Comment

Comment by Keith Hart on November 25, 2009 at 3:13pm

Elaine said: ...the local currency example indicates the plurality of capitalism but does not sit outside of it.

I would like to introduce here a long quote from my friend, Jean-Louis Laville (my translation from the French):

“Two great lessons may be drawn from the history of the twentieth century. First, market society sustained by a concern for individual freedom generated huge inequalities; then submission of the economy to political will on the pretext of equality led to the suppression of freedom. These two solutions called democracy itself into question, whether in the form of totalitarian systems or, with a similar result, through the subordination of political power to that of money. If we reject both of these options, it is then a question of developing institutions capable of guaranteeing a plural economy within a democratic framework, exactly what is compromised when the rationale of material gain without limit has a monopoly. To answer this question, we must seek out new institutional forms anchored in social practice; these will point the way towards the reinsertion of democratic norms in economic life. Any return to the old compromises is doomed to failure and any reflection on how to reconcile freedom and equality, which remains the goal of democracy in a complex society, can only make progress by taking into account the reactions of people in society. This is one point of agreement between Mauss and Polanyi; we must rely on practical experience for information and analysis, in other words, start from the ‘real economic movement’, not from a programme of social reform given a veneer of realism. This is a conception of social change as self-expression, of change which ‘is by no means committed to revolutionary or radical alternatives, to brutal choices between two contradictory forms of society’ but which ‘is and will be made by a process of building new groups and institutions alongside and on top of the old ones’ (Mauss). Mauss and Polanyi, in outlining the theoretical foundations of a plural approach to the economy, began a reflection on social change that cannot be satisfied with ritual calls to turn the system upside down. In other words, rather than make an abstract appeal to an alternative economy, they have shown us a concrete road to ‘other economies’ based on the field of possibilities already open to us.”

Comment by John McCreery on November 25, 2009 at 2:31pm

Some food for thought from a Tokyo member of Marketing Communications Executives International (MCEI). Matsushita Konousuke was the founder of Matsushita Electronics, now globally branded as Panasonic and is revered as one of Japan's greatest businessmen.

Reciprocity Asked to write a biography of Matsushita Kounosuke, Kusayanagi Taizou went through all of Matsushita’s writings and speeches from 1933 on. In this, he made the somewhat-surprising discovery that far-and-away the most frequently used phrase was “o-tagai ni” (which translates roughly as “it’s mutual” or “and you, too”). Reciprocity was a core concept for Matsushita -- the philosophy that underpinned his industrial empire.

I suspect this concept of reciprocity is just as important as ever for marketing today. Whether it is the negotiations between a manufacturer and a supermarket buyer or the unspoken haggling between the supermarket and someone who might come to shop there, the focus on price can be alleviated and a less stressful resolution found if both sides work in the spirit of reciprocity -- if both sides recognize that this particular deal is more than this particular deal and is part of a larger arrangement of shared interests.

The spirit of reciprocity is essential to creating win-win situations. Neither side should assume it holds all of the cards or try to ride roughshod over the other. Instead, you want a resolution that satisfies everyone and that contributes to a long-term relationship. Accommodation, not dominance, is the key.

Kawashima Tamotsu (publishing coordinator)

Comment by Luke Alexander Heslop on November 25, 2009 at 1:58pm

John - It seems that the benefits of local trade speak to the environmental benefits for a global community. This may suggest that a focus on the 'local business' within a 'local community' feeds into the concerns of a much larger community (human beings everywhere) as exchange doesn't stack up as much carbon. The idyllic and romantic aesthetic of the small producer / 'local trader' has featured in some interesting work of Peter Leutchford's and is commonly evoked in the literature and advertisement of many fair trade initiatives. Is this fetish for the local as irresistible as ever?

Comment by Elaine Forde on November 25, 2009 at 1:23pm

I wanted to clarify that where I saw synergy with the business processes that John described and local currencies was in the fact that traders are willing to offer a discount on purchases made in local currency. I saw this as a way to stimulate the sort of situation that John describes, whereby transactions are not solely driven by profit, but are seen as part of a larger process of to and fro between parties and are mediated by other values- albeit fuzzy ones- such as trust, community etc- this is where the economic anthropologists come in!

