Back to Barter? No

Q. Could the old system of bartering goods be used to advantage in society today? 

A. No. It could not be used as an effective method of translating one form of wealth into terms of another in our complex society. 

Among primitive tribes it was quite the vogue. Even today among peoples existing on the fringe of civilization it is being used. The Esquimaux of the North and Maoris of the South understand and utilize the barter method. Living on subsistence fishing, hunting, and farming economy they can efficaciously trade what they happen to have too much of for what they lack and their neighbours have. 

When the ancient savages or barbarians traded things on the “mark” (which later became the market) between the tribal grounds they didn’t make the exchange on the basis of value for value measured by time.  They were not concerned with time. They had lots of it. They had no clocks of wrist watches to measure it. The sun and the seasons were their means of time cognition. The covetous factor supplied incentive to trade. 

While we know that primitive man was not a complete entity in himself, and invariably functioned as a part of  the tribe, we may imagine him out of his element long enough to make our point. Should one of the ladies in his simple seraglio desire mink coat, then her boy friend clubbed the mink with a shillelagh rather than making overtures to a 5 per cent sachem in the capital. He tanned the skin in the sun and wind, had some of the women folk pummel it into pliable shape and make the coat. If the lady died and he was  stuck with the coat and he was stuck with the coat, and he found another walking delegate with a Marilyn  Monroe calendar that he was tired of, they could make an exchange on the basis of want or craving instead of value for value. 

The problems involved in barter are those associated with coincidence and divisibility. Not only must there  be present the element of coincidence but there must even be double coincidence. You must want the other  fellows article and he must want yours. 

If you have an extra horse that you don’t need, and your neighbor has an extra cow, and you really want a  cow, and he needs another horse, then, a trade can be made to the advantage of both on the value for value  basis. 

But if the neighbor has no cow to exchange, and only a cart to offer, the horse is worth much more than the cart but you can’t divide the horse. He would have to throw in some chickens or ducks to facilitate the  exchange or the deal is off. 

Those destructive factors of coincidence and divisibility led man to devise other ways and means of expediting trade. One commodity, chosen for its adaptability, was set aside to measure values and act as a  medium of exchange. This functioned, and still continues to function much better than antiquated, cumbersome  barter method. 

This, of course, is all seasoned to the capitalist inning. When capitalism succumbs to social intelligence. 

When the incentive of buying and selling yields to universal cooperation, and a Socialist Administration of things takes over, new methods of manipulating distribution and exchange will be employed. 

The present assemblage of capital, wages, money, commodities, profits, and all the rest of the equipment essential to the operation of an exploitative system will be considered excess and useless social baggage, destined to be dumped on the rubbish heap of a sane society. 

A recrudescence, on a higher and wider scale, of the primitive arrangement for bringing people together for mutual advantage will be in order. 

As to the precise and detailed nature of future methods, we can safely leave this to the workers whose mental acumen has been instrumental in eliminating class society, and realizing the inception of social ownership and control of all things relating to human comfort and freedom. 

Socialist Party of Canada