Marx’s Theory of Labor Vouchers: Could It Be Used in Socialist Countries?
Li Xiaoguan, August 2023
Labor vouchers are certificates that prove the amount of labor provided by laborers to society and are used to collect consumer goods from society that are equivalent to the amount of labor they have provided for the society. Labor vouchers are not currency and are not circulated.
Labor vouchers were first proposed by British utopian socialist R. Owen in the 1830s and were used in the fair exchange market for labor products Owen founded. Owen argued that replacing currency with labor vouchers that indicate a certain socially necessary labor time could eliminate exploitation and implement “fair exchange.”
Owen’s labor voucher experiment was based on direct social labor, and under the conditions of capitalist commodity economy, the experiment failed. On the basis of critically inheriting Owen’s and other discussions on labor vouchers, Marx proposed the idea of using labor vouchers as certificates for distributing personal consumer goods among laborers in socialist society. He pointed out that in socialist society, laborers can receive a certificate from society to prove how much labor they have provided (minus the labor they have performed for social funds), and they can use the certificate to receive a portion of consumer goods from social storage that is equivalent to the amount of labor they have provided.
The certificate for measuring labor and distributing personal consumer goods mentioned here is the meaning of labor vouchers mentioned by Marx many times. Marx’s idea of labor vouchers was established through analyzing and criticizing the utopian socialists ‘ discussion on labor vouchers and “labor currency”.
Marx believed that “in social public production, monetary capital no longer exists. Society distributes labor and means of production to different production departments. Producers may receive paper vouchers to take an amount equivalent to their labor time from the social consumer goods reserve. These vouchers are not currency. They are not circulated” (Volume 24 of ” Collected Works of Marx and Engels “, page 397).
Judging from the practice of the proletarian revolution in the Soviet Union and China, since there are still two forms of socialist public ownership and as well as multiple economic components, commodity production needs to develop, and currency cannot be abolished, that means the idea of labor vouchers cannot be implemented today.
What is a labor voucher?
Labor vouchers are certificates that prove the amount of labor a worker has provided to society and that allow the worker to receive consumer goods from society that are equivalent to the amount of labor he has provided. Labor vouchers are not currency and are not circulated. Labor vouchers were first proposed by British utopian socialist R. Owen in the 1830s and were used in the fair exchange market for labor products he founded. Owen argued that replacing currency with labor vouchers that indicated a certain amount of socially necessary labor time could eliminate exploitation and implement “fair exchange.” Owen’s labor voucher experiment was based on direct social labor , and under the conditions of capitalist commodity economy , the experiment failed. On the basis of critically inheriting Owen’s and others’ theories on labor vouchers, Marx proposed the idea of using labor vouchers as certificates for distributing personal consumer goods among workers in socialist society . He pointed out that in socialist society, workers can receive a certificate from society to prove how much labor they have provided (minus the labor they have done for social funds ), and with this certificate they can receive a portion of consumer goods from social reserves that is equivalent to the amount of labor they have provided. The certificate for measuring labor and distributing personal consumer goods mentioned here is the meaning of labor vouchers that Marx mentioned many times.
Please Download for Full Text