LETS in a cold climate:

Green Dollars, self-help and neo-liberal welfare in

New Zealand

Peter North, Local Economy Policy Unit, South Bank University, London SW8 2JZ.

Email northp@sbu.ac.uk

Abstract

Complementary currencies have emerged as social policy tools

in a number of countries in the last 15 years. This paper

examines the performance of Green Dollar Exchanges in New

Zealand/Aotearoa in a neo-liberal environment where fiscal

'imperatives' led to state provision of welfare being

curtailed in favour of delivery by organisations within civil

society through self-help. It argues that while self-help does

have a place within overall welfare provision, voluntary

mechanisms failed to fill the gap left by state withdrawal.

Consequently, an over-optimistic perspective of the

contribution of mutual aid organisations in meeting welfare

needs as an alternative to, rather than complementary to state

provision is problematic.

Keywords: New Zealand, Welfare Reform, Green Dollars, Neo-

liberalism.

1 Introduction"The free market policies of the last century failed"

- Jim Anderton, Minister for Economic Development, New Zealand, January 2000.

1

Complementary currencies are trading networks using a

community-created currency which have emerged over the past 15

years in countries as far apart as Ecuador, New Zealand,

Hungary, the UK and Japan (for a review see Croall 1996,

Dauncey 1988, Douthwaite 1996, North 2002, Solomon 1996).

They range from Local Exchange Trading Schemes (UK), to Time

Dollars (USA), Green Dollars (New Zealand, Australia, Canada),

and 'Talents' (Germany, Hungary). Currencies include Green or

Time Dollars; localised currencies such as Bath's 'Olivers',

Bristol's 'Thanks', Manchester's 'Bobbins', and Peckham's

'Pecks' in the UK; 'Hours' (hour-based notes) in the USA;

Tlocs in Mexico, and Grains of Salt or 'SEL' in France. Some

currencies are based on time (Time Money, Talents), some

measured against national currencies (Green Dollars), and some

a combination of both (LETS credits, Hours). Trading takes

place between members of these complementary currency networks

using a variety of means including cheque books (UK), tally

sheets (US, Germany), or script notes (US, Mexico) or simply

reporting transactions to an accountant who keeps score using

a computer (US, New Zealand). Other models include hour-based

notes, of which ‘Ithaca Hours’ of upstate New York is the most

highly developed (Boyle 1999, North 1998). To begin trading,

members of Green Dollar or LETS Schemes create a credit backed

by their ‘commitment’ to earn, at a later date, credits from

someone else that will return their account to zero.

Complementary currencies build on barter in that reciprocal

exchange between partners for each trade is not required. For2

example, a trader can get another to fix his car, and earn the

currency back by providing others with, for example, childcare

and help decorating.

Academic commentators have analysed these new currencies as a

re-emergence of eco-socialism (Bowring 1998); as a struggle

against globalising pressures for the localisation of economic

relations (Pacione 1997, Lee 1996, Thorne 1996); as projects

for economic development (Williams 1996b, c); or as micro-

political movements for liberated lifestyles and against

financial tyranny (North 1999). In contrast, this paper

examines the efficacy of complementary currencies as self-help

a neo-liberal political environment, New Zealand in the 1990s.

It argues that it is time to lay to rest the fallacy within

neo-liberal welfare theory that community organisations can

meet welfare needs when the state withdraws, and that the

results of this will have outcomes more beneficial than state

provision.

The paper draws on depth interviews with co-ordinators and

group discussions with members of 19 of the 40 known Green

Dollar Exchanges conducted in New Zealand in 19991. The

Exchanges were identified through the New Zealand Green Dollar

Quarterly. Research was supplemented by interviews with

representatives of the Auckland and Wellington People's

Centres and the 'Jobsletter' that campaign on issues around

work livelihood and employment, and a group discussion with

civil servants and policy advisors from the New Zealand3

Department of Social Welfare in Wellington. The paper also

draws on analysis of grey material produced by Green Dollar

Exchanges and other community organisations concerned with

workfare, and analysis of available trading records to

supplement surveys undertaken by Jackson (1995) and Williams

(1996a).

4

2. Local currencies, neo-liberalism and self-help.

The writings of the luminaries of neo-liberalism prefigure

many of the core tenets of the contemporary complementary

currency movement. At a basic level, these include Hayek's

(1990) call for the removal of the state monopoly for the

production and management of currency, and his view that sound

money is more likely to emerge from competing currencies than

those issued by 'profligate' (sic) governments. Complementary

currency enthusiasts (Dauncey 1994, Linton 1995, Greco 1994,

Douthwaite 1996, Boyle 1997, 1999) agree that business,

communities and individuals should be able to choose a

currency that best meets their needs from many competing

currencies offered by private, i.e. reliable, institutions.

Secondly, neo-liberal welfare theorists such as Green (1996),

Green and Cromwell (1984) and Murray (1990) argue for the

development of a strong civil society comprised of voluntary

organisations providing welfare while government provision is

reduced (in some cases, drastically).

I argue that local or complementary currencies are the sort of

mechanism neo-liberal theorists have in mind, in that they are

a means whereby citizens can aid each other through use of a

complementary currency whereby they meet each other, find out

each others' needs, and pay for services without being

dependent on access to sufficient quantities of national

currency - and they can be evaluated as such. I am not

attempting to conflate complementary currencies and neo-5

liberalism, or necessarily arguing that advocates of mutual

aid and self-help through complementary currencies are

specifically buying into neo-liberal perspectives on the

relationship between the state and mutual aid. But I do argue

that the complementary currency movements preference for

multiple, competing currencies and welfare through self-help

resonate strongly with Hayek's, Green's and Murray's ideas.

A second question then arises as to whether this mutual aid is

seen as an alternative to or supplementary to state provision.

