http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-27/anthropologist-graeber-turns-radical-side-loose-in-zuccotti-park.html
>From the article
[snip]
Economics textbooks tell a story in which money and markets arise out of
the human tendency to "truck and barter," as Adam Smith put it. Before
there was money, Smith argued, people would trade seven chickens for a
goat, or a bag of grain for a pair of sandals. Then some enterprising
merchant realized it would be easier to just price all of them in a
common medium of exchange, like silver or wampum. The problem with this
story, anthropologists have been arguing for decades, is that it doesn't
seem ever to have happened.
No Example
"No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been
described, let alone the emergence from it of money," writes
anthropologist Caroline Humphrey, in a passage Graeber quotes.
People in societies without money don't barter, not unless they're
dealing with a total stranger or an enemy. Instead they give things to
each other, sometimes as a form of tribute, sometimes to get something
later in return, and sometimes as an outright gift.
Money, therefore, wasn't created by traders trying to make it easier to
barter; it was created by states like ancient Egypt or massive temple
bureaucracies in Sumer so that people had a more efficient way of paying
taxes, or simply to measure property holdings. In the process, they
introduced the concept of price and of an impersonal market, and that
ate away at all those organic webs of mutual support that had existed
before.
Ancient History
That's ancient history, literally. So why does it matter? Because money,
Graeber argues, turns obligations and responsibilities, which are social
things, into debt, which is purely financial. The sense we have that
it's important to repay debts corrupts the impulse to take care of each
other: Debts are not sacred, human relationships are.
[snip]
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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