Labor Vouchers

What are (and aren't) labor vouchers?

Are they an imperfect mean, a desirable end or neither of those?

Are they really distinct from money, and if so in what ways?

Are they today outdated, if they were ever relevant?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

they're better than money, I guess, but cybersocialism beats it in most regards

praise Cockshott

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They are useful as an accounting measure, as that's all they really are. They are distinct from money in that they do not exchange or circulate, and are only obtainable by labor. This means that when you would use your labor voucher, it doesn't go in to the possession of someone else. It is "destroyed" and used in accounting. (Person A worked x hours this month so this month they can draw x hours - deductions from the social stock. So essentially its just a way of making sure everyone receives the correct amount of goods correlating to their work.) . These will probably be one of three ways distribution is dealt with in the first stage of communism while accounting is still necessary, the other to being straight rationing and free distribution. Obviously as time goes on and more and more products will move to the free distribution category moving us closer and closer to full communism with no accounting/rationing.

Towards a new socialism is literally all about labor vouchers…

Labor vouchers are socialism's training wheels for while people are not organised enought to the point where we can just take the stuff we need and mail specific things.
They will probably be digital now since everything else is.

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fuck it was a long time since i listened to that album

Marxists who support labour vouchers fail to realize that the LTV is not a theory of price.

This. Until we have post-scarcity we need some record of who has done work and who is getting what resources. Labor vouchers aren't the only option. Webm related.

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Isnt this just another way of doing Labour vouchers or is it akin to straight rationing like the user says in

what if I demand 1k labour vouchers for my chocolate bar, and I have the only one?

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you wont

(You) won't be able to receive any labor vouchers at all, they're not transferable. They're merely able to be "spent" to withdraw from what's held in common, not to buy things from individual persons.

Are (You)s a form of labour voucher?

Well, if you tie somehows (You)'s to your effective labor, if you make sure that the (You) was only yours to use with no possibility of being traded, if you had a system to exchange it against a commodity, and doing so would immediately lead to the (You)'s destruction..
Yeah no, they're unrelated.

That take is uhm interesting.

Marx argued for labor vouchers as a temporary, first-step compromise limited to early stages of the DotP. He described them as "stamped with capitalism's birthmarks".

(You)'s are tied to posting labor, and cannot be transferred once given, the problem is they can't be exchanged for goods.

Can you read? Labor vouchers are non transferable. I'm not sure you understand how they function still.

Absolute non-sense.
Marx clearly states that he is speaking about communist society here with his description of labor vouchers, specifically the first stage or socialism. At no point does Marx ever limit labor vouchers to the DOTP.

We should petition Codemonkey into allowing (You)s to be a labour voucher system.

Did you even read the quote you pasted?
> What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.

Yes we all know Marx had a dialectic view of the world. Tell me where Marx says labor vouchers are not in communist society, because the quote I just provided states just the opposite. Read literally the first sentence.

You ignored my comment. Marx doesn't just say "a communist society" indefinitely, he says "a communist society" in its early stages. That's not the same thing.

A communist society in its early stages is still a communist society. Otherwise it would be pre-communist society. Again, we all know Marx has a dialectical view of the world, the fact that communist society in its early stages will "stamped with the birthmarks of the old society" just as early capitalism was.

How are rent paid? Someone is expected to spend vouchers on a house and when you vouch for him he can't use the vouches? No one would rent then.

Does you have to sleep in a gutter until you can pay 500k voucher units? Can you borrow vouchers? If yes, how many and what happen if you don't vouch it back on time?

What if he is the only worker in the only chocolate distribution unit of the town because all the others are burned by mobs for unexplained reasons?

Then how much vouchers would it take to get a chocolate bar?

What if there are more vouchers than products available?
What if i give my voucher to some girl in exchange for a blowjob?
What if someone falsifies vouchers?

How does a group of worker get the machines and material they need to work if they can't use the vouchers their customers pay with?

