Posted by David Searles on May 30, 2009 at 08:53:51:
In Reply to: Re: Money as the root of all evil? posted by Herb on February 25, 2009 at 11:14:10:
At one point I thought that that the economic collective of labor - such as the SLP's socialist industrial union model would totally supplant the political state - and therefore there would be no currency except for labor shares issued by the workers' collective in return for work done by an individual laborer.
At one point in recent history money was backed by metal - the product of labor. This reinforced this idea to an extent - that when labor acquired the industrial means of production that labor would also acquire these stock piles of metal it had produced.
Now currency is backed by nothing but the expectation that the owners of material goods and services will part with them in return for these green pieces of paper, in some instances, and electronic credits for them in others.
Political government money can survive collective worker control of the industrial means of production as long as people, including the political govt. accepts it as currency.
Which raises the question, can not there be a bi-currency arrangements.
e.g. You work for a collective you get labor notes.
You work as an employee of the political govt. you get cash.
People who would rather be single artisans or professionals as opposed to working in the collective would sell their goods and services for cash.
The workers' collective produces electricity, people with labor notes can pay for it in labor notes, the collective can also sell the electricity for cash to municipalities for street lights.
When it gets down to it, I envision the "new society" to be an conglomerate of public, private and labor (pardon the word) enterprises.
a little further on this - and I have talked about this before - "the state" we refer to it is an organ of oppression of one class by another and various similar descriptors. But political govt. (the state) it seems looses it's bogey man status once the inordinate influence of capitalism over it ceases. When the workers are in collective control of most of the industrial means of production and distribution (as they determine) don't workers then supplant capitalists as primary influencers of the operations of the political govt.?
So as the pfans model suggests by having one house of congress political and the other industrial - the idea of binary sovereignty is not all that absurd.*
*However I wouldn't necessarily advocate the political/industrial bifurcation of congress. For the time being the current arrangement would do very well until sometime in the future long after the implementation of the new society there was a political consensus developed that it ought to be changed.
Dave Searles