"The book argues that debt has typically retained its primacy, with cash and barter usually limited to situations of low trust involving strangers or those not considered credit-worthy"
Further more, I can imagine a scenario where Roman coins were melted down to make these coins (total conjecture) .
If you know any actual contributions to economics or the history of economics that were consequences of his stimulation, I would be glad to hear about them.
Now consider archaeology (which is part of the anthropology department in the US). A high-profile dig may involve many specialist researchers: people who study seeds, people who study pollen, people who study abrasion in stone tools. If the evidence is sufficiently preserved, then a team like this can lean quite a bit about food production and trade patterns. Meanwhile, nobody can tell you much about ideology. Maybe you've got some burials, or some stone statues that might be religious. But you've got zero written records, and anything you say about religion or ideology is likely to be completely made up.
So in an anthropology department, "Marxist" may mean, "deeply interested in the means of production, which we have lots of concrete material evidence about, but much less interested in making unsubstantiated guesses about religion."
Or at least that's how my anthropology professors explained it.
Yeah, that's how they explain it, yet somehow it always ends up being about communism.
There is a famous phrase attributed to Milton Friedman, "We are all Keynesians now". Even if many economists may not share his view, his mode of thinking has been deeply integrated into modern economics. The similar thing can be said about Marx in relation to the kind of anthropology and sociology Graeber was doing.
As per 'direct contributions,' to what? This is vacuous. If you're looking for direct policy changes, new economic theories, or shifts in economic practice explicitly derived from that book, the evidence might be less concrete given the book's recent publication and its cross-disciplinary nature.
if contributions are broadly understood as influencing the discourse, prompting reevaluation of economic history, or enriching economic thought with anthropological insights, then Graeber's work has clearly made an impact. The book has been widely discussed and cited in various academic and non-academic circles, suggesting that it has stimulated thought and conversation, although not be immediately quantifiable in economic terms.
It's worth noting that the impact of theoretical work often becomes more apparent over time as it permeates through discussion, critique, and successive scholarship.
I'd also like to point out that economic anthropology is an academic field in it own right, for which Graber is considered a significant contributor. Graeber's work, in particular, has been pivotal in encouraging economists, historians, archeologist, etc, to think more critically about the origins and functions of debt, money, and economic systems. Economies are complex, culturally rich phenomena, not just market transactions (something Econ models often miss.)
It is not a foundational myth. It is certainly a topic of interest for some economists, but it is not something that you would get asked during your qualifying exams. Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models are far more foundational.
> a lot of what passes for economic 'common sense' is actually historical narrative, which is exactly where anthropology excels
Everything is a text, therefore a literary studies professor is an expert on everything. Everything is a result of human action, therefore an economist is an expert on everything. Everything is a result of social interaction, therefore a sociologist is an expert on everything.
That’s a dangerous attitude that’s unfortunately common among such fields as sociology, psychology, literary studies and economics. It overstates the expertise of people in the field and mystifies the field itself.
Being an anthropologist doesn’t make you an expert on QM and GR just because the history of physics is a history of narratives.
> Cross-pollination between disciplines is how we get past stale paradigms.
There are lots of people who already do that out there. Economics is ripe with such examples, both past and recent. But being hostile and acting as if you know more than people who study the subject for a living leads nowhere.
> I'd also like to point out that economic anthropology is an academic field in it own right, for which Graber is considered a significant contributor.
And so is economics, for which Graeber is not considered a significant contributor. And that’s okay. The gift economy of Madagascar and the technicalities of the federal reserve system are very different topics. And it is possible to know a lot about one of them without knowing much about the other.
Cool.
Also, saying that he single-handedly prompted “economists and historians alike to incorporate broader socio-cultural understandings into their analyses” is a huge denigration of institutional economics, behavioural economics, Austrian economics, social economics, etc.
It's definitely apart of the heterodox tradition in economics (without diminishing what's already there), which often takes longer to be integrated into the mainstream.