To each according to his need.

it's a bit complicated, but you get discounted labour vouchers in a form of tax, to go to administrative costs, and growth of tecnology and social services and shit, and if your system has financial sector, then prices are modified a little bit
you can't
good luck with that

So they know the voucher is only mine and can only be exchanged by me?Does this mean there will always be someone checking its me thats turning in the voucher?Or do i get a personal unlock code or something?
Also do they have an expiry date?

Waaaaaaaiiiit a minute… I give vouchers to the state and the state can use the vouchers? I hav been told they had to be used by the one who produced a shit.

They expire when you die and they're probally virtual.

Can I give to someone the decision of how I use my vouchers?

Like, can I get the bike of a guy and in exchange, he decide what I must buy with the vouchers and what to do with it? If yes, then the new money is rights to use vouchers.

So before i die i can save them and cash them out all at once?

test

What on god's green earth you talking about son? You think there will be landowners and rentiers in socialism?

You may be granted use of mop, you will not be given ownership of it. Production will be centralized under the whole of society, not atomized groups of people as under capitalism today.

You don't give your vouchers to the "state". The amount of labor vouchers in total will have a deduction applied for your labor that goes to society ex.healthcare, schooling, old people etc. All that is happening is in the plan is the part of your labor that goes toward society is accounted towards the output for that special fund. Again, it's key to remember labor vouchers are simply an accounting tool to allow you to draw from society what you give to society (minus deductions for the common fund). They don't have to be transferred all over the place, you just account differently in the plan.

So:

Great. How does we quantify needs of workplaces and how effective are things used in there?

So, a VAT or an income tax?
Who decide what the state does anyway? Representative democracy? Dictatorship of the people who made the revolution? Who decide how heavy the taxes are?

can we test out labour vouchers in prisons? would inmates pick what prison they go to using their vouchers?

No, housing would almost certainly fall under the social provisions, considering even today we have enough homes to shelter all. Nobody will be sleeping on the street in socialism.
The same way huge international supply chains do now, only without the anarchy of the market. Massive swaths of the world economy are planned right now, including state sectors and international companies that plan their entire production and distribution, obviously because it's the most efficient way to do things.
Representative democracy? Dictatorship of the people who made the revolution? Who decide how heavy the taxes are?
Well in socialism their is not really a 'state' to speak of, but we can speak of the administration of things which become engrained into social life, not above it but apart of it. As socialist society develops, it's administration becomes more and more part of everyday social life. The deduction's Marx talk's about are more akin to an income tax than a VAT tax. aka you labor in a week is say equivalent to 20 labor vouchers, and the deduction is say 20% for example. You would receive 16 labor vouchers for that period, and the plan would account for you only to draw 16 labor vouchers equivalent.

That seems like it may work at first when you consider they all sort of work under the same centralized system, but their consumption is from the outside world. Unless they could form a whole prison economy I don't really see how it could work.

the price of things is the average time it took to make them, so you'll be sleeping in a gutter until you can labour enough so your labour time equals a house, alternatively if your socialism considers houses a social expense, then your house will get discounted in taxes from everyone

measure of output divided by labour used in production, so if your rate of product to labour is low, then your tools get assigned to another person who uses them better, this is applied ad infinitum so if you are good then you'll grow and get better chances, and if you are bad, you'll get reassigned to another place

yes, or even better direct democracy by voting on what porcentage of total country labour will get assigned to which sector, this will also count as a tax determination, since every hour of labour that doesn't get assigned to consumer goods will have to get deducted in the form of tax, in this way people determine their own tax

This is not the first time I hear this. If you are given a home, food and healthcare, then why would you produce food, homes, clothes or healthcare?Why would anyone do anything?

?

Trump don't decide who get what steel, he can only decide to place a tariff.

Who decide it is 20%? How do you plan to house everyone with just 20%? Is it 20% for everyone no matter what job is done?

