Charles -------------
: The origins of trade
The origins of trade * From: Michael N
In at least two places Marx identifies the origins of exchange in communities coming into contact with each other. He reject the notion that exchange is rooted in some individual propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. The two passages by Marx that I'm thinking about are printed below.
Can anyone here point me to anthropological, historical or any other writings that would lend support to Marx's claim.
Thanks, Michael N.
it is simply wrong to place exchange at the center of communal society as the original, constituent element. It originally appears, rather, in the connection of the different communities with one another, not in the relations between the different members of a single community. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#4
the exchange of products springs up at the points where different families, tribes, communities, come in contact; for, in the beginning of civilisation, it is not private individuals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent footing. Different communities find different means of production, and different means of subsistence in their natural environment. Hence, their modes of production, and of living, and their products are different. It is this spontaneously developed difference which, when different communities come in contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the consequent gradual conversion of those products into commodities. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch14.htm [SECTION 4: DIVISION OF LABOUR IN MANUFACTURE, AND DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY]
Richard Harris
Chris Arthur deals with this at: http://marxmyths.org/chris-arthur/article2.htm
CB: One of Arthur's main points seems to be that Engels misinterpreted Marx by claiming that a socalled simple commodity production was a historical actuality. That Marx's elementary discussion of commodity and value is a Hegelian logical and not historical actual one.
What occurs to me is that Marx early Capital discussion certainly says that commodity exchange went on in the societies before capitalism. He says they tended to be on the periphery and between societies. The main production in societies before capitalism was for use and exchange between direct users, not exchange as commodities. That's his claim. I don't think history, archaeology or anthropology have found this to be false empirically.
We think from archaeology that there was "trade" or commodity exchange as early as Mesopotamia 3000 BC. And soon with money.
Perhaps the Neolithic had forms that were closest to barter, without the money commodity. Precious metals are ideal money commodity, although precious stones...?
There was commodity exchange in feudalism, but the main labor and productive forms are in the manor, castle and building masons (?), and other production for use.
The commodity exchange of capitalism is more "complex" than earlier forms in that labor power becomes a commodity, and commodity production and exchange relations move from the periphery of society to the center, to dominate the whole ecomomy.
As an archaeology buff, I am very interested in using the discussion in Capital as a generator of hypotheses concerning the historically bartering societies, or stone age exchange, gift, barter and precious/special stones (?). Also, Engels' essay on the law of value and profit. In general, Marx and Engels, not only in Capital, but elsewhere , in _Feuerbach_ even, generate interesting theory , historical theory , of historical science, concerning these ancient trading practices. It might be suggestive of ideology in such a period. I think it has critical ideas for generating hypotheses regarding the origin of arithmetic; and perhaps arithmetic as an ideology arising in the era of barter and simple commodity production and exchange. A commodity exchange implies that two different things are identical. Identical in _quantity_ of something. This is a fundamentally dialectical concept, unity and struggle of opposites, and fundamental quantitative, and therefore mathematical concept, with an origin in real human history suggested by the corresponding point of origin of commodity exchange, trade, commerce, the market. *