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Capitalism Nature Socialism
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Degrowth and Demonetization:
On the Limits of a Non-Capitalist
Market Economy
Andreas Exner
Published online: 05 Feb 2014.
To cite this article: Andreas Exner , Capit alism Nat ure Socialism (2014): Degrowt h and
Demonet izat ion: On t he Limit s of a Non-Capit alist Market Economy, Capit alism Nat ure
Socialism, DOI: 10. 1080/ 10455752. 2014. 882963
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Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2014.882963
Degrowth and Demonetization: On the Limits of a
Non-Capitalist Market Economy
Andreas Exner*
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Introduction
Since the 1980s, analysis and measures with respect to the ecological crisis have
mostly been confined to the paradigm of sustainable development, which consists of
the effort to reconcile the drive for profit with environmental and social concerns by
State intervention. However, it is widely recognized that the results of these
approaches to take on the ecological crisis are far from satisfying.
This experience, combined with the observation that only global economic
depressions—the last one of them occurring in 2008—resulted in an absolute decline
of CO2 emissions, might have contributed to an increasing awareness that a
decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) growth on the one hand and material
and energy throughput on the other hand might not be achievable at all. A growing
community of scientists and social activists, sharing the basic insight that a reduction
of energy and material use implies a reduction of GDP, is gathering under the
heading of “sustainable degrowth” (Martínez-Alier et al. 2010).
The Debates on Degrowth and Demonetization
The debate on degrowth brings together social and ecological issues and has
opened up a space for approaches that are critical to the current economic and
political system, which is geared toward restless production of profit. Degrowth,
according to the declaration of the first conference on the topic in Paris 2008, is “the
process by which right-sizing may be achieved in the wealthiest countries, and in the
global economy as a whole,” which is conceived of “as a voluntary transition towards
a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society” with the objective “to meet
basic human needs and ensure a high quality of life.”
Degrowth shall be followed by a steady state economy with a constant level of
consumption. Notably, degrowth is described as being characterized by “substantially
*Email: andreas.exner@aon.at
The author thanks Christian Lauk for critical comments on previous drafts.
© 2014 The Center for Political Ecology www.cnsjournal.org
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ANDREAS EXNER
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reduced dependence on economic activity, and an increase in free time, unremunerated activity, conviviality, sense of community, and individual and collective health
(…).” The “observation of the principles of equity, participatory democracy, respect
for human rights, and respect for cultural differences” is stressed (Research &
Degrowth 2010, 534).
Degrowth spans a considerable range of perspectives on capitalist society and its
transformation, but most of its advocates do not see critically fundamental structures
of contemporary social relations such as money and markets, the State, or wage labor
and capital. While skepticism toward markets as the sole regulating principle is
pronounced, in the mind of many, degrowth combines well with enforced State
power, as for instance, expressed in rationing measures (Alcott 2010). Even the
restless quest for profit, stationed at the core of growth dynamics (as will be
explained), is not consistently analyzed or even recognized as a driving force in
degrowth debates (Spangenberg 2010).
Where degrowth seems to take an anticapitalist stance—as in Latouche (2010),
Martínez-Alier (2009), or Bonaiuti (2012)—it is rather understood as an ideological
device to undermine the “pensée unique” of neoliberalism. Latouche, for instance,
draws heavily on Ivan Illich or Marshall Sahlins for a critique of contemporary
society, including the centrality of markets. However, his approach in the end does
not go beyond denying the validity of so-called consumerism and productivism
(Latouche 2010, 521). The problem is not identified as a mode of production based
on wage labor and markets; that is, critique is aimed toward production as such, not
profit. Although profit is recognized as the “engine” of growth (Latouche 2010, 519),
the term consumerism suggests that the system is geared toward consumption. But
this cannot be the case since profit is that part of social product that is not consumed.
I share the basic insight of the degrowth approach as it concerns the impossibility
of decoupling resource use and economic growth to the extent necessary. However,
I disagree with many of the solutions suggested by degrowth advocates, arguing that
sustainable degrowth necessitates a fundamental transformation of society that clearly
goes beyond its current basic structures. Such a transformation is proposed
by proponents of demonetization as expressed by the platform demonetize.it.1 While
the discourse of demonetization is a recent phenomenon, its content is much older.
It goes back to Marx and social movements that tried to overcome markets, money,
and exchange, like the early kibbutz movement or the Diggers at the end of the
1960s.
