[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Dmytri Kleiner]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2009, Stan Rhodes wrote:

> Christian, your peerconomy is a market in everything but name.  I've said it, Stefan's
> said it.

Me too, I made the same observation when the text was published (I
actually have a printed version). Unfortunately, I was unable to find
any of "peerconomy" theoretically coherent, and file it under the rest of
the "oekonux" drivel.

However, I'm not sure I'm 100% on-side with Kevin (whose work I very
much admire) WRT money and markets being nothing but neutral tools.

I believe that we must use money and markets in building the new society
in the shell of the old, I do not however hold them as an ideal.

I fully believe that specialization of labour implies exchange, however 
exchange does not need to be money-denominated itemizedi, transactions, 
but can be significantly more fuzzy.

Until Capitalist social relations where imposed on society, money and
markets functioned quite differently than they do today. Actual specie
was rarely used in "market" transactions, even though money has existed
as long as writing, it's use was mostly limited to paying tribute and
for prestige (usually imported) goods. Most other goods where either
traded on account or ad-hoc, this is certainly exchange and certainly
reciprocial, but the valuation was not done on each item and not
denomonated in money, but rather value was attributed to the
relationship, not the transaction or the item. Markets formed on
periphery of communities, not at their core, to dispose of surplus.

The more distant the relationship the more formal the accounting of the
transaction, ad-hoc for close relations, on account for more distant
relations, and actual negotiated trade of specie or good for other goods
only when there is no relationship, whith distant trading partners or the
State.

It is neither nuetral or natural to have markets central to communities,
to have all sharing transformed into itemized transaction, but rather
these social relations where imposed as a prerequisite of Capitalism,
and are a symptom of the degree to which Captalism has destroyed human
community, now limited only to the "Nuclear" family, and even this
paltry and normalized vestige of human community is breaking down.

The uquiqity of money and markets is very much a feature of capitalism
that was, like the rest of system, systimaticaly and forcefully imposed.

I agree with Kevin that Markets do not cause exploitation, but feel that
the degree to which they permeate communities is a symptom of
exploitation, and thus money and markets may, once again, play a vastly 
diminished role in the new society, once broken out of the shell of the old.



-- 
Dmytri Kleiner, aspiring crank

http://www.telekommunisten.net