Defintion of exchange (was: [ox-en] RE: Open Money?)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 14:18:34 +0100
Hi Kermit and all!
Yesterday Kermit Snelson wrote:
Stefan Merten:
This pops up the question what capitalist means to you. I understand
any society based on exchange as capitalist - even the former Soviet
Union.
By that definition, even a colony of ants qualifies as capitalist. What do
you mean by "exchange"?
Indeed that's the right question here. I'll try to give a definition:
* Exchange means that something is exchanged between two parties. I.e.
both party get something.
This delimits exchange from unidirectional flows such as we see in
Free Software.
Moreover this needs two separated parties to exist. When there are
no separated parties there is no need to exchange. This delimits
societies based on exchange - which need to have separated parties -
from other societies - which need not have separated parties in the
sense exchange based societies need them.
For material commodities this usually means that the giving party
looses the commodity while giving. This is not true for information
commodities and this is the basic reason you need artificial things
like copyright stating what is obviously not factual.
* To make an exchange on a rational basis, there must be a common
ground to base the exchange on.
Economists for long wondered what this common ground might be when
looking at money / commodity exchange and I go along with Marx'
analysis that it is the societal average amount of labor embodied in
a commodity. This rather abstract thing is called (exchange) value
and is reflected in the prices of a commodity. Money in this sense
is only the concrete abstraction of value.
This common ground delimits exchange from mutual flows without such
a common ground. Because (I guess) ants have no notion of value they
do not exchange - despite the fact that they organize a flow of
matter which at some times may even be mutual.
This delimits exchange from flows which take place because of brute
force. Well, this might be reconsidered, but I think it does not
make sense to count robbery as exchange.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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