Nation(s) which initially succeed in transitioning to anarchism will, in the days before revolution reaches the rest of the globe, still trade with non-anarchist nations (afterall, most nations are nowhere near self-sufficient in food... a comrades gotta eat!).
Therefore, early anarchist societies will still need to use money, if only for international trade.
How will a stateless, directly democratic society manage this money? (By manage I mean keeping it in a bank account and deciding which imports to spend it on.) How can we deal with this without giving any minority too much power? Or, if we have no choice but to entrust a small group with this power, how can we monitor them and keep them in check?
Here are some of my thoughts on this question...
(Many of you probably are familiar with federalism, so skip this explanatory paragraph if you are.) The federalist model of anarchism means that communes will have a delegate, and delegates from nearby communes will form councils, and delegates from councils in that region will form yet another council, and so on and so on, until at the national level there is a council of delegates (and there's also a final global council with delegates from the various nations). These delegates don't have the authority to impose their will downwards; rather, power flows upwards from the communes. All delegates are instantly recallable and are mandated to represent the will of those "below" them (rather than to enact their own will). Anarchists disagree on whether delegates would be elected or randomly selected and rotated.
I suppose, using this federated model, that the group of delegates at the national level would be the ones to actually have the bank account in their names? However, they would not decide how to spend it. Rather, the collective consumption requests of the nation determine what we would import / spend the money on. Those consumption requests would be sent to the relevant worker-managed industries. Those industries would contact the national-level delegates who controlled the bank account to request the necessary funds. Those industries would use the money to import the necessary materials needed to produce whatever was requested. As for imports of things already made elsewhere (rather than parts for things to be made locally), I suppose this would be handled by workers collectives responsible for importing goods.
However, this still leaves the uncomfortable fact that the bank account would be in the names of a small handful of people. This gives them way more power than anyone else in society. Theoretically, they could spend the money on personal enrichment.
One way to deal with this would be that they had to make all their banking transactions public. Put them up on a website for everyone in the nation to monitor. Upload photocopies of all the bank statements, along with receipts for every transaction. Show the hardcopies to their fellows in their local communes.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Thoughts?
