I view it like money has existed, for a while, but not as long as exchange value, conflicts of interest, private property, ownership etcetera, money developed out of those social relations as the most efficient method of exchange.

Does anyone disagree with that?

Mike wrote:
It's existed since we were all children & our parents parents parents etc that's it's long enough for it to be embedded in people's conciousness because it's the 'normal' way of life.
Most people never even question it.... that's how deep rooted it is.

I view it like money has existed, for a while, but not as long as exchange, barter, conflicts of interest, private property, ownership etcetera, money developed out of those social relations as the most efficient method of exchange.

State and government evolved as a method of controlling that conflict of interest.

Does anyone disagree with that?

Mike wrote:
The anthropologist David Graeber says the reason economics students are taught about barter economies in abstract terms (John grows wheat and David has chickens, David wants some wheat...) is because pre-money barter economies never existed so they can't give any real world examples. Barter did exist, but in different contexts, such as between tribes who may never meet again and might be suspicious of each other or as part of internal social protocols. The actual money replaces people bartering goods idea is apparently bullshit with no basis in reality.

Space Bandit wrote:
Plenty of people question it but without solutions we are just headless chickens. Ive watched about 10 different david starbuck dvds last couple of money explaining about the illusion of money. Even thoe i had to give him some of this illusion in order to purchase the dvds.

dogsmilk wrote: At some point in time man sold his labour, himself, as a commodity, he exchanged his only asset for commodities/"assets", there are maybe some remnants of human cultures where people cooperate, pool their assets for the community, perhaps even in Western families when parents give their children money, or a gift, or love and attention without the expectation of something of equal value in return, human relations exist beyond self interest.

To paraphrase, in Marxism:
Exchange of labour ( commodity production) is the “cell of bourgeois society" (capitalism). Exchange of labour is not identical with cooperation or division of labour, but is simply one well developed system of social cooperation/competition and division of labour, it began at the margins of tribal society in the form of occasional barter, and gradually grew until it engulfed the whole of social life and gave birth to capital.

"The actual money replaces people bartering goods idea is apparently bullshit with no basis in reality."
I agree with that, money grew out of the system of barter, I'm planning a hike in a few months it makes more sense for me to bring a few £10 notes in a waterproof wallet than a couple kilo bags of oats, tins of beans, bags of rice etc, that is money, what is the signignificant thing imo, and it's what nobody seems to talk about ,is the social relation between man and man, which is to say private interest, competition, and perpetual exchange/private accumulation, money just makes barter more universally available, is a bartering tool.

Though back in the day it was assumed that's where money came from and the assumption came to be regarded as fact.

Graeber proposes that money as a unit of account was invented the moment when the unquantifiable obligation "I owe you one" transformed into the quantifiable notion of "I owe you one unit of something".

"The actual money replaces people bartering goods idea is apparently bullshit with no basis in reality."
I agree with that, money grew out of the system of barter, I'm planning a hike in a few months it makes more sense for me to bring a few £10 notes in a waterproof wallet than a couple kilo bags of oats, tins of beans, bags of rice etc, that is money, what is the signignificant thing imo, and it's what nobody seems to talk about ,is the social relation between man and man, which is to say private interest, competition, and perpetual exchange/private accumulation, money just makes barter more universally available, is a bartering tool.

The author supports that originally credit systems developed as means of account much before the advent of coinage around 600 BC....
....Graeber lays out the historical development of the idea of debt, starting from the first recorded debt systems that existed in the Sumer civilization around 3500 BC. In this early form of borrowing and lending, farmers would often become so mired in debt that their children would be forced into debt peonage, though they were periodically released by kings who canceled all debts and granted them amnesty under what later came to be known, in ancient Israel, as the Law of Jubilee.

Mike wrote:
I think along these same lines...

Money not only gives people the ability to travel all over the world. But it also gives a person the ability to sell their home, car and personal possessions put that money on a card move away and start a new life. Sure money is abused just like everything else but like Space Bandit said it's existed since before any of our grandparents.

Graeber calls "human economies," as found among the Iroquois, Celts, Inuit, Tiv, Nuer and the Malagasy people of Madagascar among other groups which, according to Graeber, held a radically different conception of debt and social relations, based on the radical incalculability of human life and the constant creation and recreation of social bonds through gifts, marriages and general sociability.

In capitalist society individuals are controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond their comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value.[37] This law acts upon all aspects of one's life, shaping its course and destiny. The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller[38] — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. (A discussion of how the workers in the imperialist countries gradually lose the spirit of working-class internationalism due to a certain degree of complicity in the exploitation of the dependent countries, and how this at the same time weakens the combativity of the masses in the imperialist countries, would be appropriate here, but that is a theme that goes beyond the scope of these notes.)

In any case, the road to success is portrayed as beset with perils — perils that, it would seem, an individual with the proper qualities can overcome to attain the goal. The reward is seen in the distance; the way is lonely. Furthermore, it is a contest among wolves. One can win only at the cost of the failure of others.

So, in your opinion, or your view of David Graeber's opinion, where did it come from?
"I owe you one"

"Exchange of labour ( commodity production) is the “cell of bourgeois society" "

Most of these points you can find elsewhere, but Graeber’s genius is to weave them into an intriguing narrative. But the problems are greater than these insights. To begin with, he is an ardent advocate of the superior role of anthropology, especially in response to economists. This may take the form of some great accounts (the Tiv from Africa is one example, which I read as an instance of the imaginary resolution of a real contradiction), but it usually ends up in a kind of primitivist argument: the true insight into human nature and interactions is to be found in these anthropological investigations into tribal peoples from Africa, Greenland, Asia, the Americas and – Graeber’s own field of research – Madagascar. The upshot is an assumption he shares with Adam Smith et al: human nature is the same wherever we look. The trick is to identify how we tick. All of which leads to a trans-historical assumption, embodied in the inadequate suggestion that all human societies operate on the basis of interwoven patterns of baseline communism, reciprocity and hierarchy.....
Further, for a long book that deals with a central economic, social and political issue, there is no systematic economic theory that underpins his argument. For instance, he accepts the common position that the prime economic motor in some periods of history was plunder. The catch here, as Marx drily observed, is that you need something to plunder. Another example: despite his extended discussions of slavery and its crucial role in relation to coinage, one searches in vain for any theory of class. He has many opportunities, such as the ‘military-slavery-coinage’ complex as a way of relieving debt pressure in ancient Greece (228-30). This cries out for a class analysis, but none is forthcoming. And for my purposes, ancient Mesopotamia plays a crucial role in his discussion, for it provides the earliest evidence of what he calls a credit-based economy with far-flung international ‘trade’. Not only does he rely almost solely on the problematic Keynesian approach of Michael Hudson, but he provides no treatment of the crucial economic factor here, agriculture, let alone any effort at making sense of ancient economies.

TVP idealogue Peter Joseph critique's the "free market"
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