So, I guess time will tell?
David Graeber was a professor at the London School of Economics. It appears they believed he was well-versed in economic theory :)
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/condolences/2020/09/03/professor-dav...
First, Graeber challenged Adam Smith's idea that the history of economics evolved from barter to money to credit. According to Graeber, this sequence is actually reversed: credit systems existed first in pre-money societies, where neighbors kept track of mutual aid. Barter only became prevalent when money was introduced and sometimes unavailable.
Second, he critiqued the socialist theory of primordial debt, which suggests that humans are born with an infinite debt to the cosmos. This theory often uses religious language to support its claims and argues that the government inherits this cosmic debt, leading to total control over money and markets. Graeber distinguishes between religious or moral debt and economic debt, arguing that they operate on different logics.
Buy MWG’s Microeconomic Theory and study it. What does it have to do with Adam Smith’s theories on barter or someone’s (whose?) theory on primordial debt?
As per the myth every student of economics learns, that money grows out of barter. The idea is that monetary exchange solves the problem of the double coincidence of wants. Money makes trade much easier, so the story goes, and thus becomes a remarkable example of both human ingenuity and economic progress, isn't true. There's no evidence to support it. (support that money comes from barter, etc.)
Pick up any Economics textbook and look up the definition of "Traditional Economy," here, I'll do that for you.
"A traditional economic system is based on customs, history, and time-honored beliefs. A traditional economy is an economic system in which traditions, customs, and beliefs help shape the goods and services the economy produces, as well as the rules and manners of their distribution. Countries that use this type of economic system are often rural and farm-based. Also known as a subsistence economy, a traditional economy is defined by bartering"
We know that's not true. We know there's no evidence to support it.
So what does modern economic theory have to say about Traditional Economies? Not much apparently.
And that's the point!
Adding to this, I'm familiar with MWG's Microeconomic Theory, and while it's an excellent resource for understanding the mathematical models used in economics, (and by economics, I means systems where there's a market, money, all actors have perfect access to information, and there's property rights, etc), it doesn't offer much insight into the historical or anthropological questions that Graeber raises.
Both approaches have their value, but they serve different purposes and answer different questions. Learning or applying MWG in no way subtracts from Graeber's insights.
You can't apply or generally model a "traditional economy" using by applying MWG.
Smith, Mill and Ricardo are to economics what alchemy is to chemistry.
> As per the myth every student of economics learns, that money grows out of barter.
I wasn’t taught that. I was taught game theory, the Arrow-Debreu model and statistics.
> Pick up any Economics textbook and look up the definition of "Traditional Economy," here, I'll do that for you.
I don’t remember my textbooks saying much about traditional economies.
> "A traditional economic system is based on customs, history, and time-honored beliefs. A traditional economy is an economic system in which traditions, customs, and beliefs help shape the goods and services the economy produces, as well as the rules and manners of their distribution. Countries that use this type of economic system are often rural and farm-based. Also known as a subsistence economy, a traditional economy is defined by bartering"
I don’t know which textbook it is from. It also doesn’t go much into detail what it means.
> We know that's not true. We know there's no evidence to support it.
We know that metallic money were the norm during that times. That probably was the intuition and evidence behind the barter idea.
> So what does modern economic theory have to say about Traditional Economies?
> Not much apparently.
> And that's the point!
The point you were making initially is that modern economic theory makes false claims about barter. In fact, it doesn’t concern itself with it much outside of niche subfields. That makes Graeber simply wrong.
> it doesn't offer much insight into the historical or anthropological questions that Graeber raises.
Yes. And it doesn’t claim to. So what is the problem? How can it be wrong about things it doesn’t assert or imply?
> Learning or applying MWG in no way subtracts from Graeber's insights.
Yeah, but learning about modern economics from Graeber would make you confused and mistaken. He should have had the courtesy not to speak about things he didn’t know.
thats the point.
