WI:The Soviet Union abolishes currency?

How are it's economic policies with no currency, and instead relying on other incentives like more leisure and more food for more work. Would it work or fail as OTL. Assume this happens in it's founding by Lenin.
 
How are it's economic policies with no currency, and instead relying on other incentives like more leisure and more food for more work. Would it work or fail as OTL. Assume this happens in it's founding by Lenin.
In effect it did as money was just a unit of account for allocating resources in the Five Year Plans. And shortages meant accumulating money (if possible) didn't guarantee access to consumer goods and services. Getting better houses, luxuries or even good medical treatment required "pull", favours or other non monetary means. Good workers were rewarded with extras I think.

Thee probably could have been more efficient methods of doing this and adding rewards in kind, for "credits". Though both Lenin and Stalin preferred terror and force his successors did try carrots as well as sticks. Just the economic sclerosis the Soviet bloc suffered from 1970 or so meant it wasn't enough.

I'm not sure a kinder, gentler, Lenin and Stalin would have achieved the industrialization and economic growth needed to fend off the Nazis. But it would have been a better society to live in. Maybe a less paranoid USSR, and one less frightening to the West, could have reached an alliance with with the West at Munich that could have brought Hitler down then?
 
It won't work.

At some level, consumer purchases where there is any consumer choice at all as to goods or quantity of goods require some medium of exchange. Whether it's a physical currency or a coupon book that contains some form of credits against which purchases are made, you have to have something. The currency can be a completely fictitious one with no innate value (which would make it a fiat currency which is worthless outside the USSR) but there simply has to be something which is used to settle accounts between employers and employees and between sellers and purchasers.

The only alternative is a barter economy where everyone receives, in exchange for work, a fixed basket of goods per pay period which can then be traded privately for other things. I don't think it's a stretch for anyone to see why a currency system would be preferable to that.
 
The only alternative is a barter economy where everyone receives, in exchange for work, a fixed basket of goods per pay period which can then be traded privately for other things. I don't think it's a stretch for anyone to see why a currency system would be preferable to that.
I think it's entirely possible for a die-hard (and totally nuts) Communist state to decree that a person in a particular job is entitled to a ration of food and lodgings appropriate to their grade, be able to apply for a certain number of weeks in a resort of appropriate quality, and so forth. Since the State has determined that those are the appropriate rewards for labour, there is no need for trade and barter of goods can be made an offence as it constitutes speculation, wrecking, or some such thing.
 
I think it's entirely possible for a die-hard (and totally nuts) Communist state to decree that a person in a particular job is entitled to a ration of food and lodgings appropriate to their grade, be able to apply for a certain number of weeks in a resort of appropriate quality, and so forth. Since the State has determined that those are the appropriate rewards for labour, there is no need for trade and barter of goods can be made an offence as it constitutes speculation, wrecking, or some such thing.
Much agree, just to he west it's a very alien concept, hell for that matter it's alien in regards to the way groups of more than 10 work in most of the world. Someone has some thing you want, you trade something for it. It is possible, just most would find it bewildering a concept
 
I think it's entirely possible for a die-hard (and totally nuts) Communist state to decree that a person in a particular job is entitled to a ration of food and lodgings appropriate to their grade, be able to apply for a certain number of weeks in a resort of appropriate quality, and so forth. Since the State has determined that those are the appropriate rewards for labour, there is no need for trade and barter of goods can be made an offence as it constitutes speculation, wrecking, or some such thing.

