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.
On 8/12/06, Doug Henwood wrote:
Why international? Why not just to avoid the inconvenience of "the double coincidence of wants"? Is that historically true?
Doug, I think you're falling for the textbook barter vs. money dichotomy fallacy. It really should a be barter-exchange vs. money-based exchange vs. non-exchange systems choice. In an organization not using money internally, the double coincidence of wants makes exchange so expensive to organize that if barter is the only choice, people go for other ways of distributing products and coordinating the division of labor besides money. Polanyi writes about reciprocity and redistribution within communities/tribes/clans/extended families. Textbooks talk about tradition and command as substitutes for trade, but we should democratic agreement among relative equals as another alternative to exchange. In Marx at least, trade originated not internationally but between communities. I'd guess that was because within communities reciprocity, redistribution, command, tradition, and democracy are used (as part of the seamless web of kinship). And it should be mentioned that the original exchange was seen as a substitute for war, looting, etc. -- Jim Devine / "It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why an economist may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense...." -- Joseph Schumpeter [edited]