> Yeah, but learning about modern economics from Graeber would make you confused and mistaken. He should have had the courtesy not to speak about things he didn’t know. (What is he speaking about that he doesn't know? also, did you even read the book? I'm getting the sense you didn't.)
He's not talking about modern economics, he's talking about the history of debt. This isn't hard to understand.
> He's not talking about modern economics
I wish it were the point. I would jump on that bandwagon for a ride with him. But the point is “contribution to questioning established economic assumptions”.
So we get weird statements like “the Myth of Barter cannot go away because it is central to the entire discourse of economics” that people parrot on the Internet after reading Graeber despite the fact that the pre-historical barter or its absence is inconsequential for modern theory.
You know the joke about how physics is the study of spherical cows of uniform density in a frictionless vacuum? That's because intro level physics makes lots of simplifying assumptions. And if a physicist tried to use those assumptions to lecture a dairy farmer, the farmer might assume the physicist was a fool.
Anthropology tends to assume that too many economists study "spherical humans of uniform density in a frictionless market," basically. One of my anthropology professors actually covered these disputes, including specific cases where U Chicago economics professors attempted to advise governments around the world, and wound up totally misunderstanding particular situations.
Now, anthropology has its blind spots, too. Cultural anthropology has been a bit too willing to believe research describing exotic social structures. Archaeology is fairly sound on the nuts and bolts of pre-historical goods and food sources, but it is sometimes blind to how ideology shapes culture. (Which is a safely conservative stance to take when working with pre-historical cultures, to be fair.)
The factors Graeber describes aren't totally surprising. Lots of real world economies run on complicated webs of personal relationships and favors—just look at investors, for example. Or look at the pre-modern property rights described in Seeing Like a State. Land ownership and harvesting rights in a medieval village could be ridiculously complex. Or the customary payments and "gifts" that people made. For another modern example, consider office politics in a large corporation.
I think Graeber's basic case is plausible: complex debts and obligations seem to underly many band-level and village-level societies, especially when central state power is weak. These arrangements can seem bizarre: I remember a video of an interview with a pig farmer, probably about 60 years old, who was organizing a gift of hundreds of pigs to a neighboring village. This was apparently some kind of competitive gesture designed to elevate the status of the giver. And the farmer was really into this. He was complaining that kids these days were shockingly lazy, and that they had no appetite for hard work, and that they had no hope of putting together a proper gift of pigs. And how can you get anywhere in life if you can't embarrass a neighboring village by giving them more pigs than they gave you? It was a status display, similar to throwing conspicuously expensive parties to outdo your social circle.
The anthropology literature contains a ton of odd behavior around debts, obligations, and complex traditional rights. In a pre-modern community of 60 to 5,000 people, only a fraction of the economy seems to involve currencies or direct barter. Currency is a fantastic simplifying technology. And as Graeber points out, complex traditional webs of debt can be pretty brutal towards people who don't fit in.
Note that while Great Britain didn't have a whole lot of gold, it did have a whole lot of tin.
You can't make bronze without tin. People who want to make bronze will give you gold for it.
Cornish would do
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolaucothi_Gold_Mines
> They are the only mines for Welsh gold outside those of the Dolgellau gold-belt, and are a Scheduled Ancient Monument. They are also the only known Roman gold mines in Britain, although it does not exclude the likelihood that they exploited other known sources in Devon in South West England, north Wales, Scotland and elsewhere.
The wiki on this mine is quite extensive.
From first google link (https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/index/gold/gold-mining-in-th...):
"Gold has been mined in Scotland for over 2,500 years. There was gold mining in Crawford from the early 1500s" - and that's just a few examples.
I recommend reading about or visiting Great Orme if you are interested in mining, it's a copper mine that was in use since bronze age.
We know that gold is valuable today because of its distribution, availability and metallurgical properties. But random tribes who haven’t even seen an iron tool somehow decided that this shiny metal was scarce and valuable enough to hoard and desire.
