Concluding Reflections on Money and the Market: Possible Lines of Development for Labor Notes Theory

Abstract

In this book, Yuki reconstructs the two-century-old historical debates on the theoretical and practical feasibility of labor money and labor notes. The book elucidates that the focus of the Proudhon–Marx controversy was the conflicting issue of the market vision, whether the market was truly stable by nature or undisciplined in principle. Underlying this opposite market version is a conflicting vision of money, in terms of whether it is only a neutral medium that does not interfere with original exchange or whether something real that disturbs the normal progression of the market. Through the debates on money, labor note theorists have deepened their understanding of money and markets and presented three perspectives: marketless communal socialism, market socialism, and local currency.