Book contents
- Trade before Civilization
- Trade before Civilization
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chapter One New Perspectives on Long-Distance Trade and Social Complexity
- Part I Exchange and Social Evolution: Forms of Trade in Egalitarian, Transegalitarian, and Chiefdom Societies
- Part II The Role That Specific Institutions And Agents Played in Long-Distance Exchange
- Part III The Role of Political Economy and Elite Control in Long-Distance Exchange
- Part IV Marxian And Post-Colonial Approaches as well as World System Theory in Relation to Gift Exchange and MacroRegional Exchange
- Chapter Twelve Value and the Articulation of Modes of Re-Production
- Chapter Thirteen Entrepreneurs, Metals and Change
- Chapter Fourteen Long-Distance Interaction in Fourth Millennium bce Eurasia
- Chapter Fifteen Following the Bread Crumbs
- Part V Commentary on Contributions to This Volume
- Index
- References
Chapter Twelve - Value and the Articulation of Modes of Re-Production
from Part IV - Marxian And Post-Colonial Approaches as well as World System Theory in Relation to Gift Exchange and MacroRegional Exchange
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2022
Book contents
- Trade before Civilization
- Trade before Civilization
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chapter One New Perspectives on Long-Distance Trade and Social Complexity
- Part I Exchange and Social Evolution: Forms of Trade in Egalitarian, Transegalitarian, and Chiefdom Societies
- Part II The Role That Specific Institutions And Agents Played in Long-Distance Exchange
- Part III The Role of Political Economy and Elite Control in Long-Distance Exchange
- Part IV Marxian And Post-Colonial Approaches as well as World System Theory in Relation to Gift Exchange and MacroRegional Exchange
- Chapter Twelve Value and the Articulation of Modes of Re-Production
- Chapter Thirteen Entrepreneurs, Metals and Change
- Chapter Fourteen Long-Distance Interaction in Fourth Millennium bce Eurasia
- Chapter Fifteen Following the Bread Crumbs
- Part V Commentary on Contributions to This Volume
- Index
- References
Summary
In this chapter, I will argue that trade and exchange, whether civilised or uncivilised, have to be understood by developing a theory of value. Marx’s well-known distinction between use value and exchange value was predicated on whether the product of alienated labour confronted the producer as ‘something alien, as a power independent of the producers’ (Marx and Engels 1970: 16). In the passages on commodity fetishism in The German Ideology, the laws of the commodity market are compared to the superstition of the savage who fashions a fetish with his own hand and then falls down and worships it (Arthur 1970: 17). Extrapolating to the remote past that the product of our labour continues to confront us as something alien has a certain relevance for understanding long-term histories of inequality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Trade before CivilizationLong Distance Exchange and the Rise of Social Complexity, pp. 289 - 308Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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