Post #2673805

2023-05-12 19:25 UTC

The result of all this has been to force us into a "market society". @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on the imposition of markets and the demolition of society: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110182089285428195 @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on why money is so insidiously pervasive in virtually every aspect of life: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113854777439943148 One of the foundational falsehoods underlying capitalist ideology is the claim that money emerged at the grass-roots level as a natural and inevitable progression from supposedly pre-existing "barter economies"; a clever hack that benefited everyone. Anthropologists and archaeologists know this is not true, but orthodox economics and other conventional institutions still promote this myth routinely. Here is a recent study further debunking this pervasive indoctrination: Ancient tally sticks across three civilizations challenge myths about money https://phys.org/news/2025-09-ancient-tally-civilizations-myths-money.html See also chapter 2 "The Myth of Barter" from David Graeber's essential book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" https://we.riseup.net/assets/393727/David+Graeber+Debt+The+First+5+000+Years.pdf It is true that various forms of Indigenous currency arose independently in many places around the world, but those systems were fundamentally different from money as we know it today. Here is an informative article about that: Indigenous Currency Systems: From Wampum Belts to Trade Valuations https://archive.ph/wMhyt 15/30

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@RD4Anarchy@kolektiva.social 2023-05-12 19:26

Another quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property": "No argument about the freedom to appropriate can support the market economy, because capitalism makes people no freer to appropriate property than the common property regime, public property regime, or any other system. A person born into the contemporary market economy is as unfree to appropriate land as a person born to a common property regime or a public property regime that allows no private landownership. The right to appropriate scarce resources, as economist define the term (i.e. anything with a monetary value), is inconsistent with a system of equal freedom from coercion. The propertyless today are not and cannot be equally free to appropriate. "Lomasky’s “liberty to acquire” holdings actually means the “liberty” to purchase goods. That’s not a liberty at all. That’s a positive opportunity. The goods you are expected to buy are made out of resources you have forcibly been excluded from using yourself. The chance to take orders from one resource owner so that you can “earn” the right to buy goods from other resource owners might be useful, but it is not freedom from some form of coercion that exists in societies with a common property regime." 16/30

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