> What Marx wrote just before the passage you quote is the following:
>
> "Direct barter, the spontaneous form of exchange, signifies the beginning of
> the transformation of use-values into commodities rather than the
> transformation of commodities into money. Exchange-value does not acquire an
> independent form, but is still directly tied to use-value. . . . In fact,
> the exchange of commodities evolves originally not within primitive
> communities, [11] but on their margins, on their borders, the few points
> where they come into contact with other communities.This is where barter
>begins and moves thence into the interior of the community, exerting a
>disintegrating influence upon it. The particular use-values which, as a
>result of barter between different communities, become commodities, e.g.,
>slaves, cattle, metals, usually serve also as the first money within these
>communities. . . . The gradual extension of barter, the growing number of
>exchange transactions, and the increasing variety of commodities bartered
>lead, therefore, to the further development of the commodity as exchange-
>value, stimulates the formation of money and consequently has a
>disintegrating effect on direct barter."
Doesn't this prove my point, though? The historical barter Marx is discussing here is not the myth Graeber complains about, an inconvenient but otherwise unchanged capitalism without money. It happens between different communities. It spreads into the interior of communities not so much as generalised barter, but by the key goods of the inter-community barter coming to act as money internally, i.e. as standard of value etc.
> Yes, money didn't evolve out of generalised commodity exchange, but I thought
> the question raised was whether it evolved out of a previous existence of
> barter. Marx regards those as two different questions. The passage you cited
> is quite compatible with the idea that (a) direct barter is not a system of
> generalised commodity exchange, (b) barter is a previous form of exchange
> that, as it spreads and develops further, encourages the emergence of money,
> (c) and money in turn facilitates the transition to generalised commodity
> exchange, which in turn "has a disintegrating effect on direct barter". Thus,
> continuing on to the sentences you quote, Marx says that the bourgeois
> economists are wrong in seeing only technological issues separating barter
> and money.
Absolutely - I think you're right about what Marx is saying there.
Mike