how fundamental is money to capitalism?

Question

does creating a money-less world solve many or most of the problems that anarchists have with the current situation?
if so, what are the best ways to combat money as a phenomenon?

Comments

this question replaces the non-question that has been deleted:
Should Anarchists be publicizing the 2012 Strike for a Moneyless World?
WORLD STRIKE 2012
If you agree that the abolition of money would be a fine solution to most of our problems, and that we could create a much better system where EVERYTHING - food and drink, clothing and housing, water, heating, education, health-care and entertainment - shall be FREE for EVERYONE - why not join the World-Wide Strike on the opening day of the Olympic Games in 2012?
The Strike will begin the moment the symbolic Olympic flame is lit - the signal for all who support the abolition of money to stop work and demand a new fair world of true freedom and justice.
WE WANT A MONEYLESS WORLD
Pass it on.

Answer 1

for me this raises the question:  what is the relationship between "money" and "value (exchange)"?  doing away with money per se, while i would love to see that happen regardless, doesn't inherently do away with the mindset of "value exchange", which exists independently of money (a medium of exchange).  how tightly those are interwoven and interdependent is anybody's guess.  we can't know without doing away with the thing (money), to see how that impacts the way of thinking.

i find this both analogous and related to the similar question of "sustainability".  doing away with fossil fuels and other "unsustainable" technologies doesn't necessarily change the way people consume.  and it is that consumption that seems unsustainable.   if there were suddenly enough sun/wind/water energy products to provide the same upteen-gazillion peta-watts that the world currently uses, humans would likely make no changes in their consumption patterns.

likewise, doing away with money as a medium of exchange would not necessarily change the mindset of value exchange, hoarding, "profit", etc.

i haven't had coffee yet, so forgive the rambling...

Comments

i tend to agree with this assessment (that money is more of a symptom than a cause). but i'm not sure. the question of reform comes up here again: how do we change how we think about exchange, and value, without actively changing how we approach exchange and value? isn't trying to do without money one way (certainly not the only way) to do that?
the thing i don't like about the post that got deleted was not just that it wasn't a question (grrr) but that it's this activist tactic that seems very shallow. i find the alternate currency campaigns to be more interesting, even though they never seem to get very far.

Answer 2

Money is absolutely fundamental to capitalism. The establishment of money is one of many roles that the state has played historically in laying the groundwork for capitalism, and one of the many continuing reasons that capitalism still could not exist without the state.

All market economies that we know about so far, either historically or anthropologically, have been based on a standardized medium of exchange to facilitate commercial transactions (i.e. money). All such standardized mediums of exchange, that we know about so far, have been imposed by the state.

Examples of non-monetary market economies based on barter have invariably been situations where a monetary system had once existed, but later collapsed or became inaccessible (such as the dissolution of the USSR, or much of the colonial pre-United States.) Non-monetary economies don't tend to operate according to the logic of barter or market exchange at all, but rather systems of what an anarchist might recognize as mutual aid. (Such arrangements have been described by different academics as "generalized reciprocity," "gift economy," "primitive communism," "noble savagery," "barbarity," etc.)

It is of little consequence whether the currency is coinage, printed paper, or standardized measurements of barley. All have functioned as money, and all have been imposed by the state, usually as a method of standardizing tax collection to pay soldiers. The market economy did not exist before money, and money did not exist before the state. If money somehow disappeared, market exchange could not be conducted in a manner conducive to the social institutions of capitalism. The idea that wage labor or investment banking could function through the trade of eggs for pieces of fabric is absurd.

This is not to say that the abolition of money = anarchy and freedom. I just don't think any system that could be described as "capitalism" could exist without that green (or measured denominations of salt, as the case may be).

Comments

To a free market, what was originally meant by capitalism all that is needed is capital- material goods and/or services which people can deal with one another through.

For croney debt based fiat currency "capitalism" i.e. Corporatism, money is truly essential because it's a method of artificial scarcity and price and distribution control.