Here, self-help theorists such as Samuel Smiles from the right

would argue that state provision is perverse as it introduces

moral hazard2, and that citizens should help themselves and

each other to meet their needs - the argument that neo-

liberals now offer, and one that had a particular resonance in

New Zealand in the 1990s. Promoters of mutual aid, such as

Kropotkin, would reject the individualistic ethos of self-help

and the argument of moral hazard, but similarly reject a role

for the state - as necessarily authoritarian and destructive

of individual autonomy - favour of collective self-

organisation by communities (Burns and Taylor 1998). They

would argue that self-help is superior to necessarily

oppressive state provision, and again this needs to be tested.

If wanting as an alternative to state provision, complementary

currencies might be better thought of as just that -

complementary to state provision. The focus of this paper is,

though, to evaluate Green Dollars in an environment where the

state did - to a limited extent - withdraw from welfare in6

favour of private and community-led solutions. It therefore

forms part of a wider critique of neo-liberal and anarchist

conceptions of mutual aid as a real alternative to state

provision.

3 The New Zealand 'Experiment' 1984-1999.

First, we need to set out the environment in which this

discussion takes place. With the election of the Labour

Government of 1984 New Zealand/Aotearoa began a 15 year

experiment with neo-liberal inspired structural adjustment, the

main elements of which included the floating of the New Zealand

Dollar, a mass deregulation and privatisation programme, a

prejudice in favour of market solutions to policy goals, and

the entrenchment of financial probity in the Fiscal

Responsibility Act of 1990 (Kelsey 1995). New Zealand politics

were captured by a tight coalition of neo-liberal advocates

including Labour politicians, Treasury officials with strong

connections to the Chicago School, and the private sector

pressure group Business Round Table (Sheppard 1999, Kelsey

1995, Jesson 1999). A unicameral state with only ninety odd

legislators elected by first-past-the-post seemed powerless to

oppose the actions of this small, committed and strategically

effective group which pushed through its 'reforms' at

breakneck speed.

Roger Douglas, Finance Minister in the 1984-90 governments,

forged structural adjustment. He led the challenge to New

7

Zealand's then comprehensive and generous welfare state

(Castles and Pierson 1996), arguing that state-provided

activities such as welfare did not add value to an economy,

consumed too much of the income created by the private sector,

and could not be delivered as effectively as by the private

sector. He argued that the welfare state provided

disproportionate help to those who needed it least and did not

meet the needs of the poorest as welfare bureaucracies had been

captured by the special interest groups who promoted their

specific interests at the expense of targeting aid to those who

needed it. Benefit levels, he argued, were too high and acted

as a disincentive to enter work, while to increase wage levels

to make work more attractive would be inflationary and would

make New Zealand internationally less competitive, particularly

with Asia-Pacific competitor nations (Dalziel 1999:64). The

only alternative was to cut benefit levels. Consequently, the

Government abolished the thousands of job creation and 'make-

work' schemes introduced to combat unemployment in the early

1980s (Higgins 1999:262), and began publicly to challenge the

entire rationale for state intervention in welfare. However,

wider dissent from those outside the tight clique centred on

the Treasury and Roundtable (which did not even include Prime

Minister Lange) meant that many of Douglas' more radical neo-

liberal policies, for example, the abolition of welfare

benefits in favour of a guaranteed minimum family income, and a

flat tax rate of 23%, were never implemented (Sheppard 1999).

Douglas resigned in protest against Lange's self-described 'tea

break' of 1988, in which the pace of 'reform' slowed rapidly to8

allow New Zealanders a chance to come to terms with the

changes. He felt the 'experiment' had yet to really begin, that

the momentum would be lost, and that opponents would use the

time to marshal their arguments.

The two-term Labour administration was replaced in 1990 firstly

the National Party and then, with the introduction of

proportional representation in 1994, by a series of coalitions

of National and the populist centre-right 'New Zealand First'

party. Labour reacted against its ideological capture,

fractured, and gave birth to a left-social democrat New Labour

party which then allied with the Social Credit Party and the

Greens to form the 'Alliance'. Douglas and Labour's other neo-

liberal advocates left the party and formed the hardcore

rightwing Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT), which

argued for the reform process to be stepped up with the

complete removal of the state from welfare in favour of tax

cuts (see Douglas 1993). For ACT, The states' role would be

limited to paying the premiums of those unable to pay their own

private insurance with the income released from tax cuts. A

system with a residual role of the state in favour of

privatised insurance would replace one based on citizenship

(Boston 1999:8).

The Coalition lost power in 1999 with the election of a new

coalition of a reformed Labour Party and the left-of-centre

Alliance, now without the Greens. The new government of 1999

pledged to abolish the Community Wage in favour of a programme

9

of job creation such that ACT complained that New Zealand is

now run by socialist 'dinosaurs', while Alliance leader and

Minister for Economic Development Anderton argued that the

'hands off' era had closed and that "the free market policies

of the last century failed" (Jobs Research Trust 2000). It is

therefore timely to assess the performance of mutual aid

mechanisms in an environment in which neo-liberal welfare had

been implemented more thoroughly that in any other OECD

nation.

4. Civil society and the neo-liberal welfare utopia in New

Zealand.

The neo-liberal agenda for welfare reform is fleshed out in a

number of publications by advocates (Douglas 1993, Green 1996,

James 1998) and critics (Jobs Research Trust (JRT), Auckland

Unemployed Workers' Rights Centre (AUWRC), Sheppard 1999,

Jesson 1999), in academic commentary (Kelsey 1995, Cheyne et.

al. 1997, Boston et al 1999) and in the its less virulent form,

in the actions of the Coalition governments of 1990-9.

National, and then the Coalition, argued that high rates of

economic growth, sound public finances and labour discipline

would provide the opportunities for people to be self reliant

through work, making welfare redundant (Boston 1999:24). Once

elected after Labour's second term, National rekindled the neo-

liberal revolution with benefit cuts of up to 30% and a

significant tightening of eligibility criteria in April 1001.

10

This lead to real hardship, with an immediate rise in

applications for food and clothing parcels, and help with

mortgage payments (Stephens 1999:238). For example, Department

of Social Welfare figures showed that 365 food banks were

operating in 1994, giving out some 40,000 parcels a month at a

cost of NZ$ 25 million. The Salvation Army gave out 1,226 food

parcels in the first quarter of 1990 and 14,906 in the same

quarter of 1994 (Stephens 1999:251). Inequality and

destitution grew to levels that critics argued were

unacceptable in an OECD nation.

