North Money and Liberation The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements (Minnesota, 2007)

MONEY AND LIBERATION

This page intentionally left blank

money

and

Liberation

The Micropolitics of

Alternative Currency Movements

2

PETER NORTH

University of Minnesota Press

m i n n e a p o l i s | l o n d o n

Parts of chapter 5 were originally published in Alternative Currencies as a Challenge to Globalisation? A Case Study of Manchester’s Alternative Currency Movements (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2006); reprinted by permission of Ashgate Publishing Company. Parts of chapter 6 originally appeared in “Constructing Civil Society? Green Money in Transition Hungary,”

Review of International Political Economy 13, no. 1 (2006): 28–52; reprinted with the permission of Taylor and Francis, www.tandf.co.uk. Parts of chapter 7 were originally published in “LETS in a Cold Climate: Green Dollars and Neo-Liberal Welfare in New Zealand,” Policy and Politics 30, no.

4 (October 2002): 483–500; reprinted by permission of Policy and Politics.

Copyright 2007 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

North, Peter, 1962–

Money and liberation : the micropolitics of alternative currency movements

/ Peter North. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8166-4962-4 (hc : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8166-4963-1 (pb : alk. paper)

1. Money. 2. Monetary policy. 3. Currency question. I. Title. hg220.a2n67 2007

332.4—dc22 2006038757

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

12

11

10

09

08

07

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

This book is dedicated to those who have traded labor notes, stamp script, green dollars, and créditos from

Auckland to Budapest, from Manchester to Mendoza. They all helped make a better world for my daughter, Polly, who was born as I completed this volume.

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS

8

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Thinking Economies Otherwise . . . . . . .	xi
⁄. Beyond the Veil? Money and Economies. . . . . . . . . . . . .	1
¤. The Politics of Monetary Contestation. . . . . . . . . . . . . .	19
‹. Utopians, Anarchists, and Populists:
The Politics of Money in the Nineteenth Century . . . .	41

›. Twentieth-Century Utopians: Gesell and Douglas . . . .62

fi. New Money, New Work?

LETS in the United Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79

fl. Kaláka and Kör: Green Money,

Mutual Aid, and Transition in Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . .102

‡. The Longevity of Alternative Economic Practices:

Green Dollars in Aotearoa/New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Ò. Surviving Financial Meltdown:

Argentina’s Barter Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

Conclusion The Ghosts of Marx and Simmel? . . . . . . . 174

Notes 183

Bibliography 187

Index 201

This page intentionally left blank

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

8

there are too many people to thank for the production of this book and the research from which it was constructed for me to hope to name them all individually. I would like to thank colleagues at the Universities of Bristol, Sheffield, London South Bank, and Liverpool who have helped and encouraged me and critiqued my work over the years; in particular I would like to call attention to the efforts of Paul Burton, Irene Bruegel, Roger Lee, and ColinWilliams.

From the world of local exchange trading schemes (LETS) I would like to thank Nigel Leach, Michael Linton, Liz Shephard, Angus Soutar, and Harry Turner (sadly, no longer with us; he will be missed).

They all got me thinking. From Manchester LETS I would like to thank everyone I met with, including (but not limited to) Malcolm Allum, Jo Bend, Linda Bloomfield, John and Wendy Clifford, Marian Daltrop, Inland Driftwood, Bernard Ekbury, Spencer Fitzgibbon, Peter Gay, Gilli Gladman, Siobhan Harpur, Karsten Jungnickel, Bob Kirby, Steven Knight, Kos, Katrina Long, Margaret Mansoor, Alison

Milner, John Piprani, Mike Scantlebury, Rose Snow, Storm Steel, and Lyn Woolry, John from Withington Cycles, and Andy, Chris, Fraser, Kai, and Kryshia from LETSGo.

I would particularly like to thank Éva Izsák for involving me in the development of Talentum and Kör in Hungary and then for translating “simple, clear, uncomplicated” Hungarian into English for me. Who could have known what would come from a chance meeting in the House of Commons? The British Council and the Association of Nonprofit Human Services of Hungary financed my early visits. I

[ ix ]