This is true, as long as the basket of goods received by each consumer are identical. The second you have any variation, this becomes wasteful; for instance, the worker with children will need certain things that a worker without children won't. People vary in size and will therefore require clothing of different sizes. It is wasteful to provide diapers and baby formula to a worker who is single; that worker might prefer more borscht and vodka instead. It's true that the possibility for barter exists unless banned, but that is wasteful insofar as barter has fairly high transaction costs. If bartering is banned, then there is waste of production and you wind up with the absurdity of non-drinkers being stuck with vodka and nonsmokers being stuck with cigarettes. In practice, banning these transactions is impractical; the single worker will "give away" his diapers to his neighbor, who then happens to "give away" the vodka they don't drink. What you wind up with very quickly when the economy has any complexity is a situation where some form of currency maximizes the utility of all parties. Instead of being paid in diapers and other goods, a worker receives X units of currency, which can be used to procure what they want. For a centralized state, there are other advantages with currency because it is entirely a creation of the state and creates in the state certain powers to change its value and to reorder the relative value of goods to each other. Another advantage of a currency is that it creates the ability of consumers to save. While one could save cigarettes and vodka as a store of value, many consumer goods tend to deteriorate over time which makes them a poor store of value. Currency, obviously, does not have that problem.

In the case of clothing and food, two things which will perhaps vary the most due to personal preference and the individual nature of the purchaser, any coupon or voucher or other device for proving the entitlement of the recipient to a certain amount of a good is a form of currency. It becomes something for which other goods can be traded, even if the voucher is non-transferable because the recipient can always agree to procure something in exchange for something else. This is inefficient and leads you back to a situation in which a more universal currency is a more satisfactory solution.

The Soviet Union did a number of dumb things with its economy and I suppose it isn't completely inconceivable that the ruble could be abolished in favor of some kind of fixed allotment system. But it would be stupid and wasteful and would exacerbate what was already an economy with serious structural problems. The results of the experiment would not be good.
 
Agreed that it's horrendously inefficient and unworkable in practice, but when did that ever stop someone with near-unlimited dictatorial power when they really wanted reality to work differently?
 
Agreed that it's horrendously inefficient and unworkable in practice, but when did that ever stop someone with near-unlimited dictatorial power when they really wanted reality to work differently?

Well, I certainly can't argue with this! Quite true with numerous examples.
 
I for one, even though I have kids , I would appreciate an extra allotment of good nimskyi vino .. Or I guess vodka, pazhalusta
 
Agreed that it's horrendously inefficient and unworkable in practice, but when did that ever stop someone with near-unlimited dictatorial power when they really wanted reality to work differently?

1921. The Bolsheviks gave up War Communism and adopted the New Economic Policy. Because they couldn't make War Communism work any longer
 
What is more Capitalism than money? And for an economy that views central planning, scientific modelling and non-class allocation of resources an attainable ideal, why not end the reign of money? Instead of cash you are simply given what you need as per the plan, they tried to do it at the macro level so why not the micro level too? I think we get as much barter, black market and wonky work around as the Soviet Union actually got just in every last corner of the economy.
 
What is more Capitalism than money? And for an economy that views central planning, scientific modelling and non-class allocation of resources an attainable ideal, why not end the reign of money? Instead of cash you are simply given what you need as per the plan, they tried to do it at the macro level so why not the micro level too? I think we get as much barter, black market and wonky work around as the Soviet Union actually got just in every last corner of the economy.
The whole problem is that as long as there are external markets and or systems, there will be people wit things you don't have. Communism works if everyone is a communist and the system is honest, however as every system is run by humans, and humans are quite greedy little bastards, it just doesn't work.

But sure there is no reason they couldn't do away with cash as long as everyone in e system does away with cash
 
The whole problem is that as long as there are external markets and or systems, there will be people wit things you don't have. Communism works if everyone is a communist and the system is honest, however as every system is run by humans, and humans are quite greedy little bastards, it just doesn't work.

But sure there is no reason they couldn't do away with cash as long as everyone in e system does away with cash

In the Soviet Union the Ruble was little more than a ration chit, it was usable only for internal trade whereas foreign currency was a privileged access item that allowed one to purchase imported goods (Western ones people actually wanted). If the powers that be chose to be ridded of the trappings of dreaded capitalism they simply use the great plan to allocate what you require, so many grams of bread, a bottle of Vodka, your suit, and so on, very scientific, egalitarian and communist! We know it does not work just as the Soviet economy did not. My best quote was where a Soviet worker explained that they pretend to work since the State only pretends to pay. So in a system of fantasy why not go full tilt and abolish currency as we know it? Or does that betray the prison for what it is?
 
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