ACT (Douglas 1993) and the Business Roundtable wanted to go

further, describing the welfare state as "one of the seven

deadly economic sins of the twentieth century" along with the

growth of the state and collectivism (Kerr 1997 quoted by

Dalziel and St John 1999:75). For the Business Roundtable,

David Green (1996) took the classic neo-liberal position that

'interference' by the state in the decisions of individuals

'impairs' human character by undermining personal

responsibility and 'crowding out' a domain for voluntary action

to care for those in need. He argued that 'illegitimate'

government involvement in welfare:

"has rendered welfare services less effective in their

central task of bringing out the best in people who are

temporarily down on their luck. Consequently, instead of

appealing to people's strengths, the social security

system panders to their weaknesses";

and11

"It has diminished opportunities for people to be of

service to each other, impairing the quality of life and

encouraging us to look outwards to 'the authorities',

instead of inwards to our own strengths and skills, for

solutions to shared problems" (1996:vii)

Green's prescription was for a more bottom-up, self-help

approach. He argued that freedom could best be preserved

through a revitalisation of civil society where citizens

associate to meet collective needs, and markets ensure

resources are provided efficiently. He contrasted civil

association and market mechanisms with welfare bureaucracies

captured by bureaucratic elites and special interests who

promote their own agendas at the expense of the common good, or

those who claim 'victimhood' to gain special favours. He

therefore argued for a limitation of the role of the state to

one of maintaining individual liberty and the active promotion

of civil society independent of state control or funding.

Civil society organisations would devise innovative, face-to-

face customised solutions to people's problems, and in return

will expect an obligation from the recipient to limit requests

to support to those absolutely necessary.

Green argued for a residual role for the state in favour not of

privatised welfare, but voluntary-sector provision. He argued

that community control of welfare is essential to deter the

abuse likely to be as replicated in large-scale private

provision as that provided by the state (Green and Cromwell12

1984). While an emphasis on the voluntary sector in providing

welfare resonates with libertarian concerns (and can be

contrasted with compulsion in workfare), his argument is

supplanted with an individualistic, moralistic and

authoritarian emphasis on the duty of parents to either meet

the costs of their children within the family or be required to

work in return for state support. In another Business

Roundtable publication (James 1998), Datson agreed that New

Zealand's voluntary sector could accept the Roundtables'

challenge but doubted the extent that welfare could be

delivered in ways that reduced feelings of supplicancy from

recipients. Green, then, sees community-led self-help

agencies as an alternative to what he sees as failed welfare

state bureaucracies.

Critics argued that reform under Labour, then National, was

always driven more by fiscal concerns about the level of public

debt; concerns about what were perceived to be 'burdens' like

an ageing population or 'abuses' such as of welfare; and a

prejudice in favour of 'self reliance' than a philosophical

commitment to the good life that would emerge from the actions

of liberated individuals (Cheyne et. al. 1997, Boston et. al.

1999, Kelsey 1995, Jesson 1999). They pointed to the lack of

evidence for claims that government spending damaged economies,

and to the benefits of government action in facilitating growth

(Dalziel 1999). They argued that fiscal considerations were

exacerbated by the decision to lower the top rate of tax to 33%

which cut the resources available to the state for welfare in13

what became a self fulfilling prophesy. Tax cuts did not lead

to economic growth, and the incoming National government

inherited worsening public finances and a deficit projected by

Treasury of 5.7% for 1992/3 (Boston 1999:12). Given National's

a priori contention that state spending was already too large a

proportion of GDP to be healthy, massive cuts in government

spending were inevitable for ideological reasons.

Resistance meant that Green's prescriptions were not fully

tested. A lack of political consensus over the scale of change

and a perception that a doctrinaire elite had captured the New

Zealand polity (working through Labour, and then National)

directly fed into the referendum decision to adopt a

proportional electoral system in the face of opposition from

the National government and the Business Roundtable. This,

along with the scale of the changes and the sheer

administrative complexity of putting so many changes into place

in such a short timeframe limited the potential to go further.

National's major reform proposals for the privatisation of

health and housing were withdrawn. The short lived governments

between 1994 and 1996 were unable to give firm direction to

policy, and after 1996 National's centre right coalition

partners successfully opposed further attempts to withdraw the

state from welfare. Health spending increased (Boston 1999:17).

From 1996, National moved from 'revolutionary withdrawal' of

state involvement in welfare to an incremental move towards

"active welfare" that mirrored contemporaneous moves in14

Australia, the UK and the US (Castles and Peirson 1996, Burgess

et. al. 1998). The emphasis on individual responsibility was

continued with a strategy entitled 'from welfare to wellbeing'

which set as its objective the strengthening self-reliance and

independence rather than the alleviation of poverty and

inequality (see box).

1 Thanks to South Bank University, the New Zealand Government and GreenDollar Exchanges for funding the visit; to Maureen Malinson (Thames GreenDollars), Bryan Duxfield (Wellington Green Dollars) and Helen Dew(Wairarapa Exchange) for inviting me to speak at the 1999 Green DollarConference. Finally, thanks to the members of Green Dollars who gave theirtime, fed and transported me around their beautiful country.2 Moral Hazard arises if it is not necessary for individuals to attend to their own needs in a time of difficulty if they know the state will look after them. The welfare state, it is argued, thereby encourages financial and personal irresponsibility.

15

Box 1: The Coalition Governments' Six Principles of Social

Responsibility:

1- Everyone has a responsibility to themselves, their families,communities, taxpayers and society.

2- Work underpins economic independence.3- Work expectations and income support obligations should be

linked to the capacity and ability to work.4- Social assistance must be designed to encourage people to

help themselves.5- Resources should help those in most need. 6- Social services should strengthen families.

