[ 54 ] The Great Transformation
enlarged scale, while its "communistic" distribution was graded, in-
volving sharply differentiated rations. A vast number of storehouses
was ready to receive the produce of the peasant's activity, whether he
was cattle-breeder, hunter, baker, brewer, potter, weaver, or whatever
else. The produce was minutely registered and, insofar as it was not
consumed locally, transferred from smaller to larger storehouses until
it reached the central administration situated at the court of the Pha-
raoh. There were separate treasure houses for cloth, works of art, orna-
mental objects, cosmetics, silverware, the royal wardrobe; there were
huge grain stores, arsenals, and wine cellars.
But redistribution on the scale practiced by the pyramid builders
was not restricted to economies which knew not money. Indeed, all ar-
chaic kingdoms made use of metal currencies for the payment of taxes
and salaries, but relied for the rest on payments in kind from granaries
and warehouses of every description, from which they distributed the
most varied goods for use and consumption mainly to the nonpro-
ducing part of the population, that is, to the officials, the military, and
the leisure class. This was the system practiced in ancient China, in the
empire of the Incas, in the kingdoms of India, and also in Babylonia.
In these, and many other civilizations of high economic achievement,
an elaborate division of labor was worked by the mechanism of redis-
tribution.
Under feudal conditions also this principle held. In the ethnically
stratified societies of Africa it sometimes happens that the superior
stratum consist of herdsmen settled among agriculturalists who are
still using the digging stick or the hoe. The gifts collected by the herds-
men are mainly agricultural—such as cereals and beer—while the
gifts distributed by them may be animals, especially sheep or goats. In
these cases there is division of labor, though usually an unequal one,
between the various strata of society: distribution may often cover up
a measure of exploitation, while at the same time the symbiosis bene-
fits the standards of both strata owing to the advantages of an im-
proved division of labor. Politically, such societies live under a regime
of feudalism, whether cattle or land be the privileged value. There are
"regular cattle fiefs in East Africa." Thurnwald, whom we follow
closely on the subject of redistribution, could therefore say that feu-
dalism implied everywhere a system of redistribution. Only under
very advanced conditions and exceptional circumstances does this
system become predominantly political, as happened in Western Eu-
Societies and Economic Systems [ 55 ]
rope, where the change arose out of the vassal's need for protection,
and gifts were converted into feudal tributes.
These instances show that redistribution also tends to enmesh the
economic system proper in social relationships. We find, as a rule, the
process of redistribution forming part of the prevailing political re-
gime, whether it be that of tribe, city-state, despotism, or feudalism of
cattle or land. The production and distribution of goods is organized
in the main through collection, storage, and redistribution, the pat-
tern being focused on the chief, the temple, the despot, or the lord.
Since the relations of the leading group to the led are different ac-
cording to the foundation on which political power rests, the principle
of redistribution will involve individual motives as different as the
voluntary sharing of the game by hunters and the dread of punish-
ment which urges the fellaheen to deliver their taxes in kind.
We deliberately disregarded in this presentation the vital distinc-
tion between homogeneous and stratified societies, i.e., societies
which are on the whole socially unified, and as such are split into rul-
ers and ruled. Though the relative status of slaves and masters may be
worlds apart from that of the free and equal members of some hunting
tribes, and, consequently, motives in the two societies will differ
widely, the organization of the economic system may still be based on
the same principles, though accompanied by very different culture
traits, according to the very different human relations with which the
economic system is intertwined.
The third principle, which was destined to play a big role in history
and which we will call the principle of householding, consists in pro-
duction for one's own use. The Greeks called it ceconomia, the etymon
of the word "economy." As far as ethnographical records are con-
cerned, we should not assume that production for a person's or
group's own sake is more ancient than reciprocity or redistribution.
On the contrary, orthodox tradition as well as some more recent theo-
ries on the subject have been emphatically disproved. The individual-
istic savage collecting food and hunting on his own or for his family
has never existed. Indeed, the practice of catering for the needs of one's
household becomes a feature of economic life only on a more ad-
vanced level of agriculture; however, even then it has nothing in com-
mon either with the motive of gain or with the institution of markets.
Its pattern is the closed group. Whether the very different entities of
the family or the settlement or the manor formed the self-sufficient
[ 56 ] The Great Transformation
unit, the principle was invariably the same, namely, that of producing
and storing for the satisfaction of the wants of the members of the
group. The principle is as broad in its application as either reciprocity
or redistribution. The nature of the institutional nucleus is indiffer-
ent: it may be sex as with the patriarchal family, locality as with the vil-
lage settlement, or political power as with the seigneurial manor. Nor
does the internal organization of the group matter. It may be as des-
potic as the Roman familia or as democratic as the South Slav zadruga;
as large as the great domains of the Carolingian magnates or as small
as the average peasant holding of Western Europe. The need for trade
or markets is no greater than in the case of reciprocity or redistri-
bution.
It is such a condition of affairs which Aristotle tried to establish as
a norm more than two thousand years ago. Looking back from the
rapidly declining heights of a worldwide market economy, we must
concede that his famous distinction of householding proper and
money-making, in the introductory chapter of his Politics, was proba-
bly the most prophetic pointer ever made in the realm of the social sci-
ences; it is certainly still the best analysis of the subject we possess. Ar-
istotle insists on production for use as against production for gain as
the essence of householding proper; yet accessory production for the
market need not, he argues, destroy the self-sufficiency of the house-
hold as long as the cash crop would also otherwise be raised on the
farm for sustenance, as cattle or grain; the sale of the surpluses need
not destroy the basis of householding. Only a genius of common sense
could have maintained, as he did, that gain was a motive peculiar to
production for the market, and that the money factor introduced a
new element into the situation, yet nevertheless, as long as markets
and money were mere accessories to an otherwise self-sufficient
household, the principle of production for use could operate. Un-
doubtedly, in this he was right, though he failed to see how impractica-
ble it was to ignore the existence of markets at a time when Greek econ-
omy had made itself dependent upon wholesale trading and loaned
capital. For this was the century when Delos and Rhodes were devel-
oping into emporia of freight insurance, sea-loans, and giro-banking,
compared with which the Western Europe of a thousand years later
was the very picture of primitivity. Yet Jowett, Master of Balliol, was
grievously mistaken when he took it for granted that his Victorian En-
gland had a fairer grasp than Aristotle of the nature of the difference
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