Different currents of critical thought and social movements are part of the
demonetization discourse. In German-speaking countries, the publications of Robert
Kurz (1997) are essential together with Michael Heinrich ([1991] 2001), Nadja
Rakowitz (2000), and the feminist Roswitha Scholz (1992, 2000). More recently,
1
www.demonetize.it
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
3
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parts of the solidarity economy movement have propagated demonetization
practically, as Friederike Habermann (2009) shows. Also, Karathanassis (2003),
Fresin (2005), Bockelmann (2004), the Hans-Jürgen-Krahl-Institut (2008), and
Exner, Lauk, and Kulterer (2008) argue for demonetization. In France, the late
André Gorz (2003) supported demonetization as he linked it to the free software
movement. This current is also expressed on http://keimform.de and in Siefkes
(2007), who promotes commons as a demonetized mode of production.
In the English-speaking world, Harry Cleaver (1979) is one of the early theorists
of demonetization, who reappears in Nelson and Timmerman (2011) on “Life
without money.” Genevieve Vaughan (1997) is a feminist who developed an original
approach to the critique of exchange, market, and money. More recently, John
Holloway (2002, 2010) made popular demonetization as a perspective, while the
essential work of Moishe Postone (1993) seems to have reached only a small circle of
academics. Milios, Dimoulis, and Economakis (2001) develop an interpretation of
Marx similar to Heinrich. Besides Anitra Nelson (2001), Paul Burkett (2006) is
notable for an ecological view on demonetization. Demonetization appears explicitly
in some of the texts that reflect current social movements, e.g. The Invisible
Committee (2008) and Research and Destroy (2009).
Demonetization is promoted for both ecological and social reasons. Theoretically, it draws on Marx with different extensions, namely feminist. Usually the
reference to Marxism is a critical one. Often a distinction between two theoretical
layers in Marxism is made: one is attached to capitalist modernization in a socialist
guise and is thus pro-market; the other formulates a critique of the totality of
capitalist society, including markets, money, and exchange. Most Marxists are
divided in their opinions on whether this theoretical split originated in Marx or
rather in the interpretation of Engels. The theoretical foundation of demonetization
shall be discussed in the following with a focus on ecology.
Market Socialism: A Hidden Model of Degrowth
Actually, what we term economic growth today became the decisive feature of
social life together with the global expansion of the capitalist mode of production,
which is based on wage labor and markets in goods and services. Prior to 1000 AD,
economic output per capita remained more or less stable. It grew somewhat faster
afterward, but only with the expansion of wage labor and a full-blown market
economy in the middle of the 19th century—that is, with capitalist industrialization,
economic growth accelerated considerably (Maddison 2007, 71). While this is
commonly recognized in Marxist debates, the role of the market is often not seen in
its fullest extent. Most Marxists would rather stop at stressing the importance of
surplus production in the form of profit for the outstanding performance of
economic growth in capitalism.
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In considering degrowth and the necessity of a steady state afterward, such a
traditional position would tend to argue for State intervention in order to tame
growth and enforce a stable throughput of resources, complemented with bottomup participation (Sarkar 1999). Others propose “a transformation of needs,”
saying “from the standpoint of commodity production, this translates into a
valorization of use-values over exchange-values” (Kovel and Lowy 2001), implying
that commodity production, markets, and exchange continue to exist under
“ecosocialism.”
Those who adopt the ideology of former real socialism as it concerns the
abolition of markets at face value and, at the same time, aim at limiting the State,
tend to argue that the negative aspects of a Soviet-style socialism could be
circumvented by introducing market elements and participatory planning procedures
(Schweickart 1998). There is no publication on degrowth from an explicitly market
socialist viewpoint yet, but since its basic tenet is that markets can be decoupled from
capital, one can assume that it would argue degrowth could be realized through
collective decisions.
Degrowth debates usually suffer from weak theoretical foundations with regard
to the analysis of social structures, and even more so, as they concern perspectives of
realizing degrowth. Sometimes advocated is a mere reduction in consumption by way
of individual decisions (Hamilton 2010); and sometimes promoted is a more radical
transformation in the direction of demonetized spheres of life, but without
transcending the framework of a market economy on the whole (Cattaneo and
Gavalda 2010, 588).2 Martínez-Alier (2009, 1110) argues for equal consideration of
monetary and nonmonetary aspects in decision-making, thus implying that markets
and money coexist in a more or less harmonious fashion under the conditions of
degrowth and a steady state.
