At some point throughout your schooling history, you’ve heard this story.
Even today, any basic economics textbook will tell of how back in the ancient times before
the creation of money, man used to trade and barter.
If you had shirts and needed spears, you’d have to find a neighborhood spear-maker.
But not just any spear-maker, they’d need to be willing to trade the weapons for shirts.
It was a bit of a hassle, and way too complex, but for small communities this basic system
of barter was enough to get you what you needed.
People eventually wised up and standardized the process through physical money and thus
money was born.
Adam Smith was the first to popularize the idea of ancient barter systems in 1776.
To Adam Smith, it was something innate in humanity, “the propensity to truck, barter,
and exchange one thing for another.”
It might seem like a topic with little relevance to today, but the story of trade had fundamentally
changed how we came to view the world around us.
The drive to maximize value through barter became an innate biological behavior.
Humans eat, groom, and barter.
Too bad no one bothered to fact check Adam Smith, because he was completely wrong.
Within communities, people actually lived under gift economies.
Going back to the shirts and spears, instead of bartering, you’d find your neighborhood
spear-guy and the exchange would go something like this.
“Hey, nice spear!”
“Oh this old thing?
It’s alright, but if you like it, take it!”
“Thanks guy!”
And that was it.
There was nothing you had to exchange back, just the knowledge that you would have your
neighbors back if he needed something was enough.
When trading with people outside of your village, that’s when barter would occur.
While trade rituals varied endlessly by different traditions, these were often tense and violent
encounters.
No matter how amicable people were on the outside, barter meant preparing for potential
battle if an individual felt swindled.
A world where everyone’s at each-other’s throats is unsustainable, and barter is necessarily
competitive, which is why the overwhelming amount of trade throughout human history has
occurred via gifts.
I mean, if the world related entirely through impersonal trade, we wouldn’t see the end
of conflict, wars and…
Oh shi-! [explosion!]
So without this as the origin of money, where did money come from?
Well, it’s impossible to precisely say how money began to be used, but there’s no shortage
of evidence that the evolution of the state and money were deeply interlinked.
In fact, the very first records of writing are, astoundingly, financial and tax records.
A prevailing theory holds that as warlords acquired more and more land, they would declare
a set currency, such as crude gold or silver, pay their soldiers with it and force conquered
people to accept it.
So right out the window the naturalistic theory of the origins of money goes.
Karl Marx dubbed ancient human civilizations ‘primitive communism’ for their adherence
to “From each according to their ability to each according their need.” and it has
received endorsement by modern anthropologists.
So why is the myth so enduring when we stopped teaching female inferiority and native savagery
ages ago?
The answer is a whole lot more cynical than you might think.
Modern capitalist philosophy was built upon these lies.
Existing economic systems don’t have to be justified if they’re an extension of
natural human relations, if it’s just how the world works.
The economic sphere, the market, all this can be separated from anthropology and sociology
into its own scientific sphere.
Sure, capitalism might not be the greatest, but if we hold these myths to be true, then
modern capitalism, with all its high falutin tech and stocks, is just window-dressing over
what really is a primordial system.
Rational choice theory remains a widely held view in the western world.
It holds that humans are naturally rational actors who aim to maximize their benefit at
the cost of everyone else.
Yet this is false, overwhelmingly so.
But trying telling the capitalists and libertarians that money is only possible through the state,
and they’ll probably faint in shock.
And so the reality of history has been mainly confined to academia, and I guess YouTube
videos.
But without rational choice, what’s left?
Daddy Marx doesn’t have all the answers either, in fact, his theory of history is
a bit of a simplified fairy tale.
Renowned anthropologist David Graeber goes into depth on how “primitive communism”
has remained with us, even to today.
But this requires a bit of a culture shock: egoism and altruism as we understand them
aren’t biologically engrained things, they’re a relatively new phenomenon.
Pretty blasphemous right?
We tend to order all of our interactions on an egoist or altruist dichotomy.
Market and business affairs, egoist.
Family and friends, mainly altruist.
And even sociologists have spent decades finding ways to explain even selfless behavior as
narcissism in disguise.
But in cultures without markets, money, or private property, they generally lack the
concepts and language to describe selfish and selfless behavior.
On the other hand, they have much more nuanced language to describe “envy, solidarity,
pride, and the like.”
Peculiar behavior to us, like a family amassing massive wealth only to give it all away to
their rivals to humiliate them is just one example of the range of behaviors that don’t
quite fit the egoist-altruist mold.
Yet, this ideological hole we’re stuck in makes sense.
If we live in a society where the economic mode requires us to be entirely selfish and
focused on acquiring capital in business affairs, the later emergence of world religions and
philosophy that reject egoism and materialism in social affairs as a response seems inevitable.
Total altruism as concept is only possible as a response to total egoism.
To recap, without the myth of barter and the origins of money, we see that economic relations
are not confined to their own scientific sphere but are just another aspect of human relations
that can be analyzed anthropologically and sociologically.
And through thorough analysis of cultures that have foregone slave, feudal and capitalist
developments, we see that holding altruism and egoism as the primary and natural form
of human existence is inadequate.
Like I mentioned earlier, in gift economies, when spearguy gave you his spear, there’s
an expectation of solidarity, a knowledge that you would and will do the same for spearguy
when he’s in need.
Unlike in market economies, where this exchange is quantified formally through money or credit,
in gift economies, the spirit of solidarity is what drove primitive communism forward.
But instead of what Marx had theorized, primitive communism didn’t see a decisive end with
the onset of slave societies.
Let’s define communism more broadly as the spirit of solidarity, Graeber dubbed this
definition “base communism”; “a recognition of our ultimate interdependence[,] that is
the ultimate substance of social peace.”
By digging deeper, we actually find that this is still the primary way we relate to each-other.
Think of any interaction you’ve had where you gave to others in which the thought of
keeping tabs would be so ludicrous as to be offensive?
When was the last time you refused to open the door for a stranger unless you were compensated?
The last time you engaged in hard barter in a group project to ensure you worked the least?
Or the last time you demanded payment for the emotional labor you give your friends
and loved ones?
Never because that’s ridiculous!
We don’t give each-other enough credit.
We engage in basic communism, social solidarity every-day, attuned to small social injustices
and giving the slightest hints of amicability with strangers.
We do this much more than we engage in “social capitalism” or egoism in the market.
The only thing that’s changed from the ancient times is that we’ve accepted the economy
as a distinct space where we’re allowed to perform our egoism.
We’ve bought into the myth of the barter.
But that’s a lie, that, increasingly, we can’t continue to hold.