From: Allin Cottrell (cottrell@wfu.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 21 2004 - 13:50:11 EDT
On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, ajit sinha wrote: > A social division of labor requires exchange of goods, > but not necessarily a value calculation. Imagine > exchange on the basis of gifts--here goods would > exchange without value calculations. In a well defined > caste division of labor also goods would exchange > without any value calculations. I think it is simply > wrong to think that exchange of goods imply "value", > if value has to keep its meaning. Ian's point -- as I understand it from his formal work on the subject, and put very crudely -- is that if the gift-exchanges that you're imagining are ongoing, and amount to a significant fraction of the economic activity of the agents involved, then in the long run they are bound to give rise to exchange ratios that do not differ too drastically from labour-values. If they did differ drastically, some of the gift-exchangers would go extinct; the situation would not sustain reproduction. With a caste system it's perhaps a bit different, in that one can imagine systematically unequal exchange between castes as a form of exploitation -- given the power relations required to enforce the inequality and to prevent people from changing caste. Allin Cottrell
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