Money must go

Money is the universally accepted means of exchange. It is a universal equivalent. Instead of me giving you three toasters for your armchair, I pay in an accepted, legal currency. Sounds sensible. Who wants to return to the awkward system of bartering goods? So the alternative to money would not be a return to barter, nor even equal shares for all, but free access for all to what they needed to live and enjoy life.

Imagine that all the things you need are owned and held in common. There is no need to buy food from anyone--it is common property. There are no rent or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to all of us. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). We possess an advanced industrial economy so that free access is technically possible. Science and technology –scientists and technologists or technicians –have in their hands the knowledge and the wherewithal to take humanity in any direction they choose to take, but like the rest of us they are constrained by the system we live in. They are not directed by the wishes, needs and aims of society as a whole but have to follow the logic of their master, the market. Everything becomes possible when the tools are in the right hands, the hands of the producers. It becomes a matter of organisation to bring in the new society.

The alternative to monetary calculation based on exchange-value is calculation based on use values. Decisions, apart from purely personal ones of preferences or interest, will be made after weighing the real advantages and disadvantages and real costs of alternatives in particular circumstances. When you remove money out of this equation, the motivation to do work suddenly changes. Without money, people are motivated to work for each other. It essentially means that the business mentality that has shaped most societies for thousands of years will cease to exist.

Imagine all the things that you need were owned and controlled in common. By everyone. All of us—you included. There is nobody to buy food from—it is common property. There are no rents or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to us all. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). You would not need money. In a society of common ownership, money would have no role. No longer would money exist. In a society where the earth's resources were owned commonly and controlled democratically — socialism — wealth will not be bought and sold. Envisage a money-free world community where production is for use and access to the common wealth is the equal right of every human being.

Marx identified money as one of the two main manifestations of human alienation (the other was the state) and looked forward to its abolition in a socialist society where human values would apply: where the standard by which something would be considered ‘valuable’ would be human welfare. Marx also fully endorsed the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System!” Marx's vision of a socialist society can be fairly summed up as a world-wide system of social organisation based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of, the whole community. In other words, a universal class-free, wages-free and money-free society wherein human beings would voluntarily contribute in accordance with their mental and/or physical abilities to the production and distribution of the needs of their society and in which everyone would have free and equal access to their needs. It does not mean we'll use some sort of barter system. Goods will be voluntarily produced, and services voluntarily supplied to meet people's needs. People will freely take the things they need. As Marx says it will be a “society organised as a conscious and planned association”.

In the early days of socialism, there might not be able to be full free access to everything. In which case, there would have to be some sort of "rationing" of the goods and services in short supply. Certainly, Marx considered the temporary use of "labour-time vouchers". But these should not be regarded as "money" or as any other all-purpose circulating vouchers that could be used to acquire anything (though we wouldn't be able to stop people calling it money). In these early days of change, the only point of debate might be on what basis might such coupons be distributed to the populace, such as distribution perhaps ought to be effected in a way that takes into account the inequalities which we will inherit from capitalism, for example, in respect of housing since housing constitutes easily the most important component of quality of life.

William Morris said: "One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman; two men with the same idea in common maybe foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and why only a hundred thousand?  Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth?  You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question."