This is an update to the debate about post-capitalism, by mutualist Dmytri Kleiner:

“I believe that we must use money and markets in building the new society in the shell of the old, I do not however hold them as an ideal.

I fully believe that specialization of labour implies exchange, however exchange does not need to be money-denominated and itemized transactions, but can be significantly more fuzzy.

Until Capitalist social relations where imposed on society, money and markets functioned quite differently than they do today. Actual specie was rarely used in “market” transactions, even though money has existed as long as writing, it’s use was mostly limited to paying tribute and for prestige (usually imported) goods. Most other goods where either traded on account or ad-hoc, this is certainly exchange and certainly reciprocial, but the valuation was not done on each item and not denomonated in money, but rather value was attributed to the relationship, not the transaction or the item. Markets formed on periphery of communities, not at their core, to dispose of surplus.

The more distant the relationship the more formal the accounting of the transaction, ad-hoc for close relations, on account for more distant relations, and actual negotiated trade of specie or good for other goods only when there is no relationship, whith distant trading partners or the State.

It is neither neutral or natural to have markets central to communities, to have all sharing transformed into itemized transaction, but rather these social relations where imposed as a prerequisite of Capitalism, and are a symptom of the degree to which Captalism has destroyed human community, now limited only to the “Nuclear” family, and even this paltry and normalized vestige of human community is breaking down.

The ubuquity of money and markets is very much a feature of capitalism that was, like the rest of system, systematically and forcefully imposed.

I agree with Kevin Carson that Markets do not cause exploitation, but feel that the degree to which they permeate communities is a symptom of exploitation, and thus money and markets may, once again, play a vastly diminished role in the new society, once broken out of the shell of the old.”