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Re: [ox-en] Robinsonades



Hi,

Christian Siefkes wrote:

Patrick Anderson wrote:
It is true that I look at almost all human interaction as exchange,
but I don't see anything wrong with that.  It is just a more
broad/inclusive definiiton.  If I spend time and money to court a mate
and she gives me a kiss, then we have made an exchange.  We have
traded.  And other potential mates are the 'market' for that trading.

An analytical model that is unable to distinguish prostitution from love
does not strike me as very useful.

Sometimes money is involved when you go courting. There are things, and have been things called dowries for instance and pre-nuptial agreements.

But consider the performance of the male bower bird -- I wonder if in this day an age, some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder may be just as likely to get you a mate, if that's indeed what you are after.

Maybe a useful way to distinguish between courting and prostitution is that having and raising chicks is thought to be an essential outcome by some courting couples, whereas it is usually deemed to be an accidental outcome with respect to prostitution.

Stefan Meretz wrote:

Patrick Anderson wrote:
Husbands and wives do enormous amounts of trading because the
physical differences in their strengths and abilities means male
husbands generally do more of the heavy lifting while female wives
often do more of the 'fine' work.

Sounds like a horror trip from the 19th century to me.

Other than Patrick's trading metaphor, doesn't this sounds more like a manifestation of sexual dimorphism. Perhaps to move away from the swapping jobs metaphor, would it be useful to think of the couple combining their work in synthesis, their whole being greater than the sum of their parts, so to speak.

Stefan Meretz wrote:

Patrick Anderson wrote:
> I think we really have a chance to pinpoint the problem if we take
> such an approach to keep us from getting otherwise lost in the
> complexity.

Sorry, this won't work, because the basic assumptions of isolated human beings are a wrong starting point. There is no start below the level of a self-reproducing society. All other approaches are under-complex.

Hmmm maybe -- but you can read how Marx develops his analytical model of self-reproducing Capital, in das Kapital, from an elementary particle, namely the Commodity.

As well as essays about self-reproducing Capital, Engels and Marx, following Morgan, wrote quite a bit on the self-reproduction of families, gens, private property and states:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm

Making an analogy to Paul's boolean table, do you think it would be fair to say that a courting couple hold the products of their courtship in trust for their mutual use, and in trust for their reproduction(s), the naturing and inheritance thereof.

-- adam




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