/edu/ - Education

Money is a commodity. Marxist want to abolish the production of commodities. That doesn't mean the abolishing of production of things, rather, abolishing the production of things with the primary purpose of being sold (rather than shared or distributed).
So, abolishing commodities includes abolishing money.

>>4667
money isn't just a commodity, but it's also a "map" of value, which is ultimately created by labor, it's an imperfect map, sort of like this one, it's somewhat correct but in the end distorted. Labor vouchers would be more accurate BECAUSE they aren't distorted by being a commodity like you said.

>>4670
The idea is to scientifically engineer utopia. So the goal of communism is to actually implement these conditions. If you don't need to pay labor vouchers for food (because it is freely available), for shelter, for whatever other need you have, then labor vouchers would become moot. The goal is to abolish work and create utopia, so however it might make sense to do that, you do that. After you abolish scarcity and the majority of necessary work, you could transition to a voluntary work society and that might be enough. If it isn't, then perhaps a proof of work system where you need to prove you worked at least X amount of hours a month in order to partake in the fruit of society. It really depends and you'll never really know until you try different things and see what works better. Different conditions might require or lead to the development of different systems too.

>>4666
>why do orthodox Marxists want to eventually abolish money
here is a video about thermodynamics of money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQrEEdy_uwM
summary of the video: money causes extreme inequality and it's deterministic.
>he just said it could be temporarily used in a workers’ state. I don’t understand how he planned on deprecating it afterwards.
people will work less and less because of higher and higher productivity, eventually every good will be too cheap to put a price on it.

It will not make sense to put a price tag on the earl grey tea that has just materialised from thin air in the replicator hole in the wall, because it only contains a few milliseconds of labour time, and any economic interaction would take you a few seconds to complete. Basically the time-cost of transactions would cost hundreds or thousands of times more than the products you get. It would be like going to a restaurant and ordering a cup of tea that cost 0.05 money for the tea but 100 money for the credit-card transaction.

>>4672
>>4671
I get that automation significantly reduces the labor time necessary to produce a commodity, but won’t a few job sectors like construction, resource extraction like mining, wholesale and retail distribution always add a significant number of hours of labor time per person to the commodity? some of these could theoretically take over 1000 years before they’re automated to the point of demanding nothing but seconds of time, am I wrong?

>>4673
>I get that automation significantly reduces the labor time necessary to produce a commodity
It's not only about the cost of a commodity. Transactions are not free, you have to spend time interacting with a transaction system like money tokens, credit cards and labour vouchers too. You have to spend mental energy to decide on purchases. At some point the hole of humanity would spend more time and effort on transactions than they work in the economy it self. It just becomes overhead.
>but won’t a few job sectors like construction, resource extraction like mining, wholesale and retail distribution always add a significant number of hours of labor time per person to the commodity?
I don't really know how the future looks like but replicators don't have much in terms of externalities, they need power, and maybe once in a while you need to refill the matter cartridge because it doesn't perfectly recycle. The replicator is just a projection of observable trends, like productivity improving, and shrinking of the size of production tools relative to the products they make, and it's the ultimate multi tool, because in principle it could do any modification you want. I don't really know what people will do, basically all the constrains we have today would be removed. If i want to make a prediction i'm left with few indicators, but there definitely is a lower cut-off point where prices make no sense to humans. And that's what i'm basing this on.

>>4673
Post-scarcity doesn't even imply 100% automation.

USSR was moneyless for all that maters. Money is power to command labour. USSR's currency didn't have any such power.

>>4671
>The idea is to scientifically engineer utopia
We are not utopians, and trying to achieve it is a pointless endeavor. The goal is to create a *better* society, not a utopian one.

You don't need money if you plan the economy.
>figure out the demand for the product
>produce that much product
>distribute it where the demand is
Money serves no purpose here.
Picture people going on a service something like Amazon except when you order something you don't pay money. Orders are limited either by personal credit like labor vouchers or some basic allowance OR you get it first come first served and additional orders schedule more production OR in a post-scarcity situation you don't have to limit it by definition (scarcity meaning supply is lower than demand).

wild how the entire thread (except one poster) hasn't mentioned wage labour, which is the actual reason to get rid of money. Labor vouchers just kick the can down the road, but in no way abolish wage slavery.

>>5549
I think a far more interesting discussion is is there a difference between non-commodity money (ie not requiring labor input in the form of gold or other rare metals) and labor vouchers. In both cases the state basically says we need X amount of money to have the economy not implode, and then print it. I don't know enough about USSR economics to answer tho.

>>5549
what would society even look like in the abscence of wage labour though

like, how would you even requisition certain goods? I know Cuba gives you a basic alotment of food each month, but how the fuck would buying an emoji pillow or a catback exhaust for your 2013 Subura WRX Sti

>>5551
No idea, communism is the real movement that abolishes the present state of things - basically the law of value collapses - asking that question is like asking a Russian peasant to imagine the breakdown of the corvee system.

"Eventually"? Getting rid of it is a necessity.

>>5553
That answers nothing

>>4667
>abolishing the production of things with the primary purpose of being sold (rather than shared or distributed)
So there will be no more trading collectable card games in communism?

>>5566
“abolish” is a bad translation of “sublate”. there won’t be a law making trading things illegal, that’s not what abolish means in Marxism.

>>5566
Pokemon card are shared and passed around.