ALB wrote:I know Graeber is

I’ve read a bit more and am in a slightly better position to offer an answer. The economists have a theory of the origin of money, and anthropologists have been telling them for years that it’s definitely wrong, says Graeber. For years, the economists have retorted: well, what’s your alternative? Graeber says there isn’t a single, coherent alternative to offer for the good reason that money was not an invention as such and so did not have a single origin. Money, in its broadest sense, is a way of comparing the value of two things, and so has existed as long as the need to compare the value of two things has existed – ever since humans engaged in social activity (were “indebted” to each other in some way), ever since human life arose. In the narrower sense of money, ie, money as a commodity (coinage) that facilitates trade, it is as much a myth that it arises naturally out of exchange (barter) as is the idea that markets arise naturally as a result of our tendency to “truck and barter”. (There is no evidence that money or markets ever arose in this way, plenty of evidence to contradict the idea) The truth is that money in this sense, like markets, has to be imposed by the state. Why impose markets and money? To raise armies and impose social control, basically.At least, I think that’s the gist of the argument, as far as I’ve understood it.Cheers