So, most thinking about degrowth currently underlies the assumption of a
market economy, the growth of which could be stopped voluntarily without social
hardships, and with the ability to enter a steady state afterward. This is a noncapitalist market economy model of degrowth, the viability of which shall be
discussed further on in three steps. First, I contrast with reciprocity the historical
specificity of exchange, markets, and money in the modern sense. Second, I discuss
the logical connection between market, money, and capital. Third, I analyze the
contradictions and pitfalls of a market socialist approach, which operationalizes the
idea of a non-capitalist market economy.
2
The first author wrote a contribution for “Life Without Money” (Nelson and Timmerman 2011), which
explicitly rejects markets as such (Cattaneo 2011, 209f.)
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
5
Reciprocity Versus Exchange
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The assumption that markets will be part of degrowth and a steady state
economy is often based on the theoretical assumption that markets, or at least
exchange, are superhistorical features of any society. Thus, as a first step, it is
important to show that exchange is only one distinct form of societal metabolism,
one that only began to play a dominant role upon the advent of capital.
Marcel Mauss elucidated the central role of what he called the gift in
non-capitalist societies (Mauss [1925] 1990). For Mauss, the gift constitutes a “total
social fact” because it exists as the intersection of the spheres of life separated in
modern societies such as esthetics, politics, economics, religion, culture, and ethics.
While Mauss somewhat obscured his discovery by intermingling it with the category
of exchange, Karl Polanyi, building on the Maussian framework, refined his
conception (Polanyi [1944] 1977).
Polanyi distinguished four basic types of societal metabolism: reciprocity and
redistribution (both involving gifts), subsistence, and exchange. The latter is
distinctive as only exchange leads to the development of a separate institution,
which is the market. In this process, the principle of exchange, which never played a
more-than-peripheral role in non-capitalist societies, becomes the defining structure
of society on the whole, giving rise to a veritable “market economy” (Polanyi [1944]
1977, 71ff.).
Indeed, exchange is fundamentally different from reciprocity, although both are
frequently mixed up. Exchange is centered on the transaction of a good or service and
does not recognize the individuals involved as human beings, but as mere vehicles or
objects (Sabourin 2007, 37ff.). A social interaction that realizes exchange ends when
the exchange is terminated, and it leaves, so to say, no trace behind. To the contrary,
reciprocity creates social relationships. While reciprocity can involve asymmetry, even
domination, its core principle is the recognition of the other as a human being. With
reciprocity, material flows between individuals or groups are a secondary aspect.
Reciprocity can involve such flows, but they do not define the event. Reciprocity is
fundamentally productive as it creates relationships and, consequently, the realization
of human beings and their society. Exchange does not produce anything; rather, it
parasitizes reciprocity, both because it is necessary at least in the rudimentary form of
business trust and because the agents of exchange must be able to communicate. The
ability to communicate requires a biography characterized by reciprocity (cf.
Vaughan 1997).
Reciprocity can take on different shapes from bilateral (such as in marriage,
friendship, or companionship) to multilateral (such as in social networks, especially in
the commons). Reciprocity can even be unilateral, as exhibited in the parent–child
relation, which involves a chain of caring relationships from the older to the younger
generations where the children give back what they received, but not to the same
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person (Sabourin 2007, 37ff.). A similar pattern is visible in the Trobriand Kula
system, already taken as an example by Mauss. Thus, what many theories and
histories of money regard to be precursors of money are signifiers of reciprocity yet
mistaken as money only because the scientists socialized in capitalist society tend to
see everything within the frame of exchange. Alfred Bürgin even warns against
regarding the Greek agora as a market in a sense comparable to the modern meaning
(Bürgin 1996, 44f.). Likewise, Polanyi clearly differentiates between premodern
“markets” and the “market economy.”
Exchange and reciprocity involve different social logics. While reciprocity is
constitutive of any society because it exists as the core of social relationships,
exchange is mere ruthlessness. Reciprocity can be negative, involving hatred and
revenge (Sabourin 2007), yet it always constitutes a relationship. Exchange, to the
contrary, is a social relation that is a nonrelationship by definition. Its logical extreme
is not a liberally conceived do ut des, but robbery because it lacks any recognition of
the other.
Historically, the system of exchange did not spontaneously evolve from
antecedents such as the circumscribed local markets of the Middle Ages that were
tightly enmeshed in reciprocity and had no decisive role for social reproduction, or
the long-distance trade networks that served the interests of an elite who could not
directly influence or enhance surplus production. Rather, the exchange system was
forced upon society by what Marx called “primitive accumulation,” i.e. the enclosure
of the commons and the establishment of wage labor, and thus capital in the modern
sense, as a relation of production.
