Labour Credits

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Description

"In a Labour Credit system, workers receive credits for the time that they put into the work they undertake. In a typical system, a person would receive one credit for each hour of labour and goods would cost a certain amount of Labour Credits depending on how much Labour went into producing the item. There exists variations of this system where the amount of Labour Credits might vary, for example, depending on the desirability of the task where the more desirable task has a lower credit value. The idea behind labour credits has to do with one person’s labour equalling another persons labour so that if one person worked for an hour they should have the ability to exchange the hours labour for another persons labour.

The Twin Oaks community in the US exemplifies a community that has successfully implemented a labour credit system.

The association between labour and the amount of credits issued forms an important and relevant characteristic of labour Credits. This differs Labour Credits from both money and Energy Credits. The amount of money a person receives in a money system does not depend on the amount of labour a person has put into a job and we can find many examples in modern society of people earning more money than others despite putting in similar amounts of time. In an Energy Credit system the amount of Energy Credits a person receives also has no relation to the amount of work a person has put into a job as each person receives an equal amount of Energy Credits dependent on the production capacity only.

Like money, people can save Labour Credits which again differs Labour Credits from Energy Credits." (http://en.technocracynet.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=103&Itemid=103)


Status 2008

Note from Paul Cockshott:

"the proposal to use labour as the basis for measuring the value of goods and services is old, going back to the proposals of John Gray and Robert Owen in the 19th century. I have advocated it as a system for the modern world in : Towards a New Socialism available online from http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/


More Information

  1. Labour time versus alternative value bases: a research note. By Cockshott,W.P. Cottrell,A.

Appeared in: Cambridge Journal of Economics (Volume 21), pp. 545-549, 1997