> That's perfectly correct. But whatever Marx says in this passage (and I
> think it's disputable) the beginning of Capital Vol I is the most detailed
> example of the ideal barter story I can call to mind. First you have
> exchange of good for good, i.e., pure barter; then you have a generalized
> equivalent, i.e., a trade good in terms of which other things are measured;
> and then that general equivalent (or a representation thereof) becomes
> money.
OK, here's how I see the difference between Graeber's position on the barter myth and a Marxish position I would defend. I don't want to defend everything Marx says in that chapter, or how he says it. It is confusing and unconvincing today I think - largely because of his Hegelian way of arguing there - but it can be redeveloped as a functionalist argument.
Graeber complains about the barter myth essentially because it's an abstraction - "this is just a make-believe land much like the present, except with money somehow plucked away. As a result it makes no sense: Who in their right mind would set up a grocery in such a place? And how would they get supplies?" (p. 23) And he sees it as a politically-motivated abstraction: "Adam Smith... objected to the notion that money was a creation of government... insisting that property, money and markets not only existed before political institutions but were the very foundation of human society." (p. 24)
Graeber's strategy against this abstraction is to show that there never was any such make-believe land - instead, money has its historical origins in state decree. In this he joins a long tradition of chartalist argument - as he acknowledges. This is damning to the very enterprise of economics, or political economy, because it is "only by making such an argument [i.e. that property, money and markets existed before political institutions] that [Adam Smith] could insist that economics is itself a field of human inquiry with its own principles and laws - that is, as distinct from, say ethics or politics." (p. 24)
Marx would agree that there is no possibility of a capitalism without money. But as part of an abstract discussion of the functions of money, the barter myth has a legitimate place. There is a fundamental and important distinction in Marx between explaining how a major mistake, like Keynes and other chartalists, in thinking that you can establish that money is in essence "a creation of government" simply by tracing its origins. This is a mistake because money plays a role within a broader social system. It has no essence beyond its role (though it is more than its role in the sense that it involves material things and practices which are capable of evolving in ways incompatible with the system as it is, which may change the system). Marx uses something very much like the barter myth as an abstraction in order to elaborate money's synchronic place within the capitalist system, with no implication that it actually evolved in that way.
Marx obviously did not believe commodity exchange or capitalism was a state of natural law. But he did believe, in contrast to Graeber, that there were economic phenomena which could not be reduced to "say ethics or politics" - they developed behind humanity's back without conscious plan, and had to be understood with political economy. He was very concerned, for political reasons, to counter the idea that money was a creation of government - this comes out very clearly in the Grundrisse just before the draft of the sections which would become Ch 1 of Capital. He argues against the Proudhonists that the state could reform the money system in various ways - because it did not control the primarily private system of exchange and production in which money circulated. This, I think, is why he was concerned to show that money emerged - in a systematic but not historical sense - from a system of commodity exchange: if the thing circulating as money became dysfunctional, the system would 'route around' it by revaluing or replacing it with a more stable money. (For the same reason, Keynes' chartalism is of very little importance to the rest of his work, to Graeber's disappointment - because while the state may print the numbers on the bills, it has no control over the price lists and hence the value of money.)
One last thing on the role of historical explanations: in his response forwarded by Nathan the other day, Graeber wrote this (first quoting a passage from his book):
>"Here we come face to face with a peculiar paradox. It would seem that
>almost all elements of financial apparatus that we've come to
>associate with capitalism-central banks, bond markets, short selling,
>brokerage houses, speculative bubbles, securization, annuities came
>into being not only before the science of economics (which is per
>haps not too surprising), but also before the rise of factories, and
>wage labor itself."
>It struck me that this was the challenge I was throwing out to Marxist
>theorists. I don't think Marxist theorists are beyond answering it,
>not by any means, but it's an interesting question and deserves addressing.
I absolutely agree that it's an interesting question - but it's been probably the central question of Marxian historiography since Marx himself! It is certainly not news that commercial, mercantile and financial capital long pre-date capitalism. Once you see social explanation as involving explanation of how a system fits together (among other things), analysis of its history becomes much more complicated - it's not just a question of looking for the origins of some of its essential components. It calls for a kind of explanation of the evolution of systems, the interplay of function and dysfunction, interlocking strategies, and so on.
Mike