And who can say you produced the equivalent of 20 vouchers? Maybe you were just pretending to work.

You are talking about the total number of hours worked or the %age of hours worked?

In the first case, it mean we all sleep in a gutter until we are 50 year old.
In the second case, it mean someone own the houses and rent it, even if it is the state.


You can't ask for the input of everyone for every decision. If things get big, you need some level of representativity.

What kind of moronic question is this? Why do countries with socialized have doctors if apparently giving people healthcare means nobody will be a doctor?
The state controls many aspects of the economy, certainly in areas like raw materials and agriculture, obviously in differing amounts from state to state. You are also ignoring international companies that plan their whole supply chain, production, labor, distribution. Again they do this because it is the most efficient way of doing things.
Do you know what the word example means? We are not utopians, we don't try to bend reality to fit a preconceived idea. I don't know what the percentage will be, or if it will even be a percentage.
The whole of society will regulate production under a common plan, you aren't sneaking off and saying "Oh I did such and such, labor vouchers please."

IIRC the technocracy webm guy is advocating for rationing the product and the labor, but separately. Like, you're on the hook for X labor. So it's skipping the step where you earn your income based on your labor. Everyone gets the same income. The other webms talk about how post-scarcity is possible now (whenever they were made) for most things so measuring exact input/output of labor for individuals isn't necessary. I would tend to agree that the labor voucher is kind of obsolete in much of the world. It was relevant to the USSR because they were so impoverished when their revolution happened.

i'm talking about average total number of hours, so if on average a twinkie takes 4 hours to make, it will cost you four hours of labour vouchers to get it

you can ask for everyone's opinion on the budget that much is clear, and probably big decisions, the implementation of that budget is taken care of by councils, or trade unions, i guess this is representative democracy somewhat, but in this case each council takes care of one task, and the pool of people it selects from are a combination of people who know about the task and common people, so if you were to form a road building council then the pool of people that can be selected to that is all the architects with a phd in road building, and people of the community near the built roads, these could be elected by random number, or elections, or idk

Because people want a food, clothes a house, electricity and water. So they do thing to get an income.

Thank you for being honest and saying you have no idea of what you want and you just want it.

They have to be more competitive than all the others, that's why it is optimized. If decisions are taken by people who have no personal interest in optimizations, it's going to be ineffective.

So, at the end of the week, I give 4 vouchers to…. who? The people who just made the house and worked 1000 hours on it? I give them 4 vouchers a week and this is not rent?

If one hour of work worth one hour of work,no one work in the offshore platform, in the nuclear power plant or in the rare earth mine. If no one does, this mean we have no electricity.

No one will be willing to clean the sewers or to do the hard and dangerous industrial jobs.

You force one hour of labor to worth another hour of labor and we all are fucked.

Energy Certificatess sound aweful. I don't need everyone knowing everything I buy. Mutual Credit is better. It's like an IOU to the collective. If you do work you get credit to an account. If you want work done you have credit taken out of the account. It goes in positive and negative numbers although some set the basline as a positive number instead of 0. Basically it shows others your net value of give and take. .

you don't give vouchers to anyone

Then who does distribute vouchers?

your vouchers get eliminated, independent vouchers get assigned to the workers because of their labour, the two process are independent, and notice that i never said actual hours i said average hours, if the cleaning job of a place takes you 10 min, but on average the average worker does it in 1 hour you still get 1 hour, this is where the incentive comes in, if you are more efficient you get more, this includes sewers, and i people don't go to that job one of two things can happen, one it becomes a social labour and people are assigned to do it, or two an incentive package is put on it, so for each hour of value produced each employee would get a little bit more, and the surplus is deducted from taxes

Forced labor is also know as slavery.