The commons were definitionally structures of reciprocity, sometimes characterized by relative social equality, sometimes by drastic inequality, including patriarchal
hierarchies (Federici 2004). After the destruction or reduction of the commons, those
who were—by lack of access to land—subjugated to the principle of exchange, which
had not included human beings before, were now reduced to objects and had to
acquire their means of consumption on markets. Slavery was an exception, but also
had a different character in preexchange societies (see, e.g. Bürgin 1996). Only with
the expansion of the “fictitious commodity” (Polanyi [1944] 1977) termed wage
labor, markets grew into a market economy.
Thus, the working class and the market economy are intertwined historically.
Moreover, class is categorically related to the universe of exchange. As Heide
Gerstenberger showed at length (Gerstenberger 2006), class is a capitalist category
that should be distinguished from non-capitalist elites, e.g. feudal rulers. While the
assignment to a class is detached from any personal qualities, such qualities, to the
contrary, define elites in non-capitalist societies. Whereas a worker is able to turn into
a capitalist, a feudal peasant could never become a lord. Managers indeed loose their
jobs and even end up homeless in rare cases, which in theory might also happen to a
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
7
capitalist, but a lord struck by poverty would retain nobility. Class, an anonymous
category, reflects the ruthlessness of the exchange principle.
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Nevertheless, the relation between an individual capitalist or entrepreneur and
the workers involves reciprocity. Wage labor is not really a commodity, but the
capitalist form of production, which involves the transfer of produce to the owner of
the means of production, who transfers back a part of the produce to workers (in the
form of wages). This explains frequent signs of loyalty and identification of workers
with management and capitalist paternalism. However, this relationship of
redistribution, which can be regarded as a subtype of reciprocity (Sabourin 2007),
is strongly shaped by the overall structure of exchange, threatening workers to be
thrown onto the labor market at any time.
Vaughan and Scholz see exchange as defining gender. The market as a separate
institution, which creates an economic sphere that does not exist in societies
characterized by “total social facts” in the form of reciprocity, leads to a rigid splitting
of gender roles and attributes, which is unknown in non-capitalist patriarchies. Men
and women are defined to belong to different realms, with different ontological
status. Women are seen as being close to nature because they are equated with
reciprocity, which is mostly ignored and often destroyed, and what is left is strictly
instrumentalized by capital. Men are thought to embody reason because they are
identified with the principle of exchange. Thus, capitalism often exacerbates
non-capitalist patriarchal relations (Scholz 1992, 2000; Federici 2004; cf.
Vaughan 1997).
The Money Form as the Structural Cause of Economic Growth
After having demonstrated that money, the market economy, and exchange are
historically closely linked to capital, I shall now analyze the causes of economic
growth. Drawing essentially on the argumentation developed by Marx in Capital,
volume I,3 capital growth can be seen as both urge and compulsion.
The compulsion to grow makes itself felt as the competitive drive for survival.
This compulsion is rooted in the money relation itself. Money is the fundamental
sign of social recognition within the confines of the capitalist economy. Thus, when
products are not sold for a certain period of time, the costs of production are not
recovered, and profits are not made, an enterprise ceases to exist. By contrast, the
more the capital of an enterprise grows, the more likely is its future survival.
Moreover, there is an urge to grow that is also rooted in the money relation.
Money is the abstract representation of concrete wealth that exists in infinite varieties,
from houses to clothing, luxury items, etc. Through money, anything can be
3
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm.
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ANDREAS EXNER
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acquired; it is essentially the command over human labor power embodied in
products or by workers, and thus the command over productivity. Hence, money is
not an object, but a social relation that only appears as an object. Marx described this
paradox as a fetishism that is already inherent in the commodity form from which the
money form is logically to be derived.4 Polanyi expressed this in terms of exchange
having generated a separate institution, the market, which is “disembedded” from
social relationships.
In his analysis of the value form employed in Capital,5 Marx argues that the
commodity form logically implies the split of wealth into a concrete and an abstract
form (use value as opposed to money, which embodies value). The contradiction
between the limited, concrete character of use value and the unlimited, abstract
character of value appears as the contradiction between commodity and money on
the surface of bourgeois society in the reality of everyday life. This fundamental
contradiction is finally expressed by the contradiction between labor and capital
(Cleaver 1979).
Splitting wealth into two distinct forms also establishes a hierarchical relation—
the one (money) dominates the other (commodities). Abstract and, consequently,
fluid wealth are in essence superior to concrete and spatially fixed wealth. First, it can
be turned into any commodity and thus is superior because it is not fixed in a
concrete form of wealth that might be devalued and might loose its utility as a means
for production of further profit or its function as a status signifier. Second, in the
form of money, value can be “shifted” and appears to be freed from physical
restraints, which make status competition by exploitation very flexible both
geographically and as it concerns investment strategies.
