LETS: An eco-socialist initiative?

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 232, 1998, Pages 91-111

  Bowring, Finn ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0032262501     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Clause Offe and Rolf G. Heinze's view, expressed in their book Beyond Employment: Time, Work and the Informal Economy, Cambridge 1992, is fairly typical: 'We believe that it is not unrealistic to suppose that such developments toward a non-monetary but exchange-led parallel economy can make a very positive contribution to the solution of many social and economic problems characteristic of societies suffering from high unemployment, from much personal isolation and from a poorly functioning welfare state.' (p. viii.)
2. As argued in the study by Helen Barnes et al. for the New Economics Foundation, LETS on Low Income, London 1996; and in two papers by Colin C. Williams, one based on a study of Calderdale LETS ('Informal Sector Responses to Unemployment: An Evaluation of the Potential of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS)', Work Employment and Society, vol. 10. no. 2, June 1996, and the other on Manchester LETS ('Local Exchange and Trading Systems: A New Source of Work and Credit for the Poor and Unemployed', Environment and Planning A, vol. 28, no. 8, 1996).
3. As argued in the study by Helen Barnes et al. for the New Economics Foundation, LETS on Low Income, London 1996; and in two papers by Colin C. Williams, one based on a study of Calderdale LETS ('Informal Sector Responses to Unemployment: An Evaluation of the Potential of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS)', Work Employment and Society, vol. 10. no. 2, June 1996, and the other on Manchester LETS ('Local Exchange and Trading Systems: A New Source of Work and Credit for the Poor and Unemployed', Environment and Planning A, vol. 28, no. 8, 1996).
4. As argued in the study by Helen Barnes et al. for the New Economics Foundation, LETS on Low Income, London 1996; and in two papers by Colin C. Williams, one based on a study of Calderdale LETS ('Informal Sector Responses to Unemployment: An Evaluation of the Potential of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS)', Work Employment and Society, vol. 10. no. 2, June 1996, and the other on Manchester LETS ('Local Exchange and Trading Systems: A New Source of Work and Credit for the Poor and Unemployed', Environment and Planning A, vol. 28, no. 8, 1996).
5. The consultancy is called Landsman Community Services Ltd. The fact that LETS has since taken on a variety of meanings and inconsistent definitions - including, among other permutations, 'Local Employment and Trading Scheme' - does not concern Linton, since 'LETS' was originally adopted as a literal invitation to participate, and what it stood for was a secondary matter.
6. The first director of TOES, Paul Ekins, described it as 'an independent, international initiative, seeking to develop and promote a New Economics, based on personal development and social justice, the satisfaction of the whole range of human needs, sustainable use of resources and conservation of the environment', The Living Economy: A New Economics in the Making, edited by Paul Ekins, London 1986, p. xv. For a summary of Linton's conference paper, which outlines the defining features of the LETSystem, see pp. 200-2 of the same book.
7. In his book, LETS Act Locally, London 1997, Jonathan Croall states that there are over 200 LETS in Australia, 50 in New Zealand, 124 in France, 100 in Italy, 65 in the Netherlands, and 30 in Ireland.
8. R. Lee, 'Moral Money' LETS and the Social Construction of Local Economic Geographies in Southeast England', Environment and Planning A, vol. 28, no. 8, 1996.
9. Williams, 'Local Exchange and Trading Systems', p. 1401.
10. For a summary of the results of the survey carried out by the LETS development agency LETSLink UK in 1993, see Peter Lang, LETS Work: Rebuilding the Local Economy, Bristol 1994, pp. 150-1. LETSLink carried out a second survey in 1995. The results of this, which include a large growth in the proportion of jobless members, are discussed by Williams, 'Local Exchange and Trading Systems', pp. 1401-3. A third survey was conducted in 1996, the results of which suggest that up to 25 per cent of LETS members are unemployed (see Croall, LETS Art Locally, p. 34).
11. For a summary of the results of the survey carried out by the LETS development agency LETSLink UK in 1993, see Peter Lang, LETS Work: Rebuilding the Local Economy, Bristol 1994, pp. 150-1. LETSLink carried out a second survey in 1995. The results of this, which include a large growth in the proportion of jobless members, are discussed by Williams, 'Local Exchange and Trading Systems', pp. 1401-3. A third survey was conducted in 1996, the results of which suggest that up to 25 per cent of LETS members are unemployed (see Croall, LETS Art Locally, p. 34).
12. For a summary of the results of the survey carried out by the LETS development agency LETSLink UK in 1993, see Peter Lang, LETS Work: Rebuilding the Local Economy, Bristol 1994, pp. 150-1. LETSLink carried out a second survey in 1995. The results of this, which include a large growth in the proportion of jobless members, are discussed by Williams, 'Local Exchange and Trading Systems', pp. 1401-3. A third survey was conducted in 1996, the results of which suggest that up to 25 per cent of LETS members are unemployed (see Croall, LETS Art Locally, p. 34).