What if I refuse to clean the sewer?

what if you refuse jury duty?, what if you refuse to be voting jury?, what if you refuse obligatory military concription?, you act like this shit is somehow wierd

What if you refuse to get a job now? This is a really weird argument wage labour is fundamentally coerced or forced out of an individual in order to survive do you just think that things will magically appear from nothing and you shouldn't have to do anything? The Productive forces of society at large are so developed now that you can have full employment with an average work week of less than 20 hours, likely less. That's already half the average work week in First World nations and since you're being "paid" in labour time you're taking more in Labour Vouchers than you would working for a wage in the majority of cases since your surplus isn't being extracted by an employer, not to mention that under a centralized planned economy, due to the fact that there aren't parallel developments of the same technology as there are in capitalism, where firms compete, production will naturally become more efficient over time meaning that the amount of average time it takes to complete a task or produce something will fall leader to cheaper "prices"

You are talking about reducing people to slavery, what is wrong with you?

What the fuck are you talking about? Are you legitimately trolling? His point was that even if you discount the fundamental social relation of wage labour under Capitalism, there are countless instances where the state directly or on behalf of a proxy can detain you and force you into slavery already. Do you know anything about Prison Labour? Why do you think that there is such an incredibly large Prison Industrial Complex in the US? Hint: It's because it's incredibly profitable

You can't be arguing in good faith

Unironically speaking, you can make blockchain tech work for labor vouchers automatically. At the point of sale/point of labor you start a timer to do whatever it is you're asked to do by another person, and at the end you stop the timer once you're finished. On both ends each user's wallets confirm that the labor has been done so as to add labor time to the laborer's wallet and take away labor time out of the consumer's wallet. Any actual coins/tokens aren't actually accumulated, rather the public ledger is what assigns value to a given person's wallet and takes away what was needed to pay. There aren't any rewards added into blocks and nothing is to be mined, and the only direction these laborcoins would go would be to the ledger itself rather than any other person, eliminating accumulation of private wealth in labor vouchers without necessarily taking away the sense of accumulation in itself. You can actually save labor vouchers in this system if you want to and spend them as you please since your labor is now public knowledge on the ledger and confirmed by the wallets that consumed your labor.

We would still need labor vouchers in post-scarcity. Can we stop using the term post-scarcity if we don't know what it means? We live in post-scarcity right now, it's just capitalism and culture capitalism doesn't realize it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

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Why would we need labor vouchers in post-scarcity?

Not that guy, but how would you suggest assigning the preponderence of goods that remain scarce? I hope you didn't buy into the FALC meme? Like there are a variety of raw materials that will remain scarce for an incredibly long time, particularly things like rare earth metals which are required to produce a large variety of technology. We're not advanced enough yet to synthesize elements in qualities high enough and that's not something that will be solved by increases in productive forces, and requires major scientific breaktrhoughs, so you're left with a conundrum in regards to who gets access to such things. There are plenty of other examples that I'm sure our comrade could elucidate, but unless you wanted to advocate for some kind of lottery you would still need some kind of accounting measure against one taking from the public stock, preferably equal to ones labour inputs and perhaps, also based on grants for neccessary access to such things.

Why did Marx only support labor vouchers as a temporary arrangement restricted to the early stages of a post-revolutionary society?

Yeah, "temporary". It's "temporary" for as long as the reached state of technology and social mores doesn't allow for freeshitlmao.

It goes back to the 'unlimited wants and needs' capitalist meme. In this case, if you're using post-scarcity in the strictest sense then it wouldn't be possible until we're creating outputs with less inputs like suggests with synthesizing elements, and if you're going with science fiction then it wouldn't be possible until we reach Star Trek levels of technology like the replicator.


Probably because at some point most work won't require human labor and people will just take from the social stock of means of consumption without the labor cost. And this could be possible in the near future in comparison to far future with Star Trek replicators. I guess, even if we reach Star Trek there would still be people out there who would want entire habitable planets for themselves, which would be difficult to replicate. So, at the end the day the unlimited wants and needs meme is just a meme that ignores how our desires change over time and how they're based on things like economic conditions and consumer propaganda.