[p2p-research] quote on early history as gift economies

Fri Feb 20 03:15:23 CET 2009

thanks David,

David Graeber has written a whole book examining 'value' throughout
different (anthropological) societies.

I think the other David must have had the same experience as me during my
university years, I was explicitely taught the barter-leads-to-market story,
with no mention at all of the gift economy, a notion I only encountered
years ago. Perhaps neoclassical economists have evolved over time,
integrated other types of knowledge ..

Still, there is a difference between saying, early economies had barter,
which was complicated, so they invented tokens which became money and
ultimately resulted in capitalism and the other story which is: we had gift
economies, but when force intervened, we created debt, which eventually
resulted in the necessity of inventing money ...

Whether force is constituent to the human experience, even before the advent
of unequal class societies, is  perhaps difficult to resolve, but I tend to
believe that it is inherent to the human condition; this is why I think the
state cannot be simply abolished, and I'm not an anarchist.

You are right about 'economies' being a misleading term, and I have read
remarks of Graeber in the same sense, it's an industrial concept we are
projecting backwards, but perhaps also a distinction we have learned to see;
so I think it is okay to use by analogy, as long as we know its limitations.

This brings me to the crux of the debate: the role of networks.

Like hierarchies, and markets, I do not see them in a univocal way. Rather,
hierarchies can be feudal, or meritocratic; markets can be capitalist, or
not; and similarly for networks: they cannot be divorced from the class
structure of society, even as they have their own 'independent' effect of
society which adapt these forms. But these forms will be thoroughly adapted
and changed through the process of differential adoption.

So, my view is the following: networks first arose for the privileged elite
through private networks (multinationals and such), then became democratized
and peer to peer. This leads to widespread adoption of new economic,
political and social practices, which are more productive in many ways than
the earlier modes. Hence, peer production, governance and property, as 3 new
modes. As more productive ways of doing things, they are not only practiced
by the bottom of society, but by all sectors, which initially use them
within the existing dominant mode, just as early capitalist practices were
used to strengthen an ailing feudal order. But as it is adapted it also
changes the order, and new social forces are organizing around it. Chiefly,
the knowledge workers and other associated producers on one hand, but also
what I call 'netarchical capitalists', who created new forms of activity and
business based on 'enabling and empowering social production'.

As our infinite growth mechanism is hitting its limits, it is groping for a
change towards markets which include former externalities (green
capitalism), but also realizing it can't be done, or much less effectively,
without adopting much wider participatory practices (co-creation, co-design,
crowdsourcing, peer production and sharing modes of all kinds), hence, the
force of the new modes of peer production, governance and property are
growing, from emergence to eventual equivalence.

If the current infinite growth system succeeds in being a natural
capitalism, that may be the end of the story, otherwise, a phase transition
will eventual occur, with the former core mode becoming a subsystem in a new
meta-system based on peer to peer dynamics.

Will this totally eliminate force? I do not think so, but it may
significantly reduce their centrality to social life. But we can already see
that successful networks or peer production efforts also deal with threats
to their existence, i.e. to violence directed at them (even if through
spamming, trolling, etc...). So there are three elements to network
production: 1) enabling participation; 2) finding mechanisms for selection
of excellence that are no threat to that universal participation and
availability; and 3) defense against threats.

Michel

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:15 AM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:

