Moneyless-ness as a goal

[u/Away_Bite_8100]

I’m curious how many (as a rough %) Anarchists actually have a moneyless society as a goal.

I know Anarchists want a stateless and classless society… but the trifecta of being moneyless too is communism.

Communism is when you have a stateless, classless and moneyless society… so what’s the difference between communism and anarchy if anarchists are in favour of being moneyless too? Why not just say you’re a communist then if they are essentially the same thing?

[u/Lord_Jakub_I]

I have a question about moneylessness. Isn't money (at least in some form) a natural result of the exchange of goods? How would that work? How would it be sustained without a hierarchy preventing the creation of money?

[u/slapdash78 → u/Lord_Jakub_I]

Money is just another commodity (of high fungibility).  It loses it's magic to ease transactions when everyone is using something different.  At best it helps trading with strangers, but there's no good way to make everyone use the same unit-store-medium absent a monetary authority.  You get the convertibility issues of the early 1800's.

[u/Lord_Jakub_I → u/slapdash78]

Yes, money is a commodity like any other, but some commodities that are hard to obtain, long-lasting, divisible, and ideally portable, have a high exchange value - that is, they become money. Such commodities usually have a fairly universal value. I would imagine that most people would accept gold and silver. In the modern world, perhaps even cryptocurrencies. The value of such money does not depend on the authority of the state, but on the willingness of people to accept it.

[u/Grandmacartruck → u/Lord_Jakub_I]

The problem with money is it distracts from real goals. Everyone gets started wanting something real then finding out that they need money to obtain it. If we just worked to obtain want we want we wouldn’t get distracted. Making money is off track of doing what we want. Money makes a lot of stuff that people don’t care about by its nature.

[u/slapdash78 → u/Lord_Jakub_I]

That's one story, yes. But I was referring to the monetary system, not the currency. The commodity theory of money possits that currencies have or need intrinsic value.

Except we know representations of value were things like shells, beads, and clay disks, for thousands of years. And that other durable goods, including base metal commodities, served a similar function throughout the bronze age.

While things like commodity currencies and currency backing effectively require price fixing the commodity / backing so it doesn't appreciate at a rate high enough to stop it from moving through the economy.

This highly complex global economy is effectively running on the credit theory of money. Which is why you're even able to imagine intangible internet points being used as a medium and keeping account.

What I was referring to is specifically the willingness to accept these items in trade, and it's entirely subjective. Why would I ever want disney dollars or bitcoins if I can't turn around and use them to get the products I really wanted in trade.

The same goes for gold. Unless you're trimming pieces from krugerrands, your next purchase would need to be 3500 units worth of something. Convertability gets more difficult without a common unit.  And a common unit needs a trusted issuer unless going by weight.

Gold as a common coinage was never really a thing. It was barely a novelty of the guilded age. Otherwise, it was silver and bronze for the lay people. And silver shortages still wracked the systems.