But certainly I don't believe local and national currencies are opposed at all, if anything the local currency example indicates the plurality of capitalism but does not sit outside of it.

Comment by Keith Hart on November 25, 2009 at 11:30am

A footnote on trust. It is by no means obvious that people who know each other well trust each other most. Local communities are often riven with mutual suspicion and let's not talk about family feuds. Simmel was onto this when he observed that the city's crowds offered an escape from all this. In my Ghanaian work, I argued that trust was a willingness to incur the risk of personal default and thus most important for transient deals which could not rely on kinship or state-sanctioned contracts. Of course, having read your compelling account of running a small business, John (and having run one myself), I know there is more to it than that. the point is that community currencies cannot draw on a preexisting stock of trust, but are often an attempt to regenerate it. I believe that their largest fault is the attempt to draw a boundary around the market they create, when money's chief function, as Simmel knew, is to express our human potential for making universal society.

Comment by John McCreery on November 25, 2009 at 11:23am

Keith, I definitely do not subscribe to any "strong opposition between national and local currencies." My point is that regardless of whether a currency is national or local, its significance in social relationships depends substantially on what those relationships are. The Totnes website speaks explicitly about supporting a geographically local community. My business relationships with our clients involve, so far as I can see, no community at all. We do not belong to the same churches or clubs or go to each others weddings and funerals. Our children do not attend the same schools or, for that matter, even live in the same country.

Comment by Keith Hart on November 25, 2009 at 11:10am

Many people in the community currencies game start from a strong opposition between national and local currencies of the sort that Geoff evoked and John reproduces. I think that is a mistake since it overlooks some of the qualities they share and implies that the rules of the self-organized circuit are quite new when compared with what people already know about money. In practice many local currencies are integrated into existing commerce for the good reason that no stand-alone circuit can supply all the goods and services their members want and businesses can, as a portion of their sales. And internet-based technology means that increasingly these currencies don't have to be local: they could members of a church, football fans, even anthropologists from around the world.

I believe Kathleen is right to point to how national or world currencies are made socially, but we should not confuse Bernanke's ability to save Wall Street banks with how you and I experience the supply of dollars. I have argued for some time that money is becoming personal credit to some degree, but, having turned on the money spigot to save the banking system, they are now crying out for budget cuts and we will all feel that. And if it costs $500 to visit grandma and you don't have the money, you don't go.

The big difference between national money and complementary currencies is the politics of supply, who says how much you can spend. For the most part in the first case, it is 'them' and in the second us. When Geoff talks about zero sum money he is referring to the logic of a single supplier as opposed to a currency that is supplied by all members whenever they make a promise. Default on debts matters less in such a currency, since the remaining participants can still issue their own promises.

I have seen both sides of this argument played out in the movements I have studied. In that sense, who is right is not a zero sum game.

Comment by John McCreery on November 25, 2009 at 11:04am

Sorry if that last comment sounded a bit rough. My assumption is that if social anthropology has anything to offer economics it derives from recognition that values like "trust" are always embedded in particular social relationships and, thus, that their significance changes with the relationships in question. It makes no sense, then, to say that "trust" in relation to a local community means the same thing as "trust" in a business relationship.

Comment by John McCreery on November 25, 2009 at 10:38am

Sorry Kathleen, but "fuzzy all the way down" is, at the end of the day only hand-waving, at best recognition that we don't understand how to analyze what is happening. I agree that no currency is zero sum and, conversely, that all currencies have social dimensions that are not well understood — thus the fuzziness that plagues our thinking about them. But the simple fact of the matter is that the "trust" involved in local currencies and the "trust" involved in the sorts of business relationships that I was describing reside in two very different kinds of social relations.

Local currencies are, by definition, rooted in local communities where people interact in many capacities. It is community loyalty that is called upon to move people to use the local currency instead of the coin of the realm. In the kinds of business relationships that I was describing there is no such community. The relationships in question are normally strictly business, tempered with occasional friendly gestures that go beyond the business being transacted. These are social facts and to ignore them is, in my view, fuzzy thinking, indeed.

Comment by Keith Hart on November 25, 2009 at 5:56am

I have posted the Nishibe chapter in the text box at the top.

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