is a brief history of their experiences, written by Frank.

When we started our sharing stall in 1992, two green councillors on the Wirral Green forum saw it and produced a leaflet that described how to run a give and take sharing day, and that went around the country. As well as working at the Connah's Quay weekly market, we attended national fairs and festivals, and anywhere we could, as well as corresponding with others in the USA, Canada and other places. And the idea, when seen, got copied on the Isle of Man, The Isle of Wight. Next, through the 1990s, we heard it had started in Brighton. Next we heard it was happening in France. Then we heard Holland and then Germany. And so it spread.

But, as I have said before, it is like tasting a cherry or cake. It has to be done to be experienced. How rich it is. How people share. At first it was a gamble but it just works. Community sharing works. All the fears you have about it don't appear. One would expect, for instance, that everything on the stall would go and the stall might be left empty, but no, the stall always gains more than was put on it originally, and yet everyone has taken things they want, and are so happy with such a good idea. It is more than a stall: it is a very happy space, a community space and a catalyst for more community skills and knowledge sharing in a locality to happen.

Recently I received a set of legal rules to look over for a new organization to form a group called Free Wrexham, which is proposed to be a networking group for gift economy projects in the Wrexham area. When it’s done they will set up an account for the Gift Economy projects in Wrexham to hold the money donations that come in from a community skills and knowledge sharing and community goods sharing free stall running every day now in the Peoples Market in the town and run by anyone who wishes to. It was set up last November 2012 and is running 6 days a week, originally set up by a coalition of Give and Take, Wrexham Bring and Take, and the Yum Yum project.

This stall has been on Heart Radio and BBC radio. The stall is on the BBC website here, the the Indymedia website here, with the Chester stall here.

There is no worry about the money that comes in as donations if it gets taken because it is not the money that is important, but the sharing that is happening. Paradoxically no one takes the money! Or very rarely. Our group give and take has now accrued £12000 for others for free community space.

As well as that, one of our members Vic has said he will gift his riverside dwelling and garden into it as free sharing space to be held free forever, we just need to get the legal structure done for that. It can be seen at http://www.wigglywobblyway.weebly.com

As well, some of the Wrexham people wish to create a big town community space: the Yum Yum project for gift economy arts, cafe, library, skills sharing, goods sharing, workshops, food sharing and anything else, like brewery, that the people wish to create and give to and take from for free.



Although Vic and I, and my children, and many others through the years have been doing gift economy for 20 years — at markets, fairs and festivals, and within our local Lets scheme, and developing two Gift Economy farm forest garden permaculture land projects — it is only in the last five years that it has grown and is growing. Through these years, from the first, I have always wondered where are the women in this? Well they are here now: they are the committed majority in Wrexham, which is so good. This is just in our area. I feel sure models be copied and will grow in all areas.



Genevieve Vaughan, in For-Giving, has written the book on the gift economy. It is the book of it, the spirit of it, the why and wherefore of it. And I think that it is with a rise of the power of women, and the rise of gift economy projects, which is happening now. Patriarchy is a construct, which we live under. Taken away from the mother, males are divorced from the learning of nurture, to learn competition and fighting. What does gang, competitive, fearful patriarchy not want to happen? The rise of women and the rise of sharing. Simple community sharing — sharing governance.

Modest lifestyles and solidarity

It's great to see leaders, such as the Broad Left's President of Uruguay Jose 'Pepe' Mujica (2010–), lauded for their modest lifestyles and looking like the rest of us.

Following an interview with the Spanish El Mundo, this former guerilla was reported in Univision News as living in solidarity with the citizens of Uruguay: giving away 90 per cent of his salary to charity housed in a farmhouse rather than a presidential palace.

He has managed to reduce corruption and moved to legalise marijuana and abortions.

Warming Eduardo Galeano's heart, as in certain neighbouring Latin American countries, the popular economies of mutual aid and shared ownership of means of production are being restored — and developing anew — in Uruguay.

