Note of the Month - November 2012
Two hours of work
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The criticism of money and banks was already part of the early utopian socialist tradition, as was the research for alternative ways to perform transactions without money. Here is note with a value of 2 hours of work, issued by the utopian socialist Robert Owen (1771-1858) for his National Equitable Labour Exchange in 1833. Owen had created a utopian community in the US, "New Harmony", and after its demise had returned to England and created a short lived exchange in London and Birmingham. Goods could be sold by producers and purchased by customers without middlemen or coins. The fair price had to be established on the basis of the goods' value in terms of hours of work needed to produce them. The exchange survived only a few months because of controversies over what the fair price was and over the lower wage offered to women, but the concept of value in terms of hours of work was later developed further by Marx.
Luca Einaudi, Centre for History and Economics