(The Jobsletter 74, 6 March 1999)

Building on the 'pathological' approach that regards

unemployment as a personal failing rather a reflection of a

lack of opportunity (Levitas 1999), 'active welfare' involved

state intervention to discipline beneficiaries into work

through tightened benefit eligibility criteria and work testing

for the long term unemployed, active caseload management, and

the formation of a new one-stop agency to police it all, Work

and Income New Zealand (WINZ). A limited number of voluntary

'Benefit Plus' work experience schemes were reintroduced. In

October 1998, the voluntary schemes were replaced with a

Wisconsin-inspired 'hard' workfare programme (Jones 1996) for

all welfare beneficiaries, the Community Wage. This required

all beneficiaries to undertake up to 20 hours work in return

for benefit, with the rest of the time undertaking training,

education, or job search. It explicitly set out to restore the

work ethic by mimicking work discipline, claiming to "treat job

seekers as similarly as possible to those in paid work, to

maximise their employability and work readiness" (DSW 1998).

16

The Government argued that the Community Wage would "maintain

(beneficiaries) motivation, dignity and skills as they move

into employment", and further, "(t)his new direction is also

about changing attitudes towards the unemployed. It will help

keep jobseekers connected to the workplace and community, to

maintain their motivation, and to prevent loss of confidence,

skills and self esteem." (DSW 1998). To ensure compliance,

Community Wage included a system of penalties that critics

regarded as penal, including for example the loss of pay for

being 15 minutes late. Community organisations campaigned

actively against the changes (JRT 1998, AUWRC 1999).

Two approaches to welfare can therefore be identified within

neo-liberalism, and both were - to a limited extent - tested in

New Zealand. First, the Douglas clique within Labour then ACT,

and the Roundtable advocated community-led self-help as an

alternative to bureaucratic welfare states. Second, the

Coalition's workfare agenda looked to replace welfare with

work, policed through state intervention via workfare. With New

Zealand's experiment with neo-liberalism is seemingly coming to

an end. It is timely to examine the extent that one of the

voluntary organisations that neo-liberalism envisaged meeting

welfare needs once the state withdrew - Green Dollar Exchanges

- rose to the challenge; and second how they coped with active

welfare and workfare.

5. New Zealand Green Dollar Exchanges

17

Green Dollars developed alongside the neo-liberal experiment

(Jackson 1995:30). The first two Exchanges were established in

1986 in the North Island cities of Whangarai and New Plymouth

by two New Zealand activists who attended a conference of The

Other Economic Summit (TOES) in the UK in 1984. A TVNZ

broadcast spread the word across the country and was picked up

by the Department of Internal Affairs who funded the

development of Green Dollar Exchanges in Otago, South Island.

The biggest growth Green Dollar Exchanges was from 1989-1992,

the period of most intense economic dislocation caused by

Labour's restructuring and National's 1991 benefit cuts

(Jackson 1995). In 1991 Green Dollar Quarterly listed 38

Exchanges, with 3,000 members. By 1993, Jackson found that

of the 61 Exchanges listed in Green Dollar Quarterly, 13 were

no longer functioning or had never functioned, whereas he

contacted some 55 Exchanges in various stages of development.

In 1995, Williams surveyed 30% of the 57 Exchanges identified

by Green Dollar Quarterly, from which he extrapolated a

membership of some 5900 in a country with a total population

of 2.7 million people (Williams 1996a). Kitco (1998)

identified 45 schemes in 1997. By 1999, Green Dollar

Quarterly listed 40 Exchanges while 17 Exchanges attended the

1999 Green Dollar conference. At a national level, the

absence of a national body means that no one knows fully what

is happening in each exchange. The table below consolidates

what is known.

18

Green Dollar Exchanges: Growth 1987-

1999

Year 1987 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999Green Dollar

Quarterly

- 38 69 55 47 40

Confirmation 2 551 172 193

1Jackson (1995) 2Williams (1996a) 3 Authors sample

The Exchanges themselves varied in size, range of services and

membership characteristics, although a lack in many cases of

comprehensive and up to date membership records means it is

not possible to draw together accurate figures for membership

levels. This is particularly the case in isolated rural

schemes. Williams research (1996a) suggested an average of

104 members, but this hides considerable diversity. As a

result of a link up with Auckland's People's Centre, Auckland

Green Dollar Exchange grew to a membership of 2040 in 1997,

which made it the worlds second largest. The People's Centre

emerged in response to the 1991 benefit cuts to campaign for

unemployed and low income people and to provide a range of

welfare and community services, including healthcare,

dentistry, haircuts and cheap meals. Automatic membership of

the Green Dollar Exchange was given to Peoples Centre members,

and the centre hosted a shop where members sold second hand

goods, jams, produce, and craft items for Green Dollars.

Wellington Green Dollar Exchange had 207 members (October

1998) across the Wellington metropolitan area, collectively

trading between G$32 and G$266 a month, a mean of G$141. Over

its five-year history the Wellington Exchange had attracted at19

total of 508 members, with an average 50 members joining a

year.

It is similarly hard to get accurate figures for trading

volume. New Zealanders' rugged independence and respect for

privacy and the climate of fear engendered by the then

Government's 'Beneficiary-dobbing' campaign means that

Exchanges do not by and large publish trading levels as these

are seen a private and personal. If they did publish figures,

these underestimate real trading levels in that there can

often be a considerable delay in between work being done, the

cheque being deposited, and accounts being updated. In other

situations, members find that they will use Green Dollars with

people they know, but in time will do each other favours,

without the use of currency.

We can analyse trading levels in more depth through case

studies of Exchanges where access to trading information was

available from the co-ordinators. New Plymouth's Taranaki LETS

was established in 1988, and with 130 members in April 1999.

