On Sun, 15 Jan 2012, Alan Rudy wrote:
> I am a little flummoxed by (what I think is) Michael's assertion that
> Marx argued that there was a real material time when all exchange was
> exclusively based on barter
Not all exchange. Any exchange. As far as anthropologists and archeologists can tell based on the evidence, there has never in history been a single society where barter preceded a money equivalent. It always and everywhere came after the breakdown of such a system.
Whereas all economists always argue that first you have barter, and then you have a money equivalent, which evolved out of it.
I what to stress this is not Marx's fault in the least. This is a premise he completely shares with mainstream economists. It is in fact the one belief economists of all schools share no matter how heterodox. And it just happens to be utterly, factually wrong.
Michael