Bugger the bankers video

For some short sharp humour try the Austerity Allstars at either of the following links.

http://www.buggerthebankers.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WSIUf2hD6Io#!

Also, you might like to engage in the life without money discussion on the libertarian communism site here:

http://libcom.org/forums/announcements/life-without-money-07012013

Dana as a transitional strategy

Kellia Ramares-Watson, a freelance journalist and editor in California, is working towards a world without money. Most of us in this position seek strategies for changing the ways we operate in our personal lives. Here's what Kellia's going to experiment with this year in terms of give-and-take for her editing services:

As for price, I am starting the New Year with a new philosophy, for me. Our local Buddhist meditation center has operated for years on the principle of Dana — or generous giving. Basically, it is sliding scale. Consider your own personal financial situation, the length and complexity of the work to be edited, what it might cost in your home country, and your own sense of decency and fairness. Then come up with a figure.

One of the biggest problems with the capitalist pricing system is the fact that it tries to etch in stone a fixed value for something that is, in fact, of variable value, depending on the needs and desires of people who want the thing. The fixed price then creates scarcity, blocking certain people who need something from getting it.

While I am living in a money economy and need more of the stuff — hence the pitch for work — I am also looking for a way to lessen money’s influence on my life. For now, at least, the Buddhist Dana principle seems to be a good answer.

Kellia also has some limitations on the kind of work she takes on (e.g. no indexing) and the amount of work she can do at a time (e.g. no rush jobs) so that work does not adversely impact her health, which is very sensitive to stress. But Kellia is willing to hear what each person has to offer, and to consider each project individually. You can email her: theendofmoney@gmail.com

Radical Notes — interview

Radical Notes is a well-established on-line international forum for transformative politics with a special concern for South Asia. An in-depth interview with Anitra Nelson on non-market socialism and Life Without Money — conducted by Pratyush Chandra, who posed some insightful and intelligent questions — has just been posted on Radical Notes here.

Some extracts follow:

We see non-market socialism as the only way to address the combined crises we face, which are results of a capitalist system based in production for trade, relying on monetary accounting and exchange. This system contorts and confuses the values, relationships and structures that ideally exist between people and between people and nature. At the heart of the capitalist system is the practice and concept of money as a measure, even a god. The structure and relations of capital are impossible without the practice and concept of money as a general all-purpose means of exchange and unit of account. Capital is money that begets more money.  Thus monetary values come to dominate social and environmental values in more and more intensive and expansionary ways. The modern state arises as a handmaiden to capital. We buy and we vote; we are servants to both...

Money and markets represent capitalist power, not only a vernacular of power, but also, and more importantly, existing material practice of power. We must recover that power over the means of our existence, over the conditions and practice of our existence. You cannot have capital without money. You cannot have abstract labour or labour for wages without money. Especially people who have no money understand that money is not a neutral tool, it’s a form of control. Capitalists are defined by money, their power is monetary power, their logic is a market-based logic. If our strategies for confronting, undermining and overwhelming capital are based in these simple facts, it is not hard to challenge the system. Non-market socialism is pragmatic.

In as much as market socialists and social-democratic socialists support market processes and mechanisms, I think that they share a basic misunderstanding of monetary and market practices and how they constitute capitalism. Twentieth century examples of centrally planned and market-oriented socialism, best described as state capitalism, clearly failed to democratise power and, in many ways their systems of production and distribution mimicked capitalist work and consumption. Socialist managers seemed to use market models as instruments of power to control the masses much as we are contained in capitalism. For me, socialism must mean sharing power, the power to decide what is produced, how it is produced and for whom. Socialism must be state-free and class-free because states and classes represent exclusive power...