The most active member's turnover was G$9941, with a mean

cumulative turnover of G$750. Similarly, Wairarapa Green

Dollars had 130 members, and a turnover of G$51,732. An

average turnover of G$487 in the Wairarapa is similar to

Williams's research which suggested a mean annual turnover of

G$448 (Williams 1996a:323). At the other end of the scale,

Christchurch's PLEBs scheme collapsed under a double blow of a

deficit of G$29,000 which led to members questioning the20

viability of the scheme, followed by the loss of $3000 to a

bankrupt Credit Union. In a deregulated neo-liberal

environment, voluntary organisations - like businesses - can

fail, leaving their clients vulnerable. A less spectacular

decline was that of WEBS in Whangerai - New Zealand's first

scheme - self-described as 'moribund' when visited in April

1999. While the listings contained the names of the 450 or so

people who had passed through the scheme since 1986, only four

members attended the last trading day. The co-ordinator, who

had recently taken over the scheme and was attempting to

resuscitate it, had no up to date information on trading

levels.

Similarly, the characteristics of members varied. Williams

(1996a) survey found that 60% of members were women, 50%

'greens/alternatives', 38% people on a low income. He argued

that "although the early green dollar Exchanges are perhaps

rightly caricatured as playthings of the environmentally

conscious, more recent ones have many more jobless and far

fewer greens" (1996a:9).

6. The performance of Green Dollar Exchanges in a neo-

liberal environment

Green Dollars were arguably as direct a response to neo-

liberalism as the People's Centres. They grew during Labour's

second term as a response to concerns about the failure of a

money system that was laying waste to the country at the alter21

of 'the debt', and the mass unemployment that emerged. If the

state no longer had a commitment to full employment, they

argued for alternative forms of livelihood a more general

desire to redefine work to take more account of the value of

part time, flexible work as well as to value other forms of

unpaid work for the community, childcare, or looking after

relatives (Hanson 1989).

The political motivations of organisers for involvement in

Green Dollars ranged from nostalgia for the conservative

paternalism of Muldoon, which advocates claimed to be a time

of security, inclusiveness and community through support for

the philosophy of Social Credit to the Alliance and Green

Parties. Social Crediters saw Green Dollars as interest-free

money that put the needs of community before those of

business. Alliance supporters stressed the social justice and

community aspects of Green Dollars, seeing them as a means of

helping those who had to get by on inadequate incomes while

they campaigned for the rebuilding of the welfare state.

Greens harkened back to Muldonian Kiwi self sufficiency. They

raged against the 'take over' of New Zealand's assets by

overseas multinationals, and called for the strengthening of

local community businesses in isolated rural towns. Given the

scale of job losses in the former public sector which often

provided the only employment in town and, with the cutting of

agricultural subsidies, low farm incomes, endogenous economies

based on local self sufficiency seemed the only alternative -

and Greens saw Green Dollars as a useful tool for22

strengthening this self sufficiency. Others, for example the

Waihiki Island community in the bay outside Auckland had a

strong 'downshifting' flavour in that the Exchange was

comprised of many who moved from the city to the island for a

slower, relaxed, ecological-orientated lifestyle that put

perceived quality of life before financial wealth or status.

However, the political climate inevitably affected Green

Dollar members. While they did not support the destruction of

the welfare state, some did not argue strongly for its

reconstruction feeling economic changes in work patterns were

inevitable, and that the welfare state of old was

unsustainable and did lead to moral hazard. They felt that

beneficiaries 'should' contribute to society, that trading in

Green Dollars helped overcome 'dependency', helped people find

work, and had sympathy for the contributory principles behind

Community Wage. Some Green Dollar programmes used Community

Wage workers, and were 'named and shamed' in People's Centre

publications for so doing. Other Exchanges were organised by

campaigners for the Greens or Alliance supporters who only

ever saw Green Dollars as a complementary community

development tool. Green Dollar participants, then, had a

variety of motivations and agendas. Some resonated with, and

some contrasted with the aspirations the neo-liberal

ideologues had for them. Either way, the state sought to use

Green Dollars for its own ends, and when push came to shove,

the Exchanges had to help their members cope in the new cold

climate. How did they fare?23

A. Green Dollars as self-help.

The first point to make is that trading levels in even the

largest schemes were, 14 years after their introduction to New

Zealand, too small to make a huge difference to large numbers

of New Zealanders. We can illustrate this through an

examination of the performance of two typical successful

schemes, Taranaki (New Plymouth) and Wairarapa. The volume of

trading from the Wairarapa Exchange in 1999-2000 is reproduced

in the table below.

Wairarapa Green Dollar ExchangeAnnual Trading Figures April 1999-March 2000

Month Total Transactions Number of transactionsApril 1999 8,094.15 116May 4,639.06 99June 3,291.30 164July 5,628.65 82August 3,965.40 100September 2,537.50 72October 4,057.45 172November 5,038.11 151Dec/Jan 2000 8,411.65 313February 2,930.10 155March 3,144.35 143Total G$ 51,737.72 1567

Exchange Total Annual Turnover G$ 51,737.72 Average Monthly Turnover G$ 4,311.48 Top Member Annual Turnover G$ 5,910.95 Average Member Annual Turnover G$ 487.71

Wairarapa's mean annual trading turnover of G$488 is boosted

by the co-ordinator's turnover of G$5,991 and includes both

income and expenditure. If the co-ordinator is removed, and

24

turnover divided by half to give an average income, the figure

is an income of approximately G$173 a year to militate against

benefit cuts in 1991 of $25 a week. Secondly, the range of

services to be accessed with these Green Dollars was limited

to home produced goods like crafts and jams, alternative

therapies, help with odd jobs and the like (although some

lucky members of one scheme were able to buy beef in bulk).

While valuable and worthwhile services, they do not meet the

basic needs of those for whom welfare had been reduced to the

extent that it was in New Zealand. Rather, in extreme need

food parcel programmes met these basic needs.