Hence, money becomes the first and ultimate object of production even though,
apart from the social power it embodies, money is completely useless. While it makes
sense to produce one kilogram of bread from one kilogram of ingredients, it does not
make sense to make $100 with $100 invested. Naturally $101 starts to make sense
and $259 is even better. Not only because of competition, but also because of the
abstract character of monetary wealth, production for the market is inherently driven
by growth. It is money that constitutes the start and end points of a production cycle
in the market economy; human needs and ecological limits are necessary framework
conditions, but not the ultimate guidelines.
Both the urge and compulsion to grow ultimately rest on the dynamics of status
competition within the capitalist class. Capitalists and entrepreneurs try to preserve
their supreme social power and so are obliged to accumulate capital. While the
4
The value form analysis is not interpreted here as retracing a historical process, but as a logical unfolding
of categories specific to the capitalist mode of production (Backhaus 1978, Heinrich [1991] 2001,
Rakowitz 2000).
5
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3.
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
9
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structural matrix of competition and endless moneymaking is inherent in the money
form itself, as was explained above, its motivating force is social domination geared
toward reproducing and expanding itself. The class divide finally results in finegrained patterns of income differences that generalize status competition (Wilkinson
and Pickett 2010). This generalization stabilizes capitalism ideologically.
This causality is different from non-capitalist domination and production. In
societies where the rule over territories and their inhabitants operates as a signifier of
social status and the source of goods for conspicuous consumption, accumulation of
power, and thus status is limited by physical constraints. The greater the territory a
ruler had to administrate, the more precarious the empire became; with increasing
distances, transaction costs rose faster than surplus. The structure of an empire is
different from the modern State in that control of its central power becomes weak
toward the peripheries and its boundaries are vague. Hence, tribute was usually lower
in the peripheries than in the center. In European feudalism, power was not even
centralized, but diffused in a broad and complex web of relations (e.g. Breuer 1998,
18). The opposite is true for capital: the greater it is, the easier it grows, and the
better it withstands crises; this turns the differences between centers and peripheries
into profit.
Furthermore, in non-capitalist societies, surplus production and appropriation
were often limited by social constraints and ethical norms, which, for instance,
rendered illegitimate the eviction of peasants in European feudalism because society
was governed by reciprocity rather than exchange. It also set practical limits insofar as
the accumulation of concrete wealth was—loosely—restricted by the possibilities of
storage, maintenance, or consumption. The very limited role of exchange made it
impossible to systematically increase the productivity of labor by freely allocating
resources and labor power.
David Harvey argues that capitalist society also operates on a territorial logic
distinct from the logic of capital (Harvey 2003). This is correct insofar as capital only
exists together with a State that does not directly follow the logic of accumulating
capital, but of accumulating a means of control for the reproduction of itself. This
can, but does not necessarily, imply geographical expansion. Although the State is an
agent of primitive accumulation, it is not the cause of capital growth. Quite to the
contrary, any territorial logic that has survived into the age of capital depends on
capital growth for its means.
In summation, social inequality entails status competition, which might cause
ecological destruction due to conspicuous consumption and war. But only in a
market economy, which is just another term for capitalism, status competition
becomes unlimited both as a perspective (because moneymaking has no inherent
limitation) and as a practical endeavor (because of the enormous productivedestructive forces unleashed by exchange, which results in ever-increasing ecological
destruction).
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ANDREAS EXNER
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The Problems of “Green” and “Non-Capitalist” Money
From the analysis unfolded above, it follows that capital and money cannot be
separated. This is also the result of Marx’s approach in Capital, volume I. There,
Marx first of all distinguishes barter from the circulation of commodities: “The
process of circulation, therefore, does not, like direct barter of products, become
extinguished upon the use values changing places and hands.”6 Money thus
constitutes a specific economic reality, a sphere of abstract wealth that exists both
in transmutation with and separation from the sphere of commodities. So the
existence of money is not grounded in itself; it can only be conceived in relation to
commodities, and both money and commodities only exist as embodiments of
abstract value. The system of exchange, i.e. the market economy, is logically tied to
capital. Marx describes this through his investigation of the logical requirements for
the category of value to become an “objective form of thought”7 that governs a
particular mode of production. This is done by shifting from the theoretical model of
simple circulation to the circulation of capital:
In simple circulation, C—M—C, the value of commodities attained at the most a
form independent of their use-values, i.e. the form of money; but that same value
now in the circulation M—C—M, or the circulation of capital, suddenly presents
itself as an independent substance, endowed with a motion of its own, passing
through a life-process of its own, in which money and commodities are mere
forms which it assumes and casts off in turn.8
Not all money is capital, but without capital, money is not an all-embracing mediator
of metabolism.
