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[1 <text/plain; iso-8859-1 (quoted-printable)>] Depends what you mean by money. If you mean coinage or banknotes and all that follows, these have a clear origin with Lydia in the west in the 8th C bc and with the spade and hoe tokens issued by the chinese empire. The origin of money is closely linked with state finance. It is a myth that it originates with barter. Inghams book 'The Nature of Money' gives a good account, see also the work of the economist Randall Wray. A summary is in http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/papers/Arestis-Sawyer-Chapter%2005.pdf Paul Cockshott Dept of Computing Science University of Glasgow [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED] www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ -----Original Message----- From: owner-list-en oekonux.org on behalf of Samuel Rose Sent: Sun 7/13/2008 5:56 PM To: list-en oekonux.org Subject: Re: Money as a dominant social relation (was: Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money") [Converted from multipart/alternative] [1 text/plain] Christian, While I agree with your point, I probably should clarify mine to state that where human civilization has emerged, money of some form has quite often if not usually emerged. Some colleagues of mine that are Archaeologists argue that "human civilization" (ie humans living in towns with markets etc) goes back as far as 10,000 years. This includes recent work that a friend has done on the very earliest known Egyptian civilizations, plus work on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk where things like obsidian and shells were used for trade tokens, etc. it's a technology of convenience. I do agree with you that it hasn't emerged universally (until recent times). I agree that it wasn't really dominant until 300-500 years ago, this is when in the West the paradigm of people "expressing self for materialistic gain" (rf Clare W Graves) really started to emerge on a wide scale. So, the point that people once used money in ways that did not over-extend the medium of money proves the point that money is not always inherently in and of itself, but that it is the assumptions people have about money, and their shared understanding of how it is best used that is the problem. Once again, I will re-suggest that for p2p systems, that money can be pushed out to the periphery of systems (which is basically what is already happening). I do agree that humans could theoretically live without money. But, I also contend that it is unlikely that humans will do so in our lifetimes (as I stated previously). On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 6:28 AM, Christian Siefkes <christian siefkes.net> wrote:
Samuel Rose wrote:Money has been around for at least ten thousand years or more amonghumans.Money has naturally emerged among almost every culture that ever existed.When we talk about money, we should remember that money as a _dominant social relation_ is a fairly new phenomenon. In most cultures, money did not play a very important role, since most economy relations where based on direct dependency (slaves producing for their master, serfs producing for their feudal lord etc.) and/or on direct, money-less cooperation in small groups (subsistence production in tribes, farmer families, or serf families--except for the parts that went to the lord and the church). Most production took place for direct consumption by the producers community (subsistence) and/or their masters (direct dependency). Possibly surplusses (not needed for other purposes) were exchanged, but production _for exchange_ was rare and existed mainly "at the fringes of society", as Marx puts it. Money only became a dominant social relation when production _for exchange_, production with the explicit purpose of getting money, became the norm rather than an exception. That happened only about 500-300 years ago, with the emergence of capitalism. Sadly, I don't know of any good English-language references to these developments--if anybody can fill them in, I would be grateful. (Maybe Raoul Victor, who has studied so closely the transition from feudalism to capitalism?) Also, I believe that there have been many cultures who didn't know money at all, though they might have used different systems that might seem similar to, but cannot be considered money since they served a different purpose, such as the Kula system [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kula_ring]. (Wikipedia writes: "The Kula exchange system can be viewed as reinforcing status and authority distinctions".) That Kula cannot be considered money has been pointed out before by Gregers Petersen, if I remember correctly. So, let's not be rash about the role of money. Electricity has been with us for millions of years (think of lightning), but the use of electricity as a major source of energy is rather new. Best regards Christian -- |-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian siefkes.net --------- | Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/ | Blog: http://www.keimform.de/ | Peer Production in the Physical World: http://peerconomy.org/ |------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 -- Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. -- Rich Kulawiec
-- Sam Rose Social Synergy Tel:+1(517) 639-1552 Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451 AIM: Str9960 Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose skype: samuelrose email: samuel.rose gmail.com http://socialsynergyweb.com/services Related Sites/Blogs/Projects: OpenBusinessModels: http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage http://p2pfoundation.net http://blog.p2pfoundation.net http://www.cooperationcommons.com http://barcampbank.org http://communitywiki.org http://openfarmtech.org Information Filtering: http://ma.gnolia.com/people/srose/bookmarks http://del.icio.us/srose http://twitter.com/SamRose [2 text/html] _________________________________ Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/ Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/ Contact: projekt oekonux.de [2 winmail.dat <application/ms-tnef>] _________________________________ Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/ Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/ Contact: projekt oekonux.de
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