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tigmeister

13,672 Posts.

128

03/08/20

20:30

Post #: 46275419
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Originally posted by Parsifal: ↑

i am not so sure that your view of barter in these societies is right though - but i do think it depends on how you are seeing the term. things are only owned collectively in a general sense but in fact status is defined by different items. In parts of PNG for example it was defined by the number of pigs an individual owned, the bride price was defined by the characteristics and status of the bride and the wealth of the groom's family and so on. there is evidence that dates back way earlier than colonial times of different currencies being used. adornments served a dual purpose as they also represented wealth.

I'm not so up on more recent anthropologists but keesings work on the Kwaio is regarded as thorough and meticulous and continues to be referenced even today. he specifically looked at bartering and also the way that was controlled through the chiet even though it was between individuals.

so my thought is that where the debate exists it is definitional more than anything else - what you or someone else means by money - vs currency vs economic exchange etc

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Yes, definition is the problem.

Originally posted by whereu: ↑

In herder society we have the rise of private property, and hereditary ownership passed through the linage of the father, (or patriarchy). That is the more significant prerequisite that must occur before any type of barter can occur. Private property had to exist first before there can be any type of barter. As to such a society "agreeing" that so many shells or lumps of metal are equal to so many cows, that is nonsense. Money was invented by the state, for enforcement of penalties.

I lived in Southern Africa for about 40 years and what you state here sounds like an over-complication. Sure, people had to have something that was of value to others and to desire something that others had in order to barter. That was and still is enough to barter. In pre-colonial days, most people even in "herder societies" did not own land; land was a communal asset which resulted in clashes when tribal chiefs gave the colonials permission to use communal land to graze their cattle; colonials thought that the permission was tantamount to handing over property rights.

The hunter gather San moved around in small clans depending on resources and clans met periodically to exchange goods (to barter). Again bartering was dependent on people having something that was of value to others and to desiring something that others had.

That was enough to barter and still is everywhere.

Bartering doesn't rely on preset valuations of goods/services being bartered. It often is just a matter of a gut feel assessment of value not unlike most of us agreeing to a price of most things when we purchase everyday goods and services.

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The economists use a theory of spot trade barters between strangers and then they rationalise from this that one commodity becomes more barterable for spot trades, and this gradually evolved into money. The problem is that what you are defining as barter and what we actually find in these ancient societies is not the type of spot trade barter between strangers who have no social obligations to each other. The definitions you are giving for what constitutes barter are very different to the type of barter that the economists use to arrive at their theory of free market money, being created by higglers and hagglers in market stalls free of government influence.

In reality in these villages there are no spot trades between strangers, as David Graeber pointed out, and if a man wants something he simply says I like that, and the neighbour says, it is yours you can have it with no strings attached, but everyone knows he is in debted for some future favour in return.

This is not the type of spot trade "barter" between strangers that should have created the need for the invention of money.

Besides, whenever I have posted on HC that government could easily employ the unemployed if it chose simply by deficit spending with newly minted currency, I get hit with the hyperinflation argument, and here you are telling me that people used cowrie shells as money unenforced by government, it's ludicrous.
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