Coinage enables trade with people who you don’t trust to even be there a month later, much less to come back to repay a debt, regardless of an adherence to capitalism or no. If you like, take away any capitalist hierarchies and imagine everyone involved as artisans and subsistence workers who make their way in the world by the produce of their own hands, no wages or exploitative bourgeoise. It’s still useful to have a way to engage in exchange with someone who you don’t have reason to trust.
Trust has to exist somewhere. In state-regulated currency, it is trust in the willingness of the state’s enforcers to enact violence on those who try to mess about with the currency and trust in most people’s desire not to have state violence enacted upon them. In a stateless society, the trust has to be maintained or there will be no exchange. No exchange means lower quality of life. Most people are quite happy to live with a little state violence if it means they get to live an easier life, or even just live to see tomorrow. Moralizing doesn’t stop the would-be king from cutting off heads until the survivors shut up and pay their taxes, and sarcasm undermines your ability to make a point.
Coinage enables trade with people who you don’t trust to even be there a month later, much less to come back to repay a debt, regardless of an adherence to capitalism or no. If you like, take away any capitalist hierarchies and imagine everyone involved as artisans and subsistence workers who make their way in the world by the produce of their own hands, no wages or exploitative bourgeoise. It’s still useful to have a way to engage in exchange with someone who you don’t have reason to trust.
Trust has to exist somewhere. In state-regulated currency, it is trust in the willingness of the state’s enforcers to enact violence on those who try to mess about with the currency and trust in most people’s desire not to have state violence enacted upon them. In a stateless society, the trust has to be maintained or there will be no exchange. No exchange means lower quality of life. Most people are quite happy to live with a little state violence if it means they get to live an easier life, or even just live to see tomorrow. Moralizing doesn’t stop the would-be king from cutting off heads until the survivors shut up and pay their taxes, and sarcasm undermines your ability to make a point.