Nevertheless, the notion of non-capitalist money and the assumption that a
market economy could be non-capitalist are both widespread. A prominent line of
argumentation goes back to Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who was already criticized by
Marx. The entrepreneur Silvio Gesell (Rakowitz 2000) further developed his
approach. Today, it blooms in the discourse on regional currencies, time banks,
and local exchange trading systems (LETS), which are, among others, promoted by
the Transition Town movement as a possible tool for enhancing resilience (Hopkins
2011, 260f.). It also is at the core of “green money” debates (e.g. Kennedy 1995;
Douthwaite 1999; Lietaer 2001).
Gesell attacked capitalism but identified it with interest-bearing capital, which is
merely a specific form of capital ultimately based on the exploitation of surplus labor
(as Marx has analyzed). In Gesell’s interpretation, capital has nothing to do with
6
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#S2a
7
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm.
8
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm.
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
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either the class cleavage between wage laborers and the owners of the means of
production or with the market economy (Exner and Grohmann 2005). The ideology
of Gesell, which informed an entire movement in the interwar period, regained
currency first during the neoliberal crisis of the 1980s and has since reappeared in the
framework of occupy movements. There, credit and interest are the focus of critique
rather than the money relation (e.g. Hörmann and Pregetter 2011; Graeber 2011).
The “money system” is then criticized insofar as it depends on credit.9 As a rule,
“green money” advocates also regard interest-bearing credit as the ultimate cause of
growth.
Nothing could be more off-point. Credit in its capitalist form, which finances
investments for the sake of profit, is the result of capital growth, not its cause.10
Firms demand credit because they can accelerate accumulation by expanding it to the
limits of the physically possible, as Marx describes in volume III of Capital.11 With
credit, investments are no longer restricted by retaining profits.
The movement of the interest rate correlates negatively with the growth rate of
capital, which is basic policy knowledge, amply demonstrated to be correct in the
current crisis. However, while high interest surely reduces investment and growth,
lowering it will not in itself enhance growth since investments depend on profit
expectations that can remain depressed even with low interest rates.
But capitalism without credit is logically impossible, because the realization of
surplus value depends on surplus demand beyond the consumption of the working
class and the capitalist class. If the total social product would be consumed, no net
profit would exist because profit is per definition surplus product (i.e. product
surpassing consumption). The money necessary for realizing surplus value as profit is
created by credit. On the other hand, credit is only demanded if profit is expected
and banks only provide credit if they share this expectation. Thus, credit is part of the
feedback mechanism of profit production, but not its cause.
Leaving aside the question of whether regional currencies and “green money” can
support resilience—which is doubtful—they are, in any case, nothing more than
commercial schemes that instrumentalize the local for the marketing of specific
factions of (small) capital. They certainly do not transcend capital since the firms
taking part in regional currency schemes as a rule employ wage labor. Regional
currencies became very popular after the financial crisis of 2000 and 2001 in
9
Central bank money is not credit money, even if it formally appears as such, since credit logically implies the
promise to pay it back in real money. In relation to central bank money, though, there is no real money with
which central bank money could be exchanged. However, central bank money enters the circulation process
mostly through credit when commercial banks incur debts at the central bank (Heinrich [1991] 2001, 304).
10
For example, in Volume III of Capital, Part V, Chap. 25, Marx notes that credit is already part of the
theoretical model of a simple circulation of commodities as described in Volume I, http://www.marxists.org/
archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch25.htm.
11
Part V, Chap. 27, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm.
12
ANDREAS EXNER
Argentina. The nationwide Argentine LETS was largely non-capitalist, but it mainly
mediated individual producers (Colectivo Situaciones 2003). This lack in cooperation
of participants was also its deficit; it failed to satisfy the most pressing needs of the
population, such as food and housing. The scheme collapsed.
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The Fallacies of Solidarity Economy and Market Socialism
More interesting than such dead ends with little relevance to degrowth are the
theoretical conceptions of market socialism (Ollman 1998) and practical solidarity
economies based on cooperatives (Mance 2002). Both approaches have much in
common, although they usually do not recognize each other: market socialism has
prevailed as a model-oriented debate that reaches decades back; and solidarity
economy has existed as mostly a practical, hands-on approach that developed out of
necessity about 20 years ago and was not inspired or led by the model-like
perspective of a new social order (Singer 2003).
