I. Evaluating Exchange Cross-Culturally

A. Rules: give, receive, reciprocate
B. Hau: things as mediums for expressing relationships between people
C. Primitive societies: exchange = values, social solidarity, morality, total social fact
D. Capitalism: narrows exchange into a purely economic act

 

II. Mauss' Critique of Capitalism

A. Capitalism has forsaken wisdom of ancestors

1. Assembly lines
2. Items don't bear traces of producers' identities
3. Workers not fairly compensated for their role

B. Mauss' political proposal

1. Social security
2. "The state itself, representing the community, owes him, as do his employers, together with some assistance from himself, a certain security in life, against unemployment, sickness, old age, and death" (67)
3. Return to group morality

C. Universal morality of the gift: "It is common to the most advanced societies, to those of the immediate future, and to the lowest imaginable forms of society" (70)
D. Capitalism isn't an advance, but a moral regression

 

III. Karl Marx: Value, Labor, and Commodities

A. Capital: Written in 1860s, published in 1867
B. Two types of value

1. Use value: an item's value comes from its function, how people use it
2. Exchange value: "the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind"

C. Barter: use value and exchange value are nearly identical
D. Capitalism: exchange value becomes much more important
E. Money as "radical leveller" which corrodes social relationships
F. Labor theory of value: value of an item stems from human labor
G. Capitalism, alienation of labor

1. Capitalist class invests in means of production
2. Workers create value
3. Capitalists seen as owning products of labor, sell them for profit
4. Labor not fully compensated for the value they produce, capitalists get enormous profit

H. Money makes alienation possible by allowing everything to be assigned a value
I. Commodity fetishism: value seems a quality of an inanimate object, when it actually comes from the human act of labor
J. Money becomes the dominant arbiter of value

 

IV. Comparing Mauss and Marx

A. Alienation

1. Mauss and Marx: capitalism destroys the ways in which exchanging things creates bonds between people
2. Mauss: psychological alienation. Social security as public thank you
3. Marx: concrete, material, economic alienation. Get rid of capitalist class which steals profits

B. Commodity Fetishism

1. Mauss and Marx: we endow objects with spirits
2. Mauss: hau is positive, unites people in social relations. Capitalism makes things lifeless, divorced from social relations
3. Marx: Commodities have become separated from human source of value. Capitalism makes things lifelike and omnipotent

 

V. Evaluating Mauss

A. Armchair anthropology at its best: detailed, meticulously researched, theoretically powerful
B. Too rule-oriented
C. Over-emphasizes distinction between gifts and commodities
D. Ignores inter-dependence between types of gift and commodity exchange
E. Social security doesn't create direct relations of mutual dependence, social solidarity

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu