Recently a companera asked me, if it really is such a good idea to start from abolishing money, since it seems to enhance freedom and quality of life especially for the most poor of us. I thought about it for a while and than answered that I do not see evidence for that.

Over the last year, I read and thought a lot about Tanzania (as a case study for the land grab, the results are partly published in German). Having now quite a good picture of the situation in Tanzania (and some overview of the situation in Africa as a whole), I doubt that money ever did any good job there.

Actually, I would say, things are getting increasingly worse particularly because of monetary relations.

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Einleitungsworte beim Kongress »Jenseits des Wachstums?!«

Weltweit dominiert die kapitalistische Produktionsweise das Leben der Menschen. Sie unterliegt einem Drang und Zwang zum Wachstum, der sozial und ökologisch verheerend ist. Anders als historisch ältere Formen von Wirtschaft, die zum Teil Märkte inkludierten, ist die kapitalistische Produktionsweise wesentlich Marktwirtschaft. Sogar die Lebenszeit wird zur Ware.

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On the newly created demonetization.it mailing list (see demonetize.it), a hot debate on money and value started. As it went along, I thought it would be helpful to differentiate separate notions of value. This might refine our understanding of both the crisis and the way out of it: demonetization. The linguistic field of value as it appears in everyday language could be differentiated into four distinct concepts which are interrelated:

1. value
2. exchange value
3. use value
4. price

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