>
> many thanks, michel, for including me on this.  but i find it confusing.  i
> also find it confused, for i think the author is conflating.  i'm not aware
> that any major social theorist has grandly claimed that societies once had
> economies based solely on barter.  that barter may have been an important
> element, yes.  and that barter preceded money, yes.  but that's a narrower
> and different kind of claim.
>
> perhaps there are economists who claim that barter came first, but the
> conceptual hinge for them may be that, from their perspective, economies do
> not exist unless material trade is taking place.  however, the economists i
> happened to see at lunch today, though not historians, saw no particular
> reason to start economic history with barter, and a couple thought it could
> start with gifts, esp if the gifts had an exchange aspect.
>
> but that raises another matter.  early tribes depend significantly on
> gifting.  we've agreed on that before, citing mauss in particular, and
> graeber seems to be in agreement too.  but are we really talking about a
> "gift economy" with ancient tribes.  not exactly.  especially not if there
> is no economy per se that is separable from what else goes on in a tribe.
>  and particularly not if the purpose of the gifting is to create honorable
> relationships and social solidarity, rather than just to engage in
> potentially equal material exchanges.
>
> but perhaps i'm not seeing the point you wanted me to see.
>
> in any case, i took a look at his long article and something else caught my
> eye:  he claims that "neither states nor markets can exist without the
> constant threat of force."  he repeats this at various points, once or twice
> referring to "societies" instead of "states" since "Societies' are really
> states."  i'd question this, but i'd rather raise another point:  tribes
> also have not existed without the threat of force.  tribes often get
> idealized, perhaps especially by people fed up with states/hierarchies and
> markets.  but tribes can turn out to be as based on force and violence as
> other forms of organization.  if the author were to add this to his
> analysis, i wonder where it would lead.
>
> which leads to a question:  what about the kinds of information-age
> networks that you and i are hopefully counting on?  as an emerging form of
> organization, they look marvelous and necessary (in my timn view, as much so
> as tribes, hierarchies, and markets).  but their present-day emergence is,
> in many areas, tied to the nature of force.  and some networks may turn out
> in practice, once embedded in future multiform societies, to reflect the
> roles of force, even though many networks will be directed at the public
> good.  does this end up meaning that all forms of societal organization
> depend, to some extent, on the possibility of force?
>
> just a thought.  and i'm not entirely sure about it.  but it relates to
> some propositions for the timn framework i'm trying to develop.  i'll
> eventually get around to elaborating.
>
> meanwhile, i'll leave you with two quotes i happen to have handy that
> relate a bit to all this and get at contrasting dynamics that underlie
> civilization (though i'm not sure the author above approves much of what
> others know as civilization):
>
>        "All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on
> success in war."  (Kenneth Clark, Civilisation: A Personal View (New York:
> Harper & Row, 1969, p. 18)
>
>        "Every living culture must possess some spiritual dynamic, which
> provides the energy necessary for that sustained social effort which is
> civilization."  (Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion: An Historical
> Inquiry (London: Sheed and Ward, 1929; reissued: Washington, D.C.: The
> Catholic University of America Press, 2001, pp. 3-4)
>
> enough.  onward.
>
> ===
>
>
> On Feb 18, 2009, at 11:46 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
>  Dear friends,
>>
>> this is a quote from anthropologist david graeber, that has a bearing on
>> our earlier discussions on how to characterize tribal societies:
>>
>> "One of the traditional roles of the economic anthropologist is to point
>> out that the standard narrative set out in economic textbooks – the one we
>> all take for granted, really, that once upon a time there was barter; that
>> when this became too inconvenient, people invented money; that eventually,
>> this lead to abstract systems of credit and debt, banking, and the New York
>> Stock Exchange – is simply wrong. There is in fact no known example of a
>> human society whose economy is based on barter of the 'I'll give you ten
>> chickens for that cow' variety. Most economies that don't employ money – or
>> anything that we'd identify as money, anyway – operate quite differently.
>> They are, as French anthropologist Marcel Mauss famously put it, 'gift
>> economies' where transactions are either based on principles of open-handed
>> generosity, or, when calculation does take place, most often descend into
>> competitions over who can give the most away. What I want to emphasise here,
>> though, is what happens when money does first appear in something like it's
>> current form (basically, with the appearance of the state). Because here, it
>> becomes apparent that not only do the economists get it wrong, they get it
>> precisely backwards. In fact, virtual money comes first. Banking, tabs, and
>> expense accounts existed for at least 2 thousand years before there was
>> anything like coinage, or any other physical object that was regularly used
>> to buy and sell things, anything that could be labeled 'currency'.
>> (http://www.metamute.org/en/content/debt_the_first_five_thousand_years)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
>> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
>> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>>
>> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>
>> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>
>
>

-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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