Alternative Currencies as utopian practice?

1. Alternative Currencies as utopian practice? Peter North, University of Liverpool

2. …… OK – so what would YOU do different?????

3. The politics of alternative money • The ‘money’ we use is simply a social construction, a collective agreement to accept a certain form of measurement, store of value, and unit of exchange. • Once we accept that money is not a thing ‘out there’, external to us, but a social construction, it follows that we can change it: • We can make collective agreements to use other forms of money that will operate (at least) as effectively as the money issued by states which have in the past claimed a monopoly on the right to issue money.

4. Better Money? • Values people and work before profitability; • Stresses liquidity to ensure that needs get met before artificial scarcity to ensure labour discipline and exchange rate or price stability; • Locally owned and controlled. • Variety to avoid vulnerability to crisis in money monocultures. • Localised: by having a limited geographical coverage, encouraging the development of sustainable, localised economies.

5. A humane economy “I see it as a balanced economy - a balance between men and women, between the masculine and feminine in each of us... An economy that calls on each of us to practice in that kind of way is more likely to soften people than this horrendous situation that frightens so many people - men as much as women“ “The LETS community does look at a transaction as a relationship whereas the commercial world looks upon a transaction as a transaction. You need some respect for the person you are dealing with as you know they don't have to do it. It's got to be mutually beneficial, whereas a transaction in the real world does not have to be...there's an imbalance of power.”

6. A demonstrator of liberation “”””To me LETS is mainly about the.....educative thing. I mean, the kind of capitalist cynicism that goes around, about market forces and about the laws of supply and demand and about people being basically greedy gits that rip people off all the time, I think LETS is a good way of demonstrating, 'No - that's not actually true'. People are capable of being like that but they are also capable of being different. LETS is a good way of demonstrating to people even if they are not actually involved in it. They can see, well there'sa community, a community that's scattered around Manchester."

7. From Owen to Hayek "such demands have been raised over and over again by a long series of cranks with strong inflationist inclinations.......they all agitated for free issue because they wanted more money. Often a suspicion that the government monopoly was inconsistent with the general principle of the freedom of enterprise underlay their argument, but without exception they all believed that monopoly had led to an undue restriction rather than an excessive supply of money." Hayek (1990:12).

8. Short cut to social change? "In part (the proletariat) throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers associations, hence into a movement in which it renounces the revolutionising of the old world by means of the latter's own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society's back, in private fashion, within its limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck." (Marx 1852).

9. Inadequate? “Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms to which the individual wage slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes in the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz. the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.”

10. The politics of money. • Utopian socialism and time money. • Populism and co-operation. • Social Credit and the Green Shirts. • Social Credit and anti-semitism. • Depression era stamp scrip and swaps • Silvio Gesell and rusting money.

11. National Equitable Labour Exchange 1832-4Uses money based on TIME.

12. Problems of Owenism 1832-4. • Set up quickly and undercapitalised: could not afford the rent > evicted. • The poorest need help to set up their co-operatives, no cash to do that. • People allowed to set own estimate of time: How to pay for slower workers – prices rise. • How to differentiate between levels of efficiency.

13. Problems with Owenism • Inability to buy basics for labour notes. • Could not live on labour notes alone – heavily discounted by middlemen. • Women object to shopping under the male gaze. • False exchanges that ripped the poor off. • Attacked as atheistic, communistic. • Poor regulation led to disputes between traders, no enforcement by courts.

14. Mass usage in Argentina

15. The rise (and fall) of Trueque. • Begun 1995, Quilmes by PAR. 20 traders. • By 2001, claims of 4,500 markets used by half a million people spending 600 million credits (Norman 2002). Probably more.. • December 2001 financial crisis comes to a head, coralito imposed. • 2002 Unquantifiable mass usage. • November 2002 Trueque attacked on TV, newspapers. Confidence drops overnight. • 2003 10-30% (varies) of nodos remain.

28. ‘La Economia Solidaria’. • Don’t buy credits. All this does is fatten the pockets of the unscrupulous people who are selling them. • Produce with solidarity. Take what you can produce and what you know others will need to the market. • Distribute with solidarity. Don’t trade all of your products with one prosumer. Let many people have the chance to obtain your products. • Consume with solidarity. Only consume what is necessary, and give other prosumers the opportunity to consume the same as you.

31. ‘They don’t last very long’: Lessons from New Zealand

32. Explaining longevity • Rural, not urban. Especially top of South Island. • UK networks within cites as well as rural. • “Post-materialist hippies.” • A well rooted, committed activist at its heart with support network. • Efficient and timely admin of accounts and directories. • Small number of active local members, but strong bonds of affection/political/religious view and support. • Members educated so they understand relationship trading and how to work the system. • Attracted natural wheeler-deelers and young families offered and wanted what the network could provide. • Commitment building mechanisms – either formal or through a shared ethos. Defection penalised. Commitment building events – markets, parties etc.

33. Alternative currencies as social change mechanisms • As utopian politics - demonstration of possibilities, but limited by economic stress. • Learning about money, society, and work - and learning to live better. • Money - some reformulation of codes and creativity - hindered by lack of resources, time, distance, and opportunities to trade. • Livelihood - considerable reformulation of codes. Money makes alternative livelihoods possible. • Heterospace is possible now within resource constraints (if that is an attractive lifestyle).

34. Post industrial utopians. • Ordinary people in the c21st are able to rise above ‘dwarfish co-operation’: • They individually and collectively possess more material goods. • They are able to form networks using modern IT. • The political environment is more benign. • The environment for forming small businesses is much more benign, and opportunities for forming livelihoods based on services much greater. • The looming environmental and resource crisis might mean we have no options. • We now understand economic pluralism. Not everyone wants paid work for an employer (in the North, at least.) • BUT – what are the possibilities for alternative production given small scale resources?