Is it something in the metal itself?
Yes. I never understood it myself, until the first time I held a heavy gold necklace. The feeling is hard to describe.
Gold can be easily melted to combine larger and smaller portions together or split them up. It is "inert" meaning does not easily react with anything else so you don't lose it too easily. It is a great store of value.
And think why does Bitcoin cost so much? Because of its scarcity.
I know how fractional reserve banking works. That "more money" is represented by the collateral for the loan.
it’s not very evenly distributed wealth but our enormous economies are not limited by supplies of an arbitrarily valuable metal.
All money is imaginary anyway.
I mean gold has always been and will always be (until we start space mining I guess) scarce, can see similar effects for things like aluminium, for example here: https://clintonaluminum.com/aluminum-was-once-worth-more-tha....
So based on that I would say it was purely thanks to scarcity. Money is used to represent x human effort/time after all; it takes time to find the gold, then time to process it. But the same applies to various other weird currencies used in the world like seashells/beads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money#:~:text=Shell%20mo....
I feel like there's an intermediate step with these where seashells/beads/similar objects had cultural significance and therefore value because they had to be found (and sometimes worked into beads). It's a step from pure trading of useful items like a knife or an item of clothing to an intermediate currency like seashells, then to precious metals (which are still valuable even if melted down) to what we have now (currency as a symbol of trust that the currency is worth what it's worth as enforced by a government or some other system).
See this video of a Roman era coin being unearthed by a metal detectorist - untarnished or corroded after 2000 years:
There's certainly some gold in the UK; there's still probably thousands of extractable tonnes of gold in the UK. Whether a deposit is economic to extract is a different question. Very few sites in the world can compete with the gold mines of Canada, China and Australia with their very rich deposits.
> Was it all relatively surface level and rapidly mined out, and now all gone?
To some degree this is a factor. Copper and tin are other resources you'll find are already heavily extracted in Europe:
> The main mining district of the Kupferschiefer in Germany was Mansfeld Land, which operated from at least 1199 AD, and has provided 2,009,800 tonnes of copper and 11,111 tonnes of silver. The Mansfeld mining district was exhausted in 1990.
It's not so much that they literally ran out - there's still plenty of copper there. But it was only viable to run in the East German (Communist) economy. Now that most is extracted, there are diminishing returns. It takes more labour and processing and etc. than extracting from a deposit elsewhere would.
When Europeans came to North America and reached regions that had never had a particularly high population density and had never had much mining - like in parts of the Rocky Mountains - they sometimes literally found gold dust lying at the bottom of riverbeds and chunks of gold ore sticking out of the side of cliff-faces. (Cue up a gold rush.) Europe's first large-scale miners probably had a similar experience of abundance once, many thousands of years ago.
Herodotus tried to figure out where all the “stuff” is coming from, but mostly found stories he admits are far-fetched.
Modern historians take pleasure in proving his “myths” to be fact.
“Apparently there is some place in Asia where gold is mined by ants!”
If you're interested in this area, look up the Inca Empire. It did not really have money at all.
It would appear based on some simple googling that "money" has existed in many cultures going back 30,000 years, in two forms: "money of account" and "money of exchange". Of both of those they have taken various forms. Minted coins did not appear until around 3,000 years ago.
Barter economy certainly existed, probably from before the Human Sapiens. But _money_ is a relatively recent invention.
What is the best evidence for this historically? Anthropologists strongly dispute this idea, and believe barter was mostly used for trade between total strangers (e.g. traders from outside your society or "economy")
Graeber's Debt: the first 5000 years covers this topic
Mostly archeological. There are many burials that contain items that were clearly not locally sourced. In some cases, they had to be transported for thousands of kilometers.
And quite often this was done for non-functional items such as jewelry or dyes.
There certainly was specialization in Hawaii, and with a population of over 100,000 would seem like a good counter-example.
