"...it was demonstrated that one can live quite well here even without money. Would that be a perspective for critics of money if it became common practice?"
I can't take the question very seriously.
"...live quite well" by spending all day rummaging through dumpsters – here, no less, illegally, thus at the cost of punishment – frequenting food banks, asking friends and acquaintances for shelter, looking for discarded clothing at the Red Cross, etc. So, the "good life" is supposed to be spent entirely organizing the most basic necessities of life – food, drink, clothing, housing – without money. Don't you still have something planned for your life when food, clothing, and housing are somehow secured? Don't you have interests and desires whose fulfillment falls by the wayside when life without money inevitably fills your entire day. To voluntarily choose to live without money – the worst kind of poverty that the local economy has in store for wage-earning humanity – not only as the purpose of one's life, not only as a source of pride in surviving this life, but also as a mission; sorry, but that's not only cynical, it's simply completely stupid.
I could stop there. But I still want to address the theoretical flaws in this reasoning: How, pray tell, is this supposed to become a "perspective (!) for critics of money" when this "good life" socially presupposes precisely what it seeks to overcome?! Living off of dumpster diving not only presupposes the entire capitalist competitive context of agriculture, the food industry, and the retail trade of supermarket chains, but also thrives on state intervention in this context. The edible things you find in the trash are the result of the state's efforts to provide a national diet that somehow still deserves the name. The State stipulates that the end products on the shelves must, firstly, still have some connection to food and, secondly, must be disposed of before they completely spoil. The use of other people's homes without money not only requires the goodwill of tenants or owners, but also that moneyed individuals build and sell residential properties on real estate or extract rent from the property; rent that must first be earned by the resident. And so on. Thus, the penniless person ekes out a parasitic existence, which wouldn't be all that significant if they were only trying to take a bite out of the wallets of a few rich people. It gains significance through its mission—occasionally even presented with an anti-capitalist impetus—that one can live quite well without money, which requires nothing more and nothing less than the complete capitalist monetary economy as its very precondition.
Furthermore, the dumpster freak should not forget that he is not living in a vacuum between the clothing store and the food bank, but is 'imprisoned' as a citizen – whether he wants to admit it or not. This obligates him to abide by the rule of law, with which he quickly comes into conflict, moneyless as he is. Among other things, this is because everything he needs to live has been produced in abundance, is on the shelves, and, with its practical properties, possesses an appeal that makes some people forget that there are price tags on their groceries. Cashless shopping and subway travel (1) only works as long as things are going well.
Behind every business, behind every service, stands the state, protecting it: It secures private and state property with its power; and thus protects its function – namely, that it generates money.(2)
This, not least of all, could make it clear to the proponents of a moneyless life in a monetary economy that their "critique of money" is almost beyond naivety: The point of money in capitalism is not that it is an essentially superfluous means of purchase—as they claim to prove by proving that it is unnecessary for access to the necessities of life. Unfortunately, the opposite is true: Rather, it is—and this is only hinted at here—the entire meaning and purpose of this mode of production. This can already be seen in the fact that national wealth in this country is measured by the growth of money – known as the gross national product – that the captains of industry are concerned with nothing other than the increase of capital in monetary form, that a purchase of goods only occurs if the company makes a profit from the price of the goods, that all people in this society are sorted into those who own a source of money, such as a factory, real estate with apartment buildings, or a nice supermarket, and those who have to work hard their whole lives to tap into the flow of other people's money without making a fortune, etc.
Therefore, it must be concluded that the demonstration that one can live without money in capitalism simultaneously entails a grandiose theoretical trivialization of this economic system. Anyone who dislikes money—usually simply because they don't have it—should first of all clarify why this is so, that is, what it accomplishes in the capitalist economy, and why the state makes it obligatory for everyone to access goods of all kinds exclusively through money. (3)
footnotes:
1) Now please don't come to me with municipal, cashless public transport. As we all know, that doesn't usher in a cashless society, but rather works to combat "collapse in inner cities."
2) This is particularly evident in the fact that whenever the state is prevented from fulfilling its protective role, the massive looting begins.
3) Initial information can be found in: Work and Wealth (2nd revised edition) | GegenStandpunkt
Translated from: korrespondenz-leben-ohne-geld.pdf
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