Secondly, Green Dollar schemes were not organisationally well

developed enough to meet the needs of the vulnerable, as an

examination of the trajectory of a typically successful Green

Dollar scheme, in this case New Plymouth's Taranaki Green

Dollars, demonstrates. The scheme (one of New Zealand's first)

began in 1987, during Labour's second term. The first two

years to 1989 was one in which a philosophical membership

interested in creating local money talked through the issues,

but did little trading. The few transaction slips there were

were kept in a cardboard box while systems were designed. By

1989 the scheme began to become better organised. A management

system, job descriptions and processes were designed, and the

scheme incorporated as a charitable trust run by a management

group and trustees, with day to day management by a co-

ordinator. A regular directory was produced, with markets

every six weeks for members to bring goods to trade. However,25

the directory was not always up to date, which meant that

members didn't get to know each other very quickly so trading

was slow. Other problems included management getting

overwhelmed with minutiae leading to burn out, whilst it was

hard to get volunteers to do the more complex tasks a

professional scheme needed. In time, the trustees and

management began to be seen as remote by members. Thus at the

height of problems caused by the welfare cuts, Taranaki

Exchange had made considerable attempts to make itself the

sort of business-like voluntary organisation that could be

relied on to provide an effective service to its members (and

in neo-liberal discourse, more efficiently than the state

could ever hope to) but trading was slow.

In response to feelings that needs were not being met, the

Exchange attempted to encourage more trading and

participation. The emphasis changed from Green Dollars as a

currency system to community building through a network of

neighbourhood co-ordinators ('Green Friends') who would take

responsibility for 15 to 20 members each, ensuring that they

knew and trusted each other, and were able to trade. Green

Friends could have gone a long way to help members in

difficulty to meet their needs, and ensure that no one

floundered, but the network was not fully developed as the

'philosophical membership' had paid themselves Green Dollars

to develop the scheme with a result that the account from

which those who did the administration were paid was G$13,000

is debt. Just as New Zealanders were told they had to cut26

unsustainable services to pay off the national debt, so it was

in Taranaki. Rather than acting as facilitators, the Green

Friends were given the task of assessing the credit worthiness

of members, and policing debts. When in time it was

recognised that it was all but impossible for Green Friends to

accurately assess credit worthiness, bureaucratic credit

limits were introduced.

So at the very time that needs were at their highest, the

Exchanges limited credit creation and thereby the extent that

needs could be met. The Government's beneficiary 'dobbing'

campaigns were reinscribed as concerns for individual personal

responsibility for Green Dollar accounts being run in credit,

and a concern about personal debt. Exchanges threatened to

take members to court to enforce payment on negative balances

in Kiwi Dollars. A member in Blenheim agreed to pay G$10 a

week to reduce a G$250 debt. The Waiarappa Exchange

newsletter put it baldly:

"In the case of bad debt: don't try to get away with it.

The committee has no wish to take people to court.

Remember, the Green Dollar is a unit of trust. Again,

the answer is simple: trade until your account is at

zero, and if you want you can pay the debt in Kiwi

dollars. The committee is keen to maintain a good image

and will take appropriate action when members are not

conducting themselves properly. Members should be able

to trust each other and have faith that the system won't

let them down either. Members should be aware that the27

Wairarapa Green Dollar scheme is small and word soon gets

around who can be trusted and who can't"

Complementary currency schemes usually publish the names and

balances of members, so policing can be done by the membership

collectively. Mutual aid will not be given to those who do

not contribute to the collective. However, in New Zealand a

cultural concern for privacy and the individualistic ethos of

the Kiwi with his 'section'3, compounded with the neo-liberal

onslaught against those who did not contribute, mitigated

against this collective approach. Green Dollar Exchanges were

more likely to set a credit limit and enforce it - if needs be

through the courts.

Other problems were more generalised. Green Dollar Exchanges

found it hard to meet needs in rural environments with long

distances between members who consequently never got to know

each other, develop mutual aid networks, or answer their

questions about how the new currency worked. Isolation, and

the traditional New Zealand robust independence epitomised by

the 'number nine wire' mentality 4meant that the Exchanges were

unable to do much to counter the high levels of mental illness

and extreme loneliness experienced by many rural New

Zealanders when formerly subsidised rural industries closed.

Others had no access to childcare or transport. By and large,

Maori and Pacific Islanders did not participate. While many

rural Maori had their own Whanau, Iwi5 or Mana whenau6-based

3 The plot of land on which Kiwis build a home.28

mutual aid mechanisms, urban Maori and Pacific Islanders, many

with the greatest problems, did not participate in the

Exchanges in proportionate numbers. Often things sounded

desperate, as people tried to make ends meet. For example, an

item in the Wairarapa Green Dollar Exchange Newsletter argued:

"No formal complaints have been received by the

committee, but the following incidents have been bought

to our attention, and we feel strongly that the practices

must stop! Unsupervised children attempting to steal

sales goods and otherwise causing damage to private

property during trading days; members entering houses and

helping themselves to food and petrol without prior

arrangement, and items being bought for green dollars and

then sold (often at a profit) for kiwi dollars"

Again from the Wairarapa:

"It has been noticeable that some of the trading has been

very greedy. Many members, especially new members, were

missing out because goods were being swooped on by

bargain hunters who are buying in bulk anything they can

get their hands on…. first in, first out, grabbing all

they can get, demanding purchases before the start time…

the trading meetings have been turning ugly"

Given levels of benefit that were as low as to require

beneficiaries to rely on food parcels and the limited number

4 There isn't anything that can't be fixed with a bit of ingenuity - and alength of 'number nine wire'!5 Iwi is a confederation of extended families, or Whanau.6 An area or territory, the resources of which can be used to meet theneeds of an Iwi or Whanau.

29

of goods and services purchasable for Green Dollars, it seems

that the human spirit was cheapened rather than strengthened

by the forced reliance on voluntary welfare. Worse, the

perception of beneficiaries as in some way needing to be

policed and disciplined into being productive members of

society colonised the mindset of organisers.

If Green Dollar Exchanges found were unable to meet the new

needs, other organisations emerged with a more comprehensive

range of services, such as the People's Centres. Auckland and

Wellington People's Centres both hosted Green Dollar networks,

providing the organisational infrastructure to make the

schemes work more effectively, and as we saw Auckland People's

centre members had automatic membership of Auckland Green

Dollar Exchange. Problems emerged when it became clear that

many the 2000 members recruited through the People's Centre

were unclear about how the scheme worked, what they could

offer, or how to get their needs met. Many had only joined

the Centre for medical reasons, were often unwilling to

provide services, or did not take the currency seriously.

