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1 Inishkillane; Change and Decline in the West of Ireland (Penguin 1974)   Back to main text

2 For a painstaking account of this system see Meitheal: A Study of Co-operative Labour in Rural Ireland by Anne O'Dowd, Comhairle Bhealoideas Eireann, University College, Dublin, 1981   Back to main text

3 The quotations from Michael Linton come from talks he gave in Dublin in 1993. They have since been checked by him.  Back to main text

4 LETS has become a generic term covering a wide range of local currency systems and Linton therefore distinguishes between "LETSystems" which have five essential characteristics, and LET schemes, which he describes as the "committee-managed, small-is-beautiful, no-business-please (ie, no commercial motivation), politically-correct variety". The five characteristics of LETSystems are: (I) They operate on a not-for-profit basis and the costs of administration are paid by each account-holder in the local unit. (ii) All accounts start at zero and the account-holder has sole control over the movement of money in and out of his or her account. There is never any obligation to trade. (iii) Any account-holder may know the balance and the volume of trading of any other account-holder in the system, (iv) The local currency unit is equivalent to the national currency, and (v) No interest is charged or paid on account balances. There is a wide range of systems with these characteristics, as Linton encourages them to experiment. When this chapter refers to LET systems or LET schemes, it is talking about all types, including those which meet the LETSystem specification.  Back to main text

5 February, 1994.  Back to main text

6 Letter to author, 21/2/1994  Back to main text

7 Letter from Frank Brennan to John Bolger, 16/2/94.  Back to main text

8 E-mail dated 27/11/95.  Back to main text

9 Particulars of each barter transaction must be submitted by whoever is running the system with both parties and the revenue service unless the system has less than 100 transactions a year. See Journal of Taxation , 1983, and also Standard Federal Tax Report. 3/9/83. The law is PL 97-248, paragraph 5093.  Back to main text

10 Confusion often arises when the turnover of different LET systems is compared because some systems quote turnover figures derived by adding together all the changes in members' accounts, both positive and negative, thus doubling the value of trading apparently done. This is eliminated here.  Back to main text

11 "The Local Exchange Trading System: Political Economy and Social Audit" (MSc. thesis, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, 1994). Copies are available from Ms. Seyfang, PO Box 18, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 3NS for £6, postpaid. Studies of the Totnes and Calderdale LET systems by Colin Williams of the Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management, Leeds Metropolitan University, Brunswick Building, Leeds LS2 8BU, indicate that LETS members have below- average incomes and that the unemployed among them generally make more trades but each trade is of lower value than that of those in work.and their total earnings are less. The average annual value of trading per member was £ 40 in Calderdale and £153 in Totnes, Williams found.  Back to main text

12 February, 1994  Back to main text

13 The only book by Gesell, who died in 1930, readily obtainable in English is The Natural Economic Order, probably in the edition published by Peter Owen, London, in 1958 although there was a Berlin edition in 1929 and an American one in 1933.  Back to main text

14 "Sechs-Stunden-Tag im Mittelalter", which appeared in the book  Vorwärts zur felten kaufkraft des geldes und zur zinsfreien wirtschaft, 1931.  Back to main text

15 Carlo M. Cipolla in The Monetary Policy of 14th Century Florence (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982).  Back to main text

16 Quoted by Irving Fisher in Stamp Scrip(Adelphi, New York, 1933), p20. The New Republic article was written by Hans Cohrssen who became Fisher's assistant and contributed a valuable account of the stamp scrip movement in the US to Dieter Suhr's book on the necessity of developing a type of neutral money which encourages neither hoarding nor spending, The Capitalistic Cost-Benefit Structure of Money. (Springer: Berlin & New York 1989)  Back to main text

17 Letter to author, 11/8/94.  Back to main text

18 Erick Hansch, Initial Results of WIR Research in Switzerland (International Independence Institute: Ashby, Mass. 1971).  Back to main text

19 50 ans Cercle economique WIR, WIR Basle,1984.  Back to main text

20 Ibid.  Back to main text

21 DCN-Passport to Interest Free Living, (n.d).  Back to main text

22 Local Trading Bond Scheme: Proposal for a Feasibility Study (Schumacher Projects: July 1993).  Back to main text

23 See For Polygamy in Currency (Abraham Rotstein, University of Toronto, and Colin A.M. Duncan, York University, Ontario n.d.), which states that the growth of barter networks in the US was partly due to anti-trust laws which may forbid direct barter between firms but not if mediated through a third party. "Several of the largest transnational corporations in the world are members of their own barter networks" they say. Another motive was tax avoidance and there were some spectacular tax and other frauds.in the past although the networks are now trying to improve their image.  Back to main text

24 Fritz Schwarz, Das Experiment von Wörgl, (Genossenschaft Verlag: Berne 1952). Cited by Margrit Kennedy in Interest and Inflation-Free Money, (third edition) (Permakultur Publikationen, Steyerberg: 3rd edition 1990).  Back to main text

25 Stamp Scrip, as mentioned above. Fisher also wrote Mastering the Crisis, (George Allen & Unwin, London: 1934), which covers a lot of the same ground.  Back to main text

26 Details of the Lignieres and Marans systems are given in Perspectives d'une Revolution Economique et Monetaire by Marino-Bertil Issautier, a special issue of Cahiers de la Pensée et de l'Action, Paris, 1961.  Back to main text

27 "Financing Sustainable Development", a paper given by Hotson at the first "T.O.E.S." (The Other Economic Summit) in Australia, 26-28th November, 1993.  Back to main text

28 (Omni Publications: Hawthorne, California, 1960).  Back to main text

29 Telephone conversation.  Back to main text

30 Available from the E.F. Schumacher Society, Box 76, RD3, Great Barrington, MA 01230, 1989.  Back to main text

31 In Swann's introduction to Inflation and the Coming Keynesian Catastrophe.(E.F. Schumacher Society: Great Barrington, Mass. 1989)  Back to main text

32 C. George Benello, Robert Swann and Shann Turnbull, Ward Morehouse (ed.), Building Stable Communities, Tools and Concepts for Self-Reliant Economic Change, (Bootstrap Press: New York, 1989).  Back to main text

33 Professor Lewis D. Solomon of the National Law Center, George Washington University, Washington D.C., devotes almost a quarter of his book Rethinking our Centralized Monetary System: The Case for a System of Local Currencies (Praeger: New York 1996) to local currencies pegged to commodities and the practical steps which would have to be taken to issue one. He also provides an authoratitive survey of the legal aspects of issuing local currencies in the US.  Back to main text

34 Karl Polyani: 'The Economy as an Instituted Process' in Polyani, Pearson and Arensburg, eds., Trade and Markets in the Early Empires, (Gateway: Chicago 1957).  Back to main text

35 Lawrence White, Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience and Debate 1800-1845, (Cambridge University Press: London, 1984). An excellent bibliographic essay on free banking by Kurt Schuler appeared in the Humane Studies Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, Fall 1988. See also F.A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1976  Back to main text

36 2/11/95  Back to main text