The term solidarity economy was coined by Luis Razeto in Chile12 and was
adopted in other Latin American countries over the course of the 1990s and the early
21st century. In Brazil, the movement has even achieved the support of a state
secretariat of solidarity economy (Singer 2003); meanwhile in Venezuela, a
comprehensive government program is in place to foster it (Azzelini 2010).
The discourse on solidarity economy as a rule does not criticize markets as such,
so it is no surprise that there is frequent reference to regional currencies or fair trade
(Mance 2002). Yet the core idea of solidarity economy consists in the selfmanagement of workers and solidarity relations toward society. In this way, two
pillars of capitalism are attacked tendentiously.
However, specific problems resulting from the market economy persist. While
class cleavage is transcended within the confines of a solidarity economy firm or
project, cooperatives within a market economy suffer from the internalization of the
contradiction between labor and capital by becoming their “own capitalists,” as Marx
already noted.13 But democratic decision-making takes time, and time is scarce due
to market competition. Moreover, the self-control necessary to be “one’s own
capitalist” often puts workers under further stress. Consequently, there is the
tendency to install a leader stratum as a functional equivalent to capitalist
management, as in the cooperative Mondragon (Kasmir 1996).
Solidarity is a symmetrical form of reciprocity, incompatible with markets. So,
even when solidarity economy actors engage in regional currency networks or ethical
banking, they tend to modify exchange by introducing a considerable moment of
12
http://www.luisrazeto.net.
13
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm.
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
13
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reciprocity. At the same time, this approach is contradictory and reciprocity remains
subdued. However, seldom is this reflected on due to the lack of adequate theory
(Sabourin 2007). This contradiction could only be solved by entirely replacing
exchange.
Market socialist debates have a different history. They developed in opposition
to the model of real socialism, which is dominated by strong State intervention. They
assume an economy based on cooperatives linked by markets. Market socialism often
referred to Yugoslavia under Tito. In Bolivarian Venezuela, these debates again
become relevant. There, a Yugoslavia-type socialism is looked at skeptically, and some
policies of the Chavez government even try to support nonmarket economies based
on reciprocity (Harnecker 2009, 336; Azzelini 2010, 246; cf. Buttkereit 2011, 127ff.
on Lebowitz).
The main problem of the Yugoslav model was competition between cooperatives. As could have been expected, the principle of exchange was an obstacle to
cooperation beyond the confines of the enterprise. Ernst Lohoff has shown how the
alleged “third way” of Yugoslav socialism prepared the ground for the ensuing civil
war in the 1990s by enforcing the logic of exchange on a society that would have
otherwise been based on subsistence and reciprocity (Lohoff 1996).
Theoretical models of market socialism are more elaborate than was the Yugoslav
reality (cf. Ollman 1998). However, critics often attach themselves to a State-led
model for transcending the market, which is not viable either. Unlike the dominant
view, real socialism did not transcend markets, but only attempted to regulate them
strictly (Stahlmann 1990). Real socialism was deeply characterized by the monetary
form: workers were paid wages, firms should have made profits, economic output was
measured in monetary terms, and, consequently, goods and services had prices. The
State adopted the role of the capitalist and tried to implement economic planning
oriented toward economic growth. But markets and capital are only the other side of
the State; the split between the sphere of “the economy” and “the political” is typical
for bourgeois society, where the capitalist mode of production reigns (Gerstenberger
2006). Small wonder, then, that the State did not do away with markets, but rather
tried to manage them.
Because capital was not abolished but only transferred into the hands of the
communist party, class struggle persisted. The structural ruthlessness of markets
expressed itself in the neglect of social and ecological concerns. The first and ultimate
aim was to gain money; relationships were secondary, and reciprocity was limited.
Since the State suspended bankruptcies, such neglect took on even more severe forms
than in the West, with dysfunctional products being more the rule than the
exception. Class struggle resulted in widespread subversion. Since the State is, by
definition, an entity separate from society, it continued to depend on information
provided by the firms, which concurrently had an antagonistic relationship with the
State (as it was a force external to the firms). Because they had a great deal of
14
ANDREAS EXNER
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incentive to underestimate the productive capacities and overestimate the need for
resources, the basis of economic planning was systematically distorted (Stahlmann
1990). Hence, market socialism cannot be criticized by calling for the State, the
further existence of which, by the way, is also assumed by market socialists.
