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2021 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

12. Exchange and Reciprocity

verfasst von : Desmond McNeill

Erschienen in: Fetishism and the Theory of Value

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Marx interprets a famous passage in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in terms of his own labour theory. I contend that this explanation is flawed. Citing the work of several commentators on this passage, and drawing on an analysis of Marcel Mauss’ concept of reciprocity, I argue that in Ancient Greece (as also in many contemporary ‘traditional’ societies) the market was only incipient, and exchange was very much a social relation.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Marx’s Emphasis on Production

Nächstes Kapitel Consumption, Need and Use-Value

The picture that follows is idealised and static. My aim is to demonstrate a major difference in emphasis; the cost is severe over-simplification.

Mauss refers to customs of gift-exchange “in which persons and things become indistinguishable”. This is a theme of considerable interest which I cannot pursue further here: that the distinction between things and persons, which is fundamental to our own society—“the very condition of part of our system of property, alienation and exchange”—is “foreign to the customs we have been studying” (Mauss 1970: 46).

See head of this chapter for the full quotation.

Unless otherwise specified, references are to the Rosstranslation (Aristotle 1980). Rather than giving page references to this edition, however, I will follow common practice and henceforth refer only to the original version.

The interpretation of fairness as appropriate division is central to Aristotle’s thinking; thus: “It is for this reason also that it is called just (dikaion) because it is division into two equal parts (dikha) … and the judge (dikastes) is one who bisects (dikhastes)” (1132a).

Aristotle’s text here, and indeed in many places, is open to other interpretations. I suggest that both his argument in this section, and the fact that he treats reciprocal justice as a separate category, support the view that reciprocal justice is distinct from both the other kinds—indeed a sort of mixture of the two. Unlike the case of booty, the goods are not initially held in common. There are, as discussed below, other important differences also between exchange and the other transactions discussed, and it is perhaps a matter of speculation which of these is of most significance for Aristotle.

The word “exchange” here (“to antipeponthos”) is translated by Ross as “reciprocal action”; but according to Scaltsas (1985) Aristotle is using the term to describe “just the process of exchanging”. I am greatly indebted to Scaltsas for his advice in interpreting Aristotle, without wishing to commit him to the views expressed here.

Aristotle first uses the example of a housebuilder rather than a farmer to make the same point, but the argument is unaffected.

“Need” is a translation of the Greek “khreia”, whereas Ross, like Rackham and other earlier translators, has “demand” here. It seems widely accepted that “need” is more accurate (ref Meikle, and Miller.), although the moral connotations of the word “khreia” are not fully captured by this word either. As Finley notes: “The semantic cluster around chreia … includes ‘use’, advantage’, ‘service’” (Finley 1970: 8).

The distinction between “unequal” and “incommensurable” is important, as becomes more evident below.

In addition to the many translations, with accompanying notes, there are numerous articles concerned with this particular section of the Nichomachean Ethics, some of which I have referred to. It should perhaps be noted that there is no evidence that the Greek text, on which so much of this debate centres, was corrupt.

Distributive justice: “qua intermediate it must be between certain things (which are respectively greater and less” (1131a); and “the proportional is intermediate” (1131b). Rectificatory justice: “The equal is intermediate between the greater and the lesser line according to arithmetical proportion” (1132a). In each case there are two amounts allotted on a basis which is fair; in the first instance they are fair because “intermediate” on a geometrical basis; in the second case, fair because “intermediate” on an arithmetical basis.

Polanyi’s description of Aristotle’s method, which relates closely to this point, is very enlightening:

In mapping out a field of study he (Aristotle) would relate all questions of institutional origin and function to the totality of society. Community, self-sufficiency and justice were the focal concepts. The group as a going concern forms a community (koinonia) the members of which are linked by the bond of good will (philia). … Philia expresses itself in a behaviour of reciprocity (anti-peponthos). … The rate at which the shared services (or, eventually, the goods) are exchanged follows from the requirement of philia, i.e. that the good will among the members persist. For without it community would cease. (Polanyi 1968: 97)

A possible exception, apart from Polanyi, is Miller who, in arguing for a new “consequentialist” interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of justice, asserts:

We must take seriously Aristotle’s introducing the notion of reciprocal justice in terms of its political function. Reciprocal justice, he says, is justice concerning exchanges which hold the city together. How does it do so? By promoting exchanges in which people rely on each other to satisfy one another’s needs. (Miller 1981: 336)

I do not quite agree with his term “political”, but his interpretation seems very similar to my own—although he appears to be unaware of the crucial concept of reciprocity as I have described it above.

Thus the word “metadosis” was taken to be exchange or barter, while patently meaning its opposite, namely, giving one’s share” (Finley 1970: 112). This not only provides a good example of the problem, it also reinforces the picture of exchange as concerned with participation in society as a whole, as a member of a group.

The relation itself, however, is still paradoxical for Aristotle. Association should, since the parties are unequal, be based on proportionate requital (unequal in arithmetic terms).

His society was, in this sense, “mixed”. The same was true of Aristotle’s, and indeed of the idealised “traditional” society I described at the outset—ref. footnote (1) in this chapter.

Aristotle. (1980). The Nichomachean Ethics (D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford: University Press.

Brewer, E. (1981). Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. London: Cassell.

Chase, D. (1911). The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle. London: J.M. Dent & Co.

Finley, M. I. (1970). Aristotle and Economic Analysis. Past and Present, Vol. 47.

Gillies, J. (1813). Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics (3rd ed.). London: T. Cadell and W. Davies.

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1949). The Elementary Structures of Kinship.

Marx, K. (1954). Capital (Vol. I). Moscow: Progress.

Marx, K. (1970a). A Draft Introduction to Grundrisse. Moscow: Progress.

Marx, K. (1970b). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress.

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1983). Letters on “Capital”. London: New Park.

Mauss, M. (1970). The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Meikle, S,. (1979). Aristotle and the Political Economy of the Polis. Journal of Hellenic Studies. Vol 99.

Miller, R. W. (1981). Marx and Aristotle: A Kind of Consequentialism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, VII(Suppl), 323–352.

Polanyi, K. (1968). Aristotle Discovers the Economy. In G. Dalton (Ed.), Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies. Boston: Beacon Press.

Rowe, C. (1971). The Endemion and Nichomachean Ethics. A Study in the Development of Aristotle’s Thought. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society. Supplement No. 3.

Scaltsas, D. (1985). Reciprocal Justice in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. Mimeo notes for paper delivered to the Philosophy Department, University of Edinburgh.

Soudek, J. (1952). Aristotle’s Theory of Exchange: An Inquiry into the Origins of Economic Analysis. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96(1), 45–75.

Titel: Exchange and Reciprocity
verfasst von: Desmond McNeill
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Fetishism and the Theory of Value
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-56122-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-56123-9

Copyright-Jahr: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56123-9_12