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If barter never existed, then how did Christopher Columbus and his many successors through out ages trade with natives in America or Indonesia? They definitely

If barter never existed, then how did Christopher Columbus and his many successors through out ages trade with natives in America or Indonesia? They definitely weren't using IOUs. there's already very good rebuttal to David Graeber claims by Robert P. Murphy [1]: "Finally, we have actual case studies of communities developing money prices from scratch: namely, prisoners who end up using cigarettes as the common medium of exchange. The classic work here is Radford's 1945 article, "The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp." There is nothing in Radford's account that conflicts with the standard economists' story about the origin of money. The prisoners certainly weren't giving each other things from their Red Cross kits as gifts or as loans. No, they first were trading (in a state of direct exchange) and cigarettes quickly became the money in their community for all of the reasons that economists typically cite. And to reinforce the point we made earlier, Radford explains that the prices (quoted in cigarettes) of various items were posted on a board. If Graeber and his colleagues stumbled upon the ruins of this P.O.W. camp, they would presumably conclude that there was never a preexisting state of barter, because they only found boards listing prices quoted in terms of cigarettes. There were no boards listing the thousands of pairwise permutations of direct-exchange ratios, and so clearly the Mengerian story must have been wrong — so would go the erroneous reasoning of Graeber." [1] https://mises.org/library/have-anthropologists-overturned-menger https://mises.org/library/have-anthropologists-overturned-me...

matharmin 7y ago
The article doesn't claim that barter never _existed_. It claims that there's no known case where it was a _precursor_ for money. In both examples you mentioned, people involved were already familiar with money, and used barter as a replacement - not the other way around.
rtkwe 7y ago
> Trade did occur in non-monetary societies, but not among fellow villagers. Instead, it was used almost exclusively with strangers, or even enemies, where it was often accompanied by complex rituals involving trade, dance, feasting, mock fighting, or sex—and sometimes all of them intertwined. They talk about that and say barter generally did exist as trade between groups outside the local community. Which makes sense as an alternative to the gift economy. Also POW camps aren't really great examples because they're a) already coming from money based societies b) not producing their own goods, ie all incoming things are basically gifts especially in the POW camp and everyone has a similar set of goods initially and c) they're in confinement which distorts any group's dynamics. That last part of b is really because people all share 90% of the same set of resources and the main difference is the relative weights each person assigns to each item.
- yxhuvud 7y ago
  Also, not to forget, prisoners tend to not trust each other all that much. Most people are not in prison because they are trustworthy..
Streetli 7y ago
Perhaps interestingly, the example of the cigarettes is exactly the example Graeber gives in his book of an instance where barter does emerge, and it does so precisely because normal economic conditions have broken down: "Elaborate barter systems often crop up in the wake of the collapse of national economies: most recently in Russia in the '90s, and in Argentina around 2002, when rubles in the first case, and dollars in the second, effectively disappeared. Occasionally one can even find some kind of currency beginning to develop: for instance, in POW camps and many prisons, inmates have indeed been known to use cigarettes as a kind of currency, much to the delight and excitement of professional economists. But here too we are talking about people who grew up using money and now have to make do without it - exactly the situation "imagined" by the economics textbooks" (p. 37 of Debt) Further, the second place where Graeber notes that barter tends to emerges are precisely in those cases where different groups have no established societal relationships, and are thus exceptional to almost all well established societies - as exactly in a case like Columbus meeting natives: "True, barter does sometimes occur between people who do not consider each other strangers, but they're usually people who might as well be strangers-that is, who feel no sense of mutual responsibility or trust, or the desire to develop ongoing relations. The Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan, for instance, are famous for their open-handed hospitality. Barter is what you do with those to whom you are not bound by ties of hospitality (or kinship, or much of anything else)" (p.33). Which is all to say that the two examples used above are very much exceptional, and exactly what one would expect if the anthropological understanding of debt holds.
thescriptkiddie 7y ago
Barter existed, it was just mostly only used between people who didn't know or trust each other, eg traveling merchants. Graeber specifically addresses this in his book.

matharmin 7y ago

The article doesn't claim that barter never _existed_. It claims that there's no known case where it was a _precursor_ for money. In both examples you mentioned, people involved were already familiar with money, and used barter as a replacement - not the other way around.

rtkwe 7y ago

> Trade did occur in non-monetary societies, but not among fellow villagers. Instead, it was used almost exclusively with strangers, or even enemies, where it was often accompanied by complex rituals involving trade, dance, feasting, mock fighting, or sex—and sometimes all of them intertwined. They talk about that and say barter generally did exist as trade between groups outside the local community. Which makes sense as an alternative to the gift economy. Also POW camps aren't really great examples because they're a) already coming from money based societies b) not producing their own goods, ie all incoming things are basically gifts especially in the POW camp and everyone has a similar set of goods initially and c) they're in confinement which distorts any group's dynamics. That last part of b is really because people all share 90% of the same set of resources and the main difference is the relative weights each person assigns to each item.

yxhuvud 7y ago
Also, not to forget, prisoners tend to not trust each other all that much. Most people are not in prison because they are trustworthy..

Streetli 7y ago

Perhaps interestingly, the example of the cigarettes is exactly the example Graeber gives in his book of an instance where barter does emerge, and it does so precisely because normal economic conditions have broken down: "Elaborate barter systems often crop up in the wake of the collapse of national economies: most recently in Russia in the '90s, and in Argentina around 2002, when rubles in the first case, and dollars in the second, effectively disappeared. Occasionally one can even find some kind of currency beginning to develop: for instance, in POW camps and many prisons, inmates have indeed been known to use cigarettes as a kind of currency, much to the delight and excitement of professional economists. But here too we are talking about people who grew up using money and now have to make do without it - exactly the situation "imagined" by the economics textbooks" (p. 37 of Debt) Further, the second place where Graeber notes that barter tends to emerges are precisely in those cases where different groups have no established societal relationships, and are thus exceptional to almost all well established societies - as exactly in a case like Columbus meeting natives: "True, barter does sometimes occur between people who do not consider each other strangers, but they're usually people who might as well be strangers-that is, who feel no sense of mutual responsibility or trust, or the desire to develop ongoing relations. The Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan, for instance, are famous for their open-handed hospitality. Barter is what you do with those to whom you are not bound by ties of hospitality (or kinship, or much of anything else)" (p.33). Which is all to say that the two examples used above are very much exceptional, and exactly what one would expect if the anthropological understanding of debt holds.

thescriptkiddie 7y ago

Barter existed, it was just mostly only used between people who didn't know or trust each other, eg traveling merchants. Graeber specifically addresses this in his book.