Phil Graham on Thu, 13 Jan 2000 18:55:11 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Gift "economy" |
Hi Nik, Thanks for your reply. Please excuse the bluntness of this message. I'm short of time. At 12:00 01-01-70 +0000, Nik wrote: >Seems to me that you've missed the point of the word 'gift' as its used in >'gift economy'. No I haven't: Mauss, Durkheim, etc. I understand the word "gift" just fine as it's used sociologically, and as it is used by Richard and, apparently, you. But you seem to misunderstand the point of my post in general, my use of the word "economy", and my use of the terms "value" and "free"; "free" being the main focus of my post (not to mention my being more than mildly pissed off at how music and musicians are treated these days). >You seem to say that if something is produced, or is exchanged through a >medium, then it cannot ever be seen as 'free', even when it is given, because >of the labour that has gone into both its production and the medium through >which it is given. No, I said nothing of the sort. Of course such acts can be *seen* as free, just as a "free lunch" can. But gifts do not constitute an economy, any sort of an economy. Nor are they free in any sense. They are an aspect of an economy, normally a culturally specific aspect. Are you saying that something can be exchanged (whether given or sold) without it being mediated, socially, materially, or economically? If so, I'd like an example please. >But how the object or act was produced, or the medium >through which it is given is not the point. That was Richard's point, not mine. He said that free MP3 downloads were the most uniquely "new" aspect of the internet. I don't happen to think so. >No object or act is born free from labour or symbolic baggage - whether it is a >bottle of homebrew given to someone as a squatt-warming present in a capitalist >society, or a cup of coffee to a guest in a pre-capitalist society.. Agreed, a truism in fact. Production is the starting point of any economic assessment. >The point >of a gift is not that it was not produced (either physically or symbolically, >for whatever worth that distinction is), but that it is given. How could it be "not produced"? What do you mean? That it could appear out of thin air? All you are saying is this: "a gift is given". That is a tautology. What's your point? Are you saying that a gift is only a gift when nothing is exchanged in return, an act of pure selflessness? That's what I meant when I said 'pure "self-sacrifice"'. What you mean is that no money changes hands and no reciprocal obligation or expectation ensues. Mauss was naive in this respect and knew it, what's more. I don't have the time to go into other developments and formulations of the gift, but Bourdieu is useful here if you want a less naive view of what the gift entails culturally and socially. >When something is given, it evades the rules of capitalist exchange because the >gift is not expected to be reciprocated - when you give you don't expect to get >in return. That may be the case in some acts (very few I would think, as you admit below). But we're still talking about isolated moments here, not economies or economic relations. Sure you can commit a selfless act and give something for "nothing", for "free". But in a society of capitalist relations, in any society at all, you cannot escape the parameters of production, unless you assume that the gift - the "thing" given - appears out of thin air, which it does not, even if it is only a gift of time. You are suggesting that somehow, by exchanging something that doesn't involve monetary exchange or obligation on the part of the receiver, you have subverted capitalism: horseshit. If that were the case, every act of kindness would subvert capital, which it does not. What you are actually saying is that giving has no economic aspects: nothing is expected in exchange for the true gift, therefore no exchange takes place ecause the gift is a one-way act, therefore the *absence* of exchange. Kindness is actually a fundamental part of human societies. Even Adam Smith knew that. I do not think that capitalist social relations are all bad, by the way. That's because I believe that people are, on the whole, quite decent. If the "gift economy" is supposed to be concerned with acts that are "not expected to be reciprocated", as you put it, "free" from exchange altogether, then you are talking about disconnected, one-way, once-off, isolated acts, not an economy. You work out the implications of your own logic. What is exchange? >A gift economy (such as people putting up hotline servers so others >may download software off of them) is based on generosity, not profit. Oh yes, and where did this hotline server come from? What is it connected to? How do people come to have the time to commit such acts of selflessness? Again, you are isolating rare moments, arguing from scant and scarce examples, and eliding the system within which such acts occur, indeed which allow such acts to occur. And how do you know what these people's motivations are? . By the way, "generosity" vs "profit" again rests on a vulgar understanding of "economy" and "value", ie value as "profit", as money - a secondary form of surplus labour. From whence did this surplus arise? It seems a long stretch between giving a hungry person something to eat out of compassion and supplying the world with "free" software. I think your atrribution of motives is questionable here. I've yet to see anything as high-tech as software come without strings of some sort attached. >The >material/symbolic basis for the object/act given, and the medium through which >it is given do not alter this. The point of difference between capitalist and >gift economies is not based in their various modes of production, but in their >methods of distribution of objects/acts. You are saying that the gift economy operates outside the capitalist economy; that it is concerned with distribution only: nonsense. In any case, you can't chop off distribution from the rest of an economy and treat it in isolation as an economy in itself. Otherwise, you must assume that production just "happened" as if by magic. In other words, you are saying that production doesn't matter where giving is concerned, that surplus time and products arise mystically from nowhere. Clearly not. Moreover, you are treating this highly mediated and capital intensive form of giving as unattached to its *means* of distribution. Phew! >That said, it doesn't mean that the gift-giver doesn't gain anything for their >generosity - they may gain honor, social standing, etc. In other words, social and cultural capital: symbolic capital. These convert more or less directly into economic capital. Go figure. >But to see this gain as >being part of the exchange, and not the social flow-on effects of gift giving, >would be a mistake. To only see gifts floating around in the economy as disembodied, disembedded, unhistorical "things" is the mistake. People have always given gifts, at least since recorded history. Gifts and giving are economically epiphenomenal. They firstly require surplus production. They are culturally, historically, and economically embedded artefacts that are more ritualistic than foundational (Q. From whence does the surplus arise that allows a gift of time or thing to exist in the first place? A. From overproduction, capital's historical specialty, and one of its foundational presuppositions). Gifts are isolated artefacts, at least they are from your point of view. They do not constitute an economy in any sense whatsoever. They cannot. Yours is a misuse of "economy", misleading and false. >They are not integral to the act of giving, are not >expected by the giver, and do not always result for the act of giving. That's a huge generalisation: "gain is not integral to giving". Again, horseshit. You are only looking at one side of a small part of one huge aspect of political economy (ie distribution). Gain precedes giving, and production precedes gain. Production also precedes distribution. You must have surplus product and/or surplus time to give it in the first place, unless of course you live on fresh air. Production is the point of departure for any study of political economy, whether its "free" aspects or otherwise. A broader, more hopeful, more realistic view of political economy might point out that the emergence of a certain class of people - those who now have enough spare time to spend on developing, e.g., new software almost entirely for the benefit of others (at least according to you) - indicates that capital is starting to reach its limit in certain respects: ie, it now creates enough surplus to support such a benevolent class of people with enough surplus time to do such things (but wouldn'tcha be pissed off if you wrote a free program for the whole world and nobody wanted it?!). But works of *conspicuous* charity by the cocktail set has long been functional in generating social and cultural capital for "high society" in the west. It's called philanthropy or charity, and George Soros, e.g., specialises in it. Regards, Phil -------------------------------------------- Phil Graham Faculty of Business, Economics, and Law University of Queensland phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au -------------------------------------------- # 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