Others found it difficult to provide a quality service. The

computer system could not handle the volume of membership, and

as a consequence directories and accounts were not produced.

The large number of traders in a geographical proximity to the

resort island of Waihiki destabilised the island's scheme as

Aucklanders with few resources flocked over to the island and

everyone had a healthy Green Dollar surplus they could not

spend. Auckland Green Dollars was thus swamped with need, was30

unable to cope, and crashed, even when supported by one of the

larger organisations established to meet the new demands. It

is not possible to say how many vulnerable Auklanders suffered

when forced to rely on voluntary provision that was not able

to meet their needs.

The obvious point then is that with Green Dollar trading at

the low levels described above, and membership of Green Dollar

Exchanges so small, local currencies are not a credible self-

help alternatives to state-led welfare in their current

incarnation. Green's prejudice in favour of some forms of

personal behaviour and responsibilities consistent with

workfare-as-disciplining led to Green Dollar schemes limiting

credit to those who needed it, and needs therefore not being

met.

What is of more interest is the extent that in Green Dollars a

nascent neo-liberal self-help welfare delivery mechanism was

being developed, and whether - as advocates claimed - the

reformulation of welfare in New Zealand retarded or promoted

the development of such mechanisms. The evidence is that the

internalisation of arguments generated at the state level

about the fiscal imperatives of balancing income and

expenditure meant that Green Dollar schemes believed they had

accumulated an unsustainable debt, cut back, and did not

finance their own development into more robust organisations

by actively marketing to new organisations and businesses and

developing new services to members. The state's neo-liberal31

ideology therefore hindered the development of the civil

society- based welfare regime it argued it wished to promote.

Critics consequently felt that irrespective of their quality

of life, so long as beneficiaries were 'independent' of state

support policy would be seen as successful. This, rather than

the development of civil society, was the policy objective.

b. Green Dollars and active welfare.

There were, then, a number of problems in expecting Green

Dollars to respond to the reduction in the value of the

welfare safetynet. Alone, Green Dollar Exchanges were unable

to step into the breach. However, rather than facilitating

such organisations as part of a long-term move from state to

voluntary-led provision, the policy environment actually

became less favourable during the 1990s through a move towards

'hard' welfare (Jones 1996). Beneficiary members were

pressured off benefit and into workfare, reducing the time

they had for developing their Exchanges, which retarded the

amount of services they could provide and thus limited their

utility as welfare providers.

During the early days of the 'experiment' in the late 1980s

the Department of Internal Affairs had promoted and funded

Green Dollar Exchanges and this was instrumental in the

establishment of many Exchanges (Jackson 1995). The official

position with regard to unemployment benefits was for

tolerance of Green Dollars with the Department of Social32

Welfare guidelines holding that benefits of trading include

helping "individuals to develop a number of skills and

abilities they might not otherwise learn" and offering the

opportunity to "test the viability of a business idea." New

Zealand benefit regulations enabled beneficiaries to earn up

to $80 a week before benefits were reduced, well within the

limits of potential earnings of a member of an average scheme

with a turnover of G$100. The state, it seems, wished to

promote individual independence, as did Green Dollars.

The reality, however, was that with the move to active welfare

WINZ's conception of 'independence' was 'not getting benefit',

rather than being financially secure. Regional offices of

WINZ (the delivery arm of DSW) decided individually how to

relate to their local Exchanges, and some offices were more

aggressive in their treatment of Green Dollar earnings than

others. For example, concerns about possible loss of NZ$

benefits from the treatment of G$ earnings led to the demise

of the Hamilton system in 1998. In Taranaki, the second most

active trader was subject to a high profile newspaper case as

a benefit 'bludger', which led to a perception in the town

that Green Dollars were some kind of benefit fiddle. WINZ

promptly demanded the trading records of the entire scheme.

Another Taranaki member was reported to the self-titled

'Benefit Crime Team' for earning Green Dollars by an angry ex-

partner. WINZ was perceived by Green Dollar members as being

interested only in scaring beneficiaries such that they left

the benefit register, rather than in actively facilitating33

their wellbeing through access to services payable with Green

Dollars. Such an atmosphere is, to put it mildly, not

conducive to building mutual aid, community and trust between

people the state actively ostracises as cheats and fraudsters.

At a philosophical level then there was a clash between the

long term strategy of developing new self-help mechanisms

within civil society (and perhaps supporting their

development); and the short term goal getting people off

benefit as quickly as possible. This clash could have been

resolved, or at least led to a more beneficial trade off for

Green Dollars, had welfare-to-work also made available

resources in the form of Community Wage-workers who could

develop Green Dollars as future self-help organisations. On

the face of it, it did. WINZ invited community organisations

to provide work placements for beneficiaries, and some Green

Dollar Exchanges responded favourably. The reality was rather

different.

An article in the People's Centre's campaigning newsletter

Mean Times (9/1 June 1998 p6/7) summarised (and countered)

arguments in favour of participation. Enthusiasts for

engaging with Community Wage workers contended that full-time

work patterns are outdated, and consequently the Community

Wage could be a step towards allocating work more equitably by

recognising the importance of part time and unpaid

contributions to society. On a similar line, workfare was

claimed to be a useful step towards a universal basic income

by legitimating community work done by beneficiaries. Third,34

there was sympathy for the Government's claims that

unemployment damages confidence and self-esteem, and that the

Community Wage enabled beneficiaries to get confidence through

work that benefits the community. A counter argument was

that workfare could be subverted by community organisations

accepting placements and using these resources to campaign and

benefit the most vulnerable. Alternatively, community

organisations could protect the most vulnerable by ensuring

that they received quality placements on Workfare that

benefited the beneficiary, the community, and the community

sector.