Besides arguments via logical analysis of capital that result in a critical view of the
idea of a non-capitalist market economy, there are two arguments concerning the
historical process that render the viability of the capitalist market economy
improbable. First, society is path-dependent; the present is the result of the past.
This principle rules out utopian thinking, i.e. approaches that are not linked to actual
tendencies and struggles in the present, because the path of social development
constrains the goals that can be reached. Under this premise, it is hard to see how a
society that should be characterized by equality, cooperation, and trust—as market
socialism claims to be—could develop without considerably strengthening solidarity,
i.e. reciprocity. Perhaps a form of market socialism with a very limited role of markets
would be compatible with the necessary strategy of enlarging solidarity at the expense
of markets; but if markets only play an accidental and restricted role, one might ask
why socialism would need them at all. Most importantly, it is questionable whether
markets and monetary calculation could allow degrowth. Monetary losses would then
have to be practically interpreted as social and ecological gains. This is hardly possible
if money should exist at all.
Could political pricing alleviate this pitfall? It is difficult to imagine this as well,
since the necessary closure of many factories would then have to appear as profits; at
least, the average wage would have to remain constant despite shrinking output. This
would probably lead to hyperinflation and would consequently illustrate the
contradiction between degrowth and the money form in practical terms.
Second, we can set up a thought experiment and ask how market socialism
would deal with bankruptcies—an inevitable product as well as the desired result of
market competition. Since we assume a socialist society, bankruptcies will not lead to
social inequalities. So members of bankrupt cooperatives would have to benefit from
social transfers at the average income level or get resources to create a new business,
or they could opt to join a successful cooperative.
In the first case, it is not clear why people should then compete at all. Anyway,
we would rather expect them to prefer cooperation to competition since they would
live in a socialist society, as market socialists claim. In the second case, it is not clear
why society should first declare a firm bankrupt, i.e. devalue important resources, and
then provide members with resources that might be wasted again. In the third case,
the most competitive cooperatives would grow until society in the long run resembles
one large cooperative of cooperatives, dispensing with exchange. This is a classic
perspective of anarchist communists like Landauer and Buber (Horrox 2009), but
not the goal of market socialism.
DEGROWTH AND DEMONETIZATION
15
Conclusion
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Demonetization is not another utopia, but the logical consequence of an analysis
of the causes of economic growth, the requirements of degrowth, and a subsequent
steady state. However, such a consequence would have no immediate strategic
importance if the conditions of a demonetized mode of production and consumption
were not already in existence. Yet this is indeed the case.
Solidarity economies and the commons are demonetized modes of production,
distribution, and consumption that replace markets, in varying degrees, with
reciprocity (Exner and Lauk 2012). Only reciprocity allows democratic governance
and participatory planning. To make it effective, markets have to give way to
cooperation. As real socialism has shown, trying to steer markets through State
intervention is a vain effort. This outcome could have been foreseen on theoretical
grounds. The narrow limits of State intervention in a market economy are even more
important from a degrowth perspective: presupposing a market economy on a
degrowth path would presuppose complete State control over the means of
production. Only in this way could be realized, first, a reduction in output, and
then a steady state in which profits are spent on luxury goods, or one in which
investments would flow entirely into increases of resource efficiency—these would
have to match, moreover, any increase in capital. In the case that a society would be
forced by State power to reduce production (and consumption) and then hold it
constant, such a measure would hardly be compatible with the idea of society based
on well-being, conviviality, and equality. This would rather resemble a Soviet-style
steady state, which is not an intention of degrowth.
Presupposing a degrowth market socialism is self-contradictory as well. Why
should individuals who compete in the economic sphere, one that is separated from
the realm of the political, cooperate in the political? This idea is actually identical to
the liberal ideal of bourgeois society, which in the course of political emancipation
actually accomplishes “the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a member of civil
society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a
juridical person,” as writes Marx in On the Jewish Question.14 While the egoistic,
independent individual on the market must strive for the competitive advantage to
survive physically and as a social being that desires social recognition, the citizen
should regard society from the viewpoint of the general interest of humankind.
“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen,”
states Marx in contrast:
and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life,
in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has
recognized and organized his ‘own powers’ as social powers, and, consequently, no
14
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/.
16
ANDREAS EXNER
longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only
then will human emancipation have been accomplished. (Exner and Lauk 2012)
Degrowth requires such an emancipation from the forces humans have
unleashed yet do not control—this separate institution beyond social relationships,
the market, and the status-driven quest for profit it engenders—as well as the State.
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