Re: <nettime> The barter origins of money

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.org>]

> Exchange is more than the interplay of private interests, more
> than the coercion of state laws. It is the way that human beings reconcile
> their individuality with belonging to others in society.

"Not even capitalism, despite its ostensible organization by and for
pragmatic advantage, can escape this cultural constitution of an apparently
objective praxis. For, as Marx also taught, all production, even where it
is governed by the commodity-form, by exchange-value, remains the
production of use-values. Without consumption, the object does not complete
itself as a product: a house left unoccupied is no house. Yet, use-values
cannot be specifically understood on the natural level of 'needs' and
'wants' -- precisely because men do not merely produce 'housing' or
'shelter': they produce a dwelling of definite sorts, a peasant's hut or a
nobleman's castle. This determination of use-values, of a particular type
of house as a particular type of home, represents  a continuous process of
social life in which men reciprocally define objects in terms of themselves
and themselves in terms of objects."

Marshall Sahlins: La Pensee Bourgeoise. 1976 (2000)

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net