[
280 ] Notes on Sources
New Zealand Maori, pp. 12,206,350; Thurnwald,
Economics, pp. 170,268, and
Die
menschliche Gesellschaft, Vol. Ill, p. 146; Herskovits,
The Economic Life of Primitive
Peoples, 1940, p. 34; Malinowski,
Argonauts, p. 167, footnote.)
(h) Reciprocity and redistribution are principles of economic behavior
which apply not only to small primitive communities, but also to large and
wealthy empires.
"Distribution has its own particular history, starting from the most primitive
life of the hunting tribes." "The case is different with societies with a more recent
and more pronounced stratification...." "The most impressive example is fur-
nished by the contact of herdsmen with agricultural people." "The conditions in
these societies differ considerably. But the distributive function increases with the
growing political power of a few families and the rise of despots. The chief receives
the gifts of the peasant, which have now become 'taxes,' and distributes them
among his officials, especially those attached to his court."
"This development involved more complicated systems of distribution.... All
archaic states—ancient China, the Empire of the Incas, the Indian kingdoms,
Egypt, Babylonia—made use of a metal currency for taxes and salaries but relied
mainly on payments in kind stored in granaries and warehouses . . . and distrib-
uted to officials, warriors, and the leisured classes, that is, to the non-producing
part of the population. In this case distribution fulfils an essentially economic
function" (Thurnwald,
Economics, pp. 106-8).
"When we speak of feudalism, we are usually thinking of the Middle Ages in
Europe.... However, it is an institution, which very soon makes its appearance in
stratified communities. The fact that most transactions are in kind and that the
upper stratum claims all the land or cattle, are the economic causes of feudalism
..."
(ibid., p. 195).
T O C H A P T E R F I V E
7. Selected References to "Evolution of the Market Pattern"
Economic liberalism labored under the delusion that its practices and meth-
ods were the natural outgrowth of a general law of progress. To make them fit the
pattern, the principles underlying a self-regulating market were projected back-
ward into the whole history of human civilization. As a result the true nature and
origins of trade, markets, and money, of town life and national states were dis-
torted almost beyond recognition.
(a) Individual acts of "truck, barter, and exchange" are only exceptionally
practiced in primitive society.
"Barter is originally completely unknown. Far from being possessed with a
craving for barter primitive man has an aversion to it" (Bucher,
Die Entstehungder
Volkswirtschaft, 1904, p. 109). "It is impossible, for example, to express the value of
Notes on Sources [ 281 ]
a bonito-hook in terms of a quantity of food, since no such exchange is ever made
and would be regarded by the Tikopia as fantastic.... Each kind of object is ap-
propriate to a particular kind of social situation" (Firth,
op. cit., p. 340).
(b) Trade does not arise within a community; it is an external affair
involving different communities.
"In its beginnings commerce is a transaction between ethnic groups; it does
not take place between members of the same tribe or of the same community, but
it is, in the oldest social communities an external phenomenon, being directed
only towards foreign tribes" (M. Weber,
General Economic History, p. 195).
"Strange though it may seem, medieval commerce developed from the begin-
nings under the influence, not of local, but of export trade" (Pirenne,
Economic
and Social History of Medieval Europe, p. 142). "Trade over long distances was re-
sponsible for the economic revival of the Middle Ages" (Pirenne,
Medieval Cities,
p .
125).
(c) Trade does not rely on markets; it springs from one-sided carrying,
peaceful or otherwise.
Thurnwald established the fact that the earliest forms of trade simply con-
sisted in procuring and carrying objects from a distance. Essentially it is a hunting
expedition. Whether the expedition is warlike as in a slave hunt or as in piracy, de-
pends mainly on the resistance that is encountered
(op. cit., pp. 145,146). "Piracy
was the initiator of maritime trade among the Greeks of the Homeric era, as
among the Norse Vikings; for a long time the two vocations developed in concert"
(Pirenne,
Economic and Social History, p. 109).
(d) The presence or absence of markets not an essential characteristic; local
markets have no tendency to grow.
"Economic systems, possessing no markets, need not on this account have any
other characteristics in common" (Thurnwald,
Die menschliche Gesellschaft, Vol.
Ill, p. 137). On the early markets "only definite quantities of definite objects could
be bartered for one another"
(ibid., p. 137). "Thurnwald deserves special praise for
his observation that primitive money and trade are essentially of social rather
than of economic significance" (Loeb, "The Distribution and Function of Money
in Early Society," in
Essays in Anthropology, p. 153). Local markets did not develop
out of "armed trade" or "silent barter" or other forms of foreign trade, but out of
the "peace" maintained on a meeting place for the limited purpose of neighbor-
hood exchange. "The aim of the local market was to supply the provisions neces-
sary for daily life to the population settled in the districts. This explains their be-
ing held weekly, the very limited circle of attraction and the restriction of their
activity to small retail operations" (Pirenne,
op. cit., Ch. 4, "Commerce to the End
of the Thirteenth Century," p. 97). Even at a later stage local markets, in contrast
to fairs, showed no tendency to grow: "The market supplied the wants of the local-