15 - Economic Exchange and Allocation: Maximization of What?

Abstract

Of late in ethnology, psychology, sociology, and, expectably, economics, there has been a great deal of theoretical speculation, experimentationand field description on the subject of transactions, exchanges, altruism, pure gift, and love-as-a-form-of-exchange. Despite the considerable interest these studies arouse, they are recent and pertain mostly to modern society. This chapter reviews the controversies about the movement of valuable goods within and among primitive societies. Lewis H. Morgan's ideas about primitive property advanced the concept of primitive communism. Associated with that notion of property was the relatively unexamined assumption that goods were moved freely, generously, and without a profit motive—that is, that it was only in late barbarism and early civilization that the division of labor in production led to exchanges and finally to commodity production for market exchanges. Friedrich Engels' rendering of this idea was far more influential than Morgan's, particularly because he put it in the context of a revolutionary call to arms. Apart from Morgan and Engels, the prevailing point of view at the turn of the century with respect to primitive man and modern man as well sought to explain economics as economics, an Adam Smithian meaning of the word quite widely accepted as referring to the allocation of scarce resources among unlimited and competing uses or needs. This has to do with rational decisions on the part of society and its institutions, and rulers and decisions of individuals administering their own fortunes.