> Barter economy cannot sustain any of that, because barter economy does not scale.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money , "There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[23] instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monetary_economy#Other_mon... list other money-less systems including "the Incas and possibly, also the empire of Majapahit". Both were empires.
Therefore, Hawai'i did have money, in the form of commodity money (objects having intrinsic value in addition to value as a method of payment), which is distinct from barter in that there are specific recognizable units of exchange (specific amounts of commodity money used to pay a specific amount of debt). Material goods were also used as money for trade between islands.
[1] https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitst... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahupua%CA%BBa [3] https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/kona/history1g.... [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20140605052446/http://www.hawaii...
Your [1] starts "The concept of private property was unknown to ancient Hawaiians" and says:
> Many Native Hawaiian scholars today make a distinction between the annual exchange before and after written tax law. Ho‘okupu, the term used for the exchange before written tax law, is similar to ‘auhau, the term used after written tax law was instituted. Both refer to the requirement to provide labor or a portion of an individual’s labor production to a governmental agent, but as noted earlier, ho’okupu literally means “to cause to grow.”
> Some Native Hawaiian scholars believe that ho‘o kupu and tax are antithetical ideas, because, they argue, ho‘okupu was generated by the person who gives, while taxes were demanded from the person or group that receives.
Your [3] points out "Actually because the chief upon whose lands they lived owned all the land and resources in an ahupua'a, in a sense the tenants were only giving these resources to the rightful owner, in a useful form and upon demand, on a gift-tax basis."
If you own everything, how do you tax it?
If you own no private property, what does it mean to tax it?
Animals exchange goods - does that make it a monetary system? Eg, "Reciprocal Trading of Different Commodities in Norway Rats" at https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(18)30003... .
Why does Wikipedia list non-monetary cultures?
Property ownership is not inherent to taxation, there are many forms of tax.
There's no reason animals can't have a monetary system. We are animals after all, even if some people like to pretend we're not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals
"Landed gentry", for example, is a particularly British was of looking at things. Your source [1] says "Using a feudal metaphor that many Native Hawaiian scholars reject today, Richards described the problems with several layers of chiefs, all of whom could demand ho‘okupu." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism notes issues in extending concepts from feudalism to other cultures).
I know in ethnology there was a long history of viewing everything through a Western European structure, even when it disagreed with the data. It's taken ethnologists a long time to pull back some of those blinders. From what I understand, ethnologists are often annoyed at economists who keep using outdated ethnology. (For a traditional example, the idea that before money there was only barter, when no culture has ever been shown to be based on a barter economy.)
Why then should I not trust the Native Hawaiian scholars who presumably have a better understanding of the topic and say this was neither a tax nor feudal?
> Even paying tribute to the gods is a form of tax, because people are afraid that if they don't pay tribute
Yes, squint hard enough and anything can be tax.
If a husband and wife decide to merge incomes, with the wife deciding how the money will be spent, that could be seen as a 100% tax on the man's income.
(Yes, either one could decide to not continue this arrangement. The materials you points to also highlight that Hawaiians were not bound to the land, and could move should the chief not be to their liking.)
If a skilled slave is sent to do work on another estate, and the slavemaster profits from it, giving the slave only room and board, that could also be seen as a tax, yes?
But it doesn't seem like a useful way to describe either relationship.
Which is why the "Prostitution among animals" gives alternatives, like "The researchers speculate about the possible genetic fitness advantages and disadvantages of the practice, and aren't altogether sure that the female copulates mainly in order to obtain a stone" and "females within the meat-sharing community tend to copulate with males of their own meat-sharing community. Direct exchange of meat for sex has not been observed", with only a single example of the latter exchange among capuchin monkeys.
Or from my link, using the phrase "reciprocal altruism" instead of "monetary system"?
Is "reciprocal altruism" always the same as "monetary system"?
