ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) can best be conceptualised as a heterogeneous social movement, a contested space. It analyses the claims LETS participants make about what the stakes in the struggle are. The chapter examines the extent to which participants in LETS see what they are doing as political, and if so, what political claims they make. The official policy of the Manchester LETS Core Group, and of LETSGo, is that LETS has no values or politics in and of itself. The conviction that LETS is 'a very good piece of green politics in action' was raised by many participants in Manchester LETS, many of whom were active greens, either Green Party supporters or sympathisers. The Manchester LETS anarchists fall into the non-violent, Ghandian brand of Anarchism rather than the violent, Bakuninite class struggle Anarchism associated with newspapers such as 'Green Anarchist' or 'Class War'.