13. See Lee, 'Moral Money?'
14. See Helen Barnes et al., LETS on Low Income.
15. On the other hand, Williams reports that the results of the 1995 LETSLink UK survey show a promising trend, with younger LETS having more jobless and women members and far fewer Greens.
16. Ross V. G. Dobson offers an extensive commentary on his struggle to develop a LETS in Winnipeg, Canada, in his book Bringing the Economy Home from the Market, Montreal 1993. He argues that the description of LETS as an 'alternative money' system is misleading, and can alienate people who are committed to non-monetary forms of exchange. His point is that, since LETS money only comes into being after the exchange that occasions it, being nothing more than the information record of a transaction, it cannot properly be likened to a physical commodity like money - 'virtual money' is a term that has been suggested instead. The Winnipeg LETS is therefore called a 'Barter Credit Network' - a multilateral barter system assisted by interest-free credit.
17. According to Croall's report on the most recent LETSLink survey, only 13 per cent of LETS now fix their currency units exactly to the value of the pound, while 79 per cent 'have a unit related to the pound but "floating" against it' (LETS Act Locally, p. 26). For reasons to be discussed, the currency is unlikely to float above the value of cash units, and is therefore permanently susceptible to depreciation.
18. Manchester LETS has 65 small businesses on its books, most of which are self-employed traders (see Croall, LETS Act Locally, p. 66).
19. See Abraham Rotstein and Colin A. M. Duncan, 'For a Second Economy', in The New Era of Global Competition, edited by Daniel Drache and Meric S. Gertler, Montreal 1991.
20. See Richard Douthwaite, Short Circuit: Strengthening Local Economies in an Unstable World, Bideford and Dublin 1996.
21. Guy Dauncey, After the Crash: The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy, Basingstoke 1988, p. 51.
22. Cited by Lang, LETS Work, p. 124.
23. According to Croall, a quarter of UK LETS are already in receipt of some local authority assistance, ranging from modest technical and communication support to financial grants and the appointment of full-time development officers. Some councils are LETS account holders, exchanging office space, administrative resources and sports facilities, for example, for credits which are then spent as top-up grants for local charities or on the gardening and decorating services of LETS members. Several Steiner schools accept fees paid in LETS, while some state schools have also begun to trade in local schemes. In Manchester a housing association allows residents to pay part of their rent in LETS, the credits being spent on maintenance labour. A number of LETS have also been established specifically for people with mental health problems, with the aim of increasing their independence, sociability and self-esteem. In Wiltshire, Warminster Social Services teamed up with Bath Mental Health Care Trust to offer psychiatric services and complementary therapies through the regional LETS. During the first 18 months the scheme provided over £60,000 worth of services (see Croall, LETS Act Locally).
24. Dauncey, After the Crash, p. 64.
25. Lee, 'Moral Money?', p. 1380.
26. Ibid., p. 1384-5
27. The membership may decide to allow less able participants to run permanent minus accounts. Since the whole LETS community is then collectively subsidizing these members, there is no reason for the latter to feel any personal debt to the particular individuals whose services they buy.
28. Dobson states that even LETS businesses should be 'small-scale and expect to be short term. They are prepared from the beginning to dissolve when the need has been met.' Bringing the Economy Home from the Market, p. 192.
29. Williams reports this finding on skilled and unskilled labour in his studies both of Calderdale and Manchester LETS. Sexual inequality persists partly because the gendered division of labour is imported from the formal economy, with wage rates remaining the same, and partly because men show a greater willingness than women to negotiate a satisfactory price. See Lee, 'Moral Money?', pp. 1383-4.
30. The Family Expenditure Survey for 1997 showed that over the past ten years annual UK spending on household services has increased four-fold to £4 billion, with domestic help and childcare the second highest items after telephone bills. See The Guardian, 9 January 1997.
31. Dobson, Bringing the Economy Home from the Market, pp. 122, 188, 207.
32. Ibid., p. 68.
33. The inferior value of LETS currency is illustrated in Lang's account of a problem encountered by the owner of a café in Stroud. When she offered to give staff a pay increase exclusively in LETS, the Inland Revenue insisted that the LETS component of their wages would be taxed as ordinary income, and that this tax had to be paid in sterling. The fact that the staff were then unwilling to accept the LETS, since the higher payment would result in a net reduction in their sterling wages, proved to the café owner that the 'Stroud' was not equal to the value of the pound - and that the Inland Revenue should not treat it as such, Lang, LETS Work, pp. 97-9.
34. If the unemployed did increase the price of their labour, hyperinflation could be prevented by allowing the exchange rate to float until the true market value of LETS units was established. But this would invite currency speculation, as LETS credits would be traded in anticipation of their future value.
35. Dauncey, After the Crash, p. 65.
36. André Gorz, Paths to Paradise: On the Literation from Work, London 1985, pp. 60-63.
37. Carmen Sirianni, 'Production and Power in a Classless Society: A Critical Analysis of the Utopian Dimensions of Marxist Theory', Socialist Review, no. 59, September-October 1981.