FWIW, I entered this thread to respond to kspacewalk2s assertion about "money", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060762 , not "monetary system". According to kspacewalk2s, money is required to have trade and specialization for any culture beyond a few thousand people. I think you agree that Hawaiians did not have "money" before European contact, correct?
At the same time, the Slavic countries up north still were pre-monetary. There was little to no currency, but there was extensive trade in fur, salt, and other goods.
It depends on how you define money. Coins didn't really exist until the 7th century BC, that doesn't mean long-range widescale trade did not exist prior to that for 1000+ years but they didn't generally use money (in the way we would understand it at least) so the boundary between using money and barter wasn't really that clear.
https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C...
Still, even the barter economy was used for mostly "optional" activities. People were not dependent on it for survival, a tribe could live just fine on their own, without trade.
That's a pretty recent innovation, standardized coins didn't appear until the 600s BC, barely 100-150 years or so prior to the Greco-Persian wars. Widescale international trade existed for 1000+ years prior to that as far as we know, you don't necessarily standardized money for that.
In 600 BCE, Lydia's King Alyattes minted what is believed to be the first official currency, the Lydian stater. The coins were made from electrum, a mixture of silver and gold that occurs naturally, and the coins were stamped with pictures that acted as denominations.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/roots_of_money.asp
But also note that physical currency is not necessary for “money”. Money has been around for about 5000 years, ridding us from barter.
You don’t need physical coins to have money
I know it's all tightly related, but I believe there is a difference.
Comparing this to coinage, the innovation of coins introduced a standardized physical object that could represent value, which allowed for a different kind of economic activity not solely based on personal trust and relationships. Coinage enabled transactions with strangers and facilitated trade over larger distances and among larger groups of people, where personal credit relationships were not feasible.
Money, has a specificity to it. In essence, while early credit systems were based on social relationships and trust within communities, coinage represented a more impersonal and widely accepted medium of exchange that did not necessarily rely on social bonds. This distinction is crucial because it allowed for the expansion of trade and the concept of money as an abstract unit of account, rather than a direct reflection of social debts and credits.
modern money, whether digital or physical, serves several key functions: it is a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. While the quipu certainly functioned as a unit of account, it's not clear that it served as a medium of exchange or a store of value. These are essential characteristics that define 'money' in the economic sense.
the impersonal nature of coinage and modern digital money allows them to facilitate trade and economic activity on a scale and with a degree of anonymity that's not possible with a system like quipu, which is deeply embedded in the social and political fabric of the society that uses it.
The transition to coinage and later to digittal transactions represents a move towards a more standardized, divisible, and portable form of money that can be used in a wide range of transactions, with or without a pre-existing relationship between the parties involved. This is quite different from the quipu, which was embedded in a specific cultural context and may not have been readily exchangeable or understood outside of that context.
So while it's tempting to draw parallels between ancient accounting systems and modern digital currencies, we must be careful not to conflate the two. Each serves its purpose within its particular economic and social milieu, with specific attributes and limitations that define its use as "money."
Source for the confidence here? We know that a corvée economy existed, but I’m skeptical that we can rule out private quipo-based exchange. The evidence base is pretty thin; a lot of stuff didn’t survive Pizarro.
Extensive trade international trade networks existed during the entire bronze age and the preceding periods without any coins, though. Coins are useful as an standardized accounting unit and are easy to transport but fundamentally are not that different from barter.
Social relationships are still important the higher you go in finance - it’s much easier to get a $100 million loan for a new building with a strong relationship with a banker than as a stranger, regardless of collateral.
I think a pre-commercial time where people didn’t care about money is a fiction.
While it is true that trade is evident from ancient times, with goods found at burial sites that originated thousands of miles away, this does not automatically imply that all trade was facilitated by a commoditized asset serving as a universal medium of exchange. In many cases, goods like salt, furs, and metal objects were indeed used in trade, but they were part of a broader system of barter and reciprocal exchange, which could function effectively without a standardized form of money.