In Life Without Money, we elaborate a local–global compact society, not to lay down a hard and fast plan for a non-market socialist future but to stimulate people’s imaginations and counter those who regard it as impossible. Most significantly, for our activist practice, we need to have a clear idea of where we are going and how our different activities might ultimately constitute a socialist future. We want as many people as possible elaborating ideas of a post-capitalist future so we can argue, experiment and establish this society.

To distinguish ours, we needed to name it somehow. I liked the way that the word ‘compact’ worked in two directions, socio-political and the other environmental and material. The noun ‘compact’ refers to a social agreement and, used as an adjective, ‘compact’ is associated with efficiency and economy, referring to a condensed, small and efficient use of space. The concept of a compact world is one of multiple horizontal cells, which aim for relative collective sufficiency within neighbourhoods and bioregions, connected by networks of various sizes appropriate to their functions, with voluntarily created and agreed to compacts structuring the production and flow of goods and services. ‘Collective sufficiency’ is a term we coined to refer to material, basic-needs sufficiency evolving on the basis of a commons and people working together to ensure their communal sufficiency (in contrast to individuals or singular households developing ‘self-sufficiency’).

See — <http://radicalnotes.com/2012/12/30/non-market-socialism-life-without-money-an-interview-with-anitra-nelson/>

The alternative to capitalism

You can find a very good summary of a non-market socialist vision and strategies in The Alternative to Capitalism by Adam Buick and John Crump out now as a Kindle eBook (originally published in 1986/1987). Extracts follow.

Capitalism is an exchange economy in which most wealth, from ordinary consumer goods to vast industrial plants and other producer goods, takes the form of commodities, or items of wealth that have been produced with a view to sale on a market. Although states have intervened in capitalism ever since it came into existence, in so far as the aim was merely to interfere with the operation of world market forces, their intervention was only at the level of the division, not the production, of surplus value. However, over the past 100 or so years, there has been a definite trend in capitalism for states to go beyond merely trying to distort the world market, and to involve themselves in the actual production of wealth by establishing and operating state enterprises.

If state capitalism is not socialism, what is? In other words, if state ownership and management of production does not amount to the abolition of capitalism but only to a change in the institutional framework within which it operates, what would be the essential features of a society in which capitalism had been abolished?

To find a coherent set of ideas which are subversive of capitalism, and which do offer an alternative to production for the world market, one must turn to the 'thin red line' represented by … anarcho-communism; impos­sibilism; council communism; Bordigism; situationism …

[T]here is a basic set of socialist principles which these currents share. Initially, four such principles can be identified. The currents of non-market socialism are all committed to establishing a new society where:

1) Production will be for use, and not for sale on the market.
2) Distribution will be according to need, and not by means of buying and selling.
3) Labour will be voluntary, and not imposed on workers by means of a coercive wages system.
4) A human community will exist, and social divisions based on class, nationality, sex or race will have disappeared.

Let us clarify these four principles for those readers who may not immediately grasp all their ramifications...

Published by Theory and Practice, a paperback will be released if demand proves high.

Non-market Land Trust

Austrian Andreas Exner — in the Demonetise It discussion list — asked us to promote a call for contributions to a a land trust (Bodenfreikauf) with non-market aims. He writes the following.

We have set up now our weblog to gather three more contributions of 8.000 EUR each to buy arable land of about 1 ha in Styria with the following aims:

1. to permanently decouple it from the market
2. to increase crisis resilience of participants through subsistence agriculture
3. to foster commons instead of the market
4. to contribute free food to society

The project is part of a larger range of initiatives, with the common aim to build a pool of surfaces dedicated to collective and egalitarian production.

This call for contributions explains our motivations and the current state of the project:
https://bodenfreikauf.wordpress.com/

Please distribute widely!

We wish them the best of luck and look forward to providing updates of their progress.

Wellbeing versus wealth

Kirk Huffman was interviewed by Sean Dorney recently on ABC Radio National about the Alternative Indicators of Wellbeing in Melanesia Report, which attempts to convince 'economists that wellbeing, contentment, security of traditional land tenure, community relations are actually more important than money'.