Opponents of involvement (including the Auckland People's

Centre) argued workfare could not be used to strengthen

community provision of welfare. They accepted that

beneficiaries needed opportunities to use and develop their

skills, and raise their confidence, but argued that the

Coalition's 'Beneficiary Dobbing' campaign showed that the

Community Wage was designed to make life on benefit unpleasant

by forcing beneficiaries to do any form of work - irrespective

of quality or its contribution to employability - such that

they left register. They opposed compulsory participation. The

Wellington's People's Centre argued that the aim was to

stigmatise the unemployed:

"The Government is keen on letting us know that there is

no such thing as a free lunch. They expect every person

to contribute to the economy. Workfare, they say, is the35

way for beneficiaries to do their bit ….they have changed

one of the few ways beneficiaries have left for

participating in their communities and retaining their

self respect into a form of punishment and degradation.

Where once being a voluntary community worker could be a

source of pride, from October it will be the brand of an

outcast." (Mean Times 9/1 June 1998 p2)

In practice, workfare did not contribute (even indirectly) to

the development of new self-help organisations as it was

fiscally driven, and those Green Dollars schemes that did

participate found that the hidden agenda militated against the

provision of quality placements that would help to grow Green

Dollars Exchanges as welfare organisations in the long term.

That it was fiscally driven was manifested in the levels of

surveillance expected over Community Wage-workers (to 'install

work discipline' (sic)) to a degree that many regarded as

punitive and demeaning. It was fiscally driven in that it was

not adequately funded. Many Green Dollar schemes found the

need to pay the Community Wage ($21 a week) in advance to the

worker was either beyond their means, or led to cash flow

problems. Further, schemes experienced bureaucracy and delay

in getting payment back from WINZ. Community organisations

felt Community Wage-workers would displace employees and

volunteers. Finally, voluntary organisations were concerned

that accepting a placement would mean loss of independence and

limit freedom for campaigning. This view was more closely held

by Green Dollar Exchanges based in the Peoples Centres (and36

therefore more closely connected to welfare campaigning) than

Exchanges that accepted placements.

Fiscal limits and the assumed need to discipline beneficiaries

into work rhythms and responsibilities therefore cut across

the extent that the Community Wage could be used to strengthen

the sort of citizen led welfare service providers that neo-

liberals argued would take up the slack from state withdrawal.

New Zealand's moralistic, penal and fiscally driven welfare

regime worked against the promotion of the citizen-led models of

welfare the neo-liberals claimed they favoured.

8. Conclusion

This small case study explodes a few myths but also points to

two contradictions in New Right welfare ideology. The neo-

liberal conception of welfare rests on one side on a

libertarian perspective on developing voluntary sector welfare

provision; but also looks to discipline beneficiaries into

paid work, which limits the amount extant that new delivery

models can be developed. A second contradiction is a social

conservatism in which the voluntary sector is expected to

become the state's moral police officer, deterring the

'profligate', the 'immoral', and deterring moral hazard. This

is a role the voluntary sector is reluctant to take on, and

encouraged resistance from those who, from a libertarian

perspective, did see a greater role for the voluntary sector -

although social authoritarian ideologies did permeate the37

perceptions of some Exchange organisers who looked to regulate

the trading behaviour of their members.

The consequence of the contradictions in neo-liberal welfare

vision are that while it was actively promoted in New Zealand,

it was never fully implemented. Rather, the

National/Coalition governments that followed Labour

degenerated into populist attacks on beneficiaries coupled

with an under-funded authoritarian hard welfare that failed to

facilitate the development of their claimed more efficient

welfare infrastructure based in civil society. So when state

welfare was cut, there was no infrastructure to take its

place. New Zealanders fell back on charity, on food parcels,

and were then forced into workfare programmes rather than

being able to access mutual aid that met their needs more

effectively than the state ever could. Those New Zealanders

who used Green Dollars to get by found provision limited in

its coverage, unreliable, of limited use, and from which they

could meet few of their real needs. In 1999 Green Dollar

Exchanges seemed to be in decline, and trading levels seemed

to be little larger than those identified by Williams and

Jackson in the early and mid-1990s.

Despite high hopes for the contribution of complementary

currencies to welfare goals (Williams1996a:322-3, Williams and

Windebank 2000:140-142), the overall lesson of the experience

of Green Dollars in times when welfare levels were cut and the

environment stressed independence and self reliance rather38

than support and inclusion is that perhaps it is time to lay

to rest the fallacy that self-help can replace state

provision. Rather than a utopia, New Zealanders went through

what Onyx and Dovey (1999) called 'the time of cholera'; a

hard-faced, difficult time in which the vulnerable were

stigmatised and the need for 'balanced books' reified. This

is not in any way to disparage the hard work of those citizens

who did their best to fill the gap left when the state

drastically cut provision. In developing their Exchanges,

they did as well as their British cousins in LETS of whom the

UK Government has similar high hopes (Barnes, North and Walker

1996, North 1996, 2000). My argument is that voluntary

provision, in this example, failed completely to meet needs

previously met by the state where the state cuts back and

expects the voluntary sector to take over. Green Dollars can

only be seen as complementary to, not a replacement for state

provision.

They can, though, also be seen as spaces within civil society

where localised production and mutual aid (Douthwaite 1995,

Hines 2000) can be practised, refined and demonstrated to a

wider society (North 1999). While they may be pre-figurative

of a move to a Kropotkinite society or useful adjuncts to

mainstream policy in environments like inner cities (North

1996, Williams 1996b,c), to ignore their current 'ephemeral

nature' (Mulgan and Landry 1995) is to risk being taken

advantage of by those who wish to cut state provision (Offe

and Heinz 1992). To be more than pre-figurative, they need to39

develop considerably. But the New Zealand example shows that

a neo-liberal environment that privileges paid work and

disciplines citizens into paid work through active welfare

does not easily provide the space in which genuinely

beneficial, bottom up welfare vehicles like Green Dollar

Exchanges can be developed. Neo-liberals should, perhaps,

think long and hard about the emphasis on paid work and

utility of a social conservatism that presumes to tell people

how to live their lives rather the giving them the freedom to

develop the sort of diverse welfare models, within civil

society, that could more effectively enable economic

independence.

40

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Footnotes

45