Regarding the role of social relationships in finance, while it's accurate that relationships remain crucial, especially for large transactions in modern times, this does not discount the fact that in the past, community trust and social bonds were often the primary means of securing credit, not collateral or commoditized money. This is evident in how competitive markets and the scarcity of trust can affect transactions, as Graeber notes through an anecdote where mutual aid within a community was a given, not a transaction requiring formal repayment.
The idea of a pre-commercial time where 'people didn't care about money' may indeed be fictional, but it's more nuanced than simply saying they used money in the way we do now. They cared about value and exchange, but these were frequently managed through social mechanisms rather than through impersonal, commoditized money. It's essential to understand that the concept of money has evolved and that early forms of trade and credit were valid economic systems in their own right, even if they don't match the monetary systems we are familiar with today.
This is speculation.
> earlier societies often operated on principles of reciprocity and communal sharing rather than for-profit trade.
Any society that had specialization of labor did more than that. Heck, the American Indian tribes measured their individual wealth via horse ownership. They certainly engaged in trade with the intent of profit.
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."
You can't have wage labor unless you have money as a construct.
That sentence just clarifies what the first sentence implicitly requires, as you cannot trade for profit unless you have property rights, etc.
> Also during Pericles' tenure, pay for civic service was instituted. No single other reform furthered democracy as much as pay for service. Now many more people could afford to serve, and for some, serving became attractive financially. First, dicasts, or jurors, began to be paid. A low rate, but half a day's wages or so. That was introduced by Pericles while Cimon was still around, perhaps to counteract his liberality with his own wealth. Jurors were appointed by lot annually and could serve year after year. By 422 (Aristophanes Wasps 662), there were 6,000 jurors per year. Cleon increased the pay rate to 3 obols a day. Pericles also started the payment of soldiers and sailors 3 obols a day.
https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/clas21/notes/atheniande....
You have a very formal, academic understanding of capitalism while we are arguing that the fundamental ideas of capitalism naturally exist because that's logical for human psychology - owning things, trading, markets, paying people for labor. This is all stuff that goes back to the earliest recorded records. Cuneiform tablets are just endless accounting ledgers.
It's economy wasn't modern free market system focused on capital accumulation and investment for profit. It was a mixed economy with significant state involvement and a variety of revenue sources that went beyond simple market transactions.
State actors paying their civil servants isn't evidence of capitalism, or wage labor.
( David Graeber does write about ancient Greek city-states and how their coinage came to be, according to the historical and archeological record, in "Debt: The First 5000 Years," by the way. )
Capitalism, is a relatively modern phenomenon, with a pretty common, well understood definition. This isn't a heretical or radical idea. You may find some societies prior to the 16th/17th century that fulfills some characteristics of capitalism, but they don't make the cut.
People naturally want to trade. Markets existed before capitalism and they will exist after capitalism.
This smells like "socialism works fine it just that all the failed attempts were doing it wrong".
If you believe that early man was capable of thinking, "This shit is my shit, that shit is your shit, and if you take my shit I will punish you", then you have the precursors for capitalism. Academics like to throw a bunch of other nonsense around but that's it.
But the key difference (I have been told) is what you can do with that accounting.
Like, I can walk into a shop and buy anything on the wall with money, whereas that kind of accounting may have very different implications for what you can do with it.
Additionally, I can take money that I gathered from one source and use it somewhere else, and it's fungible in that I can use it anywhere else in the system. If I have a debt to one person in earlier systems that debt may be non-transferable.
If those two elements are true, it becomes very difficult to do a lot of the things that we think of as money, specifically interest and massive accumulation.
They may not have. Some gold mixed with silver or other metals may have been common. In other words counterfeiting whether officially sanctioned or by thieves was probably not uncommon.
Pretty much. Elemental gold or relatively easy to refine alloys were stripped off the land over many thousands of years. Now we have to go deeper to find more.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/296070#:~:text=The%20silver%20m....
[1]: https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/index/gold/gold-mining-in-th...