Doug Henwood wrote: > > On Aug 12, 2006, at 4:51 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > > > The origin of money (or some sort of universal product) was in > > international trade. Money is needed _precisely_ when the 'trading' > > parties don't share anything. > > Why international? Why not just to avoid the inconvenience of "the > double coincidence of wants"? Is that historically true?
It's been a long time since I read material on this. Within a community 'exchange' would be merely exchange of accidental surpluses of usable products (we are speaking of very early times). In Mycenae even tribute to the Palace was in goods. Presumably the local _basiliae_ (from memory, probably misspelled) recieved it from the local peasants in that form. Linear B has nothing in it remotely corresponding to money as far as I can remember. A trader might travel to 5 or 6 or more quite different places in the Mediterranean. (And at this state, of course, whatever word they used for "merchant" could be translated into English as "pirate,"amd "merchant" or perhaps even "slaver.") So one would need something that was acceptable in several different places of quite radically diffeent local 'economies.' And leaping steps that I either never knew or have forgotten (or that nobody knows) such traders would began to prefer whatever was relatively light, more or less divisible, and desired by almost everyone. Copper. Silver. Gold. You can get some of the flavor of it (again, if I'm remembering correctly) from M.I. Finley's _The Ancient Economy_ and _The World of Odysseus_. I think Gordon Chile's writings (Man Makes Himself) have been mostly superceded, but it might have some relevant material that was still regarded as valid. Carrol > > Doug
