[Nettime-bold] <nettime> dollars & donuts

[Brian Holmes <106271.223@compuserve.com>]

Doug Henwood writes:

"I've seen no evidence yet that LETS  people have given much thought to the
economic fundamentals that the money system embodies. It's the money
illusion raised to the level of a political philosophy, it seems."

Isn't that slapping praxis a bit too quickly with theory, Doug? What's
interesting in the various LETS systems, and other forms of trading
circles, is the practical response to situations where the capitalist order
is in crisis, either because of financial breakdown (Argentina), structural
inequality (in marginalized rural areas or situations of long-term high
unemployment), or because people want to escape the state (there you also
get right-libertarian alternatives, as we saw with e-gold). And what's
interesting in the practice is the chance for alternative ideas to be
embodied in the lives of people who are not necessarily theorists.

Unfortunately for us, the libertarian right has been better at that in
recent decades than any of the left factions. I can understand some
impatience with the idea that any egalitarian politics can do without a
state, and it's also naive to avoid the question of how the existing
capitalist order influences any subsystem set up inside it; but still it's
empirically interesting to get a look inside some experimental practices
that could ultimately transform our relations to the state(s), and thereby,
perhaps, transform capitalist relations.

After all, wouldn't it be interesting to bring people practically before
the questions you ask? About the relations of authority between bossess and
workers, about the planning and financing of productive capacity? Only when
people ask those questions, not as theoretical games, but as practical life
problems, does the status quo evolve in any way.

best, Brian Holmes

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