I certainly agree with you there.

“And the distinction I wanted to make was that life has been pretty good for people when things were structured differently…”

I pretty much agree here, too, with the caveat that how good things looked in any given place at any given time depended very much on the vagaries of nature and accidents of geography.

“…presumably they can be again, even if the specifics look much different than they did.”

Once again I agree, and with equality based on plenty rather than scarcity, the above caveats would no longer apply.

In any case, the point here is that “human nature” isn’t necessarily to acquire and exchange things (homo economicus?), but that such inclinations are tied to social structures involving division of labor and class inequality. And the distinction I wanted to make was that life has been pretty good for people when things were structured differently, so presumably they can be again, even if the specifics look much different than they did.

And yeah, I’m getting a bit far afield from the reading.

Certainly, I’ve come across that same information. And if we ignore infant mortality and short life-span, they make good points. But what such societies do NOT do is accumulate a surplus–which is necessary for the existence of a leisure class.

So again, it seems to me to be an abundance of necessities and of leisure, though a scarcity of unique luxury items.

Not really. Once there is sufficient abundance of necessities to support a leisure class it ceases to be primitive communism.

It may seem like a quibbling distinction, but the point hidden here is that such societies are, to use Marshall Sahlins’ phrase “the original affluent society,” with all the basic needs met and plenty of leisure time. Meanwhile, there’s no basis for trade except for the type of sharing that has been mentioned above, because everyone has access to everything that’s available.

There’s also trade between humans tribes, like how ochre or seashells get hundreds of miles away from their sources.

Division of labor by sex doesn’t have to be absolute to be significant; if most women gather and take care of the kids, and most men hunt and fight with other tribes, that’s division of labor, even if some men and women swap roles. There’s also the elderly, providing child care and knowledge in return for food, and shamans, and if one man is better at making knives than hunting, I’d be surprised if no one noticed and swapped accordingly. There’s a fair bit of potential for division of labor. (And of course, to the degree that there isn’t specialization, that can be seen as a factor in why they’re so materially poor.)

The poor hunter may get mocked and fed; I suspect someone who could be a good hunter but is lazing around gets more social pressure. Trade and social welfare are not mutually exclusive.

My understanding of Morgan is that the Iroquois traded with other tribes (trade in sense that Smith is using it), but not within a given local tribe.

(As a side note, I’ve come across some indications that division of labor according to sex was nowhere near as absolute and well-defined in primitive societies as anthropologists originally thought).

I basically agree with both you and skzb, in that I find Smith’s distinction between trade and “gaining favor” to be … obscure.

But I also find your distinction between divisions of labor in production and exchange obscure. As in the previous chapter, I’m coming from the perspective of anthropology and evolutionary biology. In foraging societies, there’s always considerable division of labor (by ape standards), between males and females. It’s not just that men hunt and women gather and both eat meat with two veg, but men and women pass tools and tool-making back and forth.

So if a man kills a deer, and shapes the bone into a needle, and gives it to the woman who uses it to make a deer-leather shirt, which he then wears — I can’t see where you (or Smith) draw the lines of exchange/trade/division of labor.

I guess (thinking as I write) that reciprocation or sharing, especially within a family, comes first — and actually it’s interesting that Smith skips over this step. Or do you think that’s included in his word “exchange”? And is it in your understanding of “exchange”, Tim?