Dorney asked Huffman about some of the findings and impact of the report that came out a few months ago — when we had a post announcing the publication. Here are some more key quotes from the audio-interview and transcript available from the link above:

Traditional lifestyles or modified traditional lifestyles actually give an awful lot of security and contentment. They are not poor! This is the mistake that economists make. They think, 'Oh, they've got no money so they're poor.' That's wrong. The province in Vanuatu that's got the highest levels of contentment and satisfaction and everything is Torba Province right up in the far north which is the area of Vanuatu that receives the least of various glitterati things or the bling things from the modern world. And that's where the levels of contentment and happiness are actually the highest. It turns out that some of the most important things of course is land. Something like 92 per cent of people surveyed have access, traditional access to land in Vanuatu ...

... The Alternative Indicators of Wellbeing in Melanesia Report is already available online in the French speaking world. The French economists - it's very interesting - French economists and French philosophers and thinkers picked up on it immediately. Absolutely immediately. And even though the report at the moment is only out in English it's available on French websites that deal with important philosophical questions. The French speaking world is living in the Age of Enlightenment sort of period where there's intense debate on philosophical questions of great importance. The English speaking world has lost that! The English speaking world is, sort of, unfortunately, become more concerned with just business, jobs and, you know, bling and various things like that.

This news item, with its singular message about the weaknesses of a monetary framing of our future, can be contrasted with one from the Guardian (1 December), 'Gross national happiness in Bhutan: The big idea from a tiny state that could change the world', by Annie Kelly Thimphu, which reveals the contradictory and undermining forces of upholding 'happiness' without withdrawing support for production for trade and money, and monetary evaluations:

Despite its focus on national wellbeing, Bhutan faces huge challenges. It remains one of the poorest nations on the planet. A quarter of its 800,000 people survive on less than $1.25 a day, and 70% live without electricity. It is struggling with a rise in violent crime, a growing gang culture and the pressures of rises in both population and global food prices.

It also faces an increasingly uncertain future. Bhutan's representatives at the Doha climate talks are warning that its gross national happiness model could crumble in the face of increasing environmental and social pressures and climatic change.

'The aim of staying below a global two-degree temperature increase being discussed here this week is not sufficient for us. We are a small nation, we have big challenges and we are trying our best, but we can't save our environment on our own,' says Thinley Namgyel, who heads Bhutan's climate change division. 'Bhutan is a mountainous country, highly vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. We have a population that is highly dependent on the agricultural sector. We are banking on hydropower as the engine that will finance our development.'

Swapping and sharing

The Faulconbridge Crop and Swap in the lower Blue Mountains of NSW runs every second Saturday in the local community hall. Everyone arrives at 10 am and sets up what they have to swap. At 10.30 am exchanging starts and ends around noon. People take all kinds of things to swap, including:

• vegetables, fruits and nuts that they've grown
• foods that they've cooked, such as baked goods and jam
• foods they've made, such as cheese
• fresh eggs from local chooks.

There are three principles determining what you can offer and how you conduct the exchange, which must be: home grown or hand made; quality produce; swapped 'in good spirit'. No money changes hands, except if you offer to donate a gold coin to cover costs for insurance and hall hire.

Sometimes similar events are held on an ad hoc basis in community gardens, our fruit and nut tree network promotes swaps theough an e-list and you can always leave garden produce to sell or give away at our 10/7 food coop in the upper mountains.

If you want to replicate the idea, may be start here. Or leave a comment about similar opportunities to swap.

In the upper Blue Mountains you will find book swaps in cafes and one at a local railway station, Leura (see photos).



A much larger version of the 'book club' exists in a central mall of Victoria's capital, Melbourne Central Station, amongst the glare of icons of over-consumption and the boppy music market researchers can prove make people buy more are massive old bookshelves where people leave and take books.

Also check out this inspiring video:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151279562307432