Re: <nettime> The New Culture? The New Economy!

[Phil Graham <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au>]

At 05:05 PM 23/08/00 -0400, richard barbrook wrote:
>Bollocks. What I always point out is that the hi-tech gift economy is
>precisely that: an *economy*.

No it isn't. It's a particular mode of exchange related in complex ways to
any number of economies, just like barter- and money-based exchanges.
Production, for example, is not included. You can't call something an
economy that doesn't take production (and a whole lot of other stuff) into
account. In essence, to call the exchange of gifts an economy is
qualitatively no different than vulgar monetarist econometricians who see
flows of money as identical with "the economy". Both views focus on modes
of exchange alone and ignore all the other material and historical
relations that make exchanges possible. 

Phil




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