Hardwired Economic Reality - Buying, Selling, And Trading Since Cowrie Shells, And The Fantasy Of Sharing Wealth

Archaeologists  digging in the Negev Desert have unearthed the remains of an early Paleolithic settlement, surprisingly well-preserved.  It was like the remains of Pompeii, men, women, children and their kitchens preserved intact as Mt. Vesuvius erupted and covered them.

There was nothing particularly surprising about the discovery.  There were the usual bones, pottery shards, rudimentary tools, and simple jewelry; but what interested the scientists was a primitive abacus and an assortment of shells, arranged and ranked in a particular order.  

Cowrie shells, of course, were used as currency as early as the Zhou Dynasty in China in 1046 BCE and were commonly used throughout Africa, Asia, and Oceania until the 19th century; but this find suggested that some kind of economic activity was common in the earliest reaches of human history. 

The Paleolithic era, 3.8 million to 100,000 years ago, is marked by the evolution of human behavior, including he use of fire for cooking, the use of tools, and the creation of religious practices; but what was not understood until the Negev discovery, was that economic activity was also a part of early human culture.

 

Dr. Shmuel Goldblum, Director of the Israeli Center for Human Research And Development, and head of the discovery team, had this to say:

The excavation in the Negev Desert is remarkable for its confirmation of economic activity in the earliest human settlements.  There can be no doubt that the findings - the abacus-like calculating instrument and the clearly demarcated differently valued shells (think American quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies) - suggested that the first human beings were engaged in value transfer. 

In other words, the private market was alive and well in the Paleolithic.  This of course suggests, as anthropologists have always suspected, that the concept of relative value and the inherent social need for commercial trade, is hardwired, or at least a fundamental, ineradicable feature of human behavior. 

Conservatives, of course, had always known that commercial activity - buying and selling on the private market, private enterprise, and the accumulation of wealth - was a feature of human behavior, and so were not surprised that it had begun as early as the Israeli archeologists had suggested.  The Negev discovery should put to rest any contrary progressive notions of wealth reapportionment, redistribution, and the intervention of the state in private economic affairs. 

Social anthropologists weighed in on the Israeli findings. Economic valuation had always been at the heart of human behavior.  Everything from market barter and trade to marriage contracts were matters of economics.  Even in the flattest, most equal, postmodern marriages, there are clear, definable contractual rules set forth to guarantee equality; and each partner in his own way is always on the alert to profit from the arrangement, to find loopholes in the contract, unwritten codicils, small measures of tilt to give advantage. 

Marriage itself has always been an economic matter - women look for a mate who will provide for them and their children; men look for a fertile, productive, and complaisant partner - and that has always been the fundamental guiding principle to social stability. 

Because human nature is hardwired to be self-interested, defensive, territorial, and aggressive, competitive economic dynamics is its natural expression. The pursuit of money, influence, and power - the sine qua non of the human condition - has always been a feature of human society.  The private sector, the free market, and economic exchange are the most obvious and telling expression of this condition. 

The findings in the desert, of specific interest to social anthropologists who have long searched for the most fundamental, ineradicable, and important aspects of human activity, were significant.  Although they suggested only that primitive man was buying and selling, the findings confirmed what researchers had always suspected - man is an economic animal and has been ever since he came down from the trees. 

While this all seems obvious and logical, the findings stirred considerable interest in progressive camps, those redoubts of socialist conviction who believe that there is no such thing as hardwired, ineradicable aspects of the human animal.  That personal ambition, greed, aggression, territorial appetite, and aggrandizement can be moderated and eventually eliminated.  Utopia does exist, and a verdant, peaceful, cooperative, considerate, and congenial world awaits.  It is only a matter of desire, commitment, and devotion. 

Anton Chekhov in his play Three Sisters discuss this idea. Two Russian intellectuals, Vershinin and Tutzenbakh see life differently.  One is convinced that fundamental social reform is imminent, that the artificial segmentation of society into a competitive, counterproductive hierarchy will end and that wealth will be shared equally in a more just, humane, and fair society. 

The other disagreed, arguing that human beings and their societies have never shown even a scintilla of this fanciful intent.  Human nature is the engine of human activity, all of which will always be private, individual, competitive, and productive. 

Vershinin, the progressive, the eternal optimist was of course prescient, for the Communist Revolution was only a few decades away; but Tutzenbakh was right because the socialist experiment failed badly and socialism has been discredited and dismissed ever since. 

Except for the American redoubts of socialist idealism.  Recently Arthur Van De Veer Brooks, Professor Emeritus of Duke University, longtime progressive and advocate for radical social reform, recently wrote an article in the New York Review Of Literature, excerpted here:

The discoveries in the Negev - a few shards of pottery, scattered shells, and primitive instruments - shed no light whatsoever on the human condition.  While there is no doubt that the earliest humans traded for value, there is no indication that the findings implied some innate, inoperable Darwinian greed.  On the contrary, as Harper and Stone (Anthropology Review 14:3-17) have noted, remarkable cooperation occurred in human Paleolithic settlements, and that this was at the heart of the human genome, not the reverse.

 'Whistlin' Dixie', said Fielding Blythe of the Cato Institute.  'Any amateur with but a scanty knowledge of history can see that enterprise, free competition, and Darwinian conflict have been the heart and soul of the human condition since the first social settlements'. 

Of course, given their own hardwired conviction for progressive neo-socialism and radical liberal reform, American progressives stayed the course.  Nothing - not millennia of history, not some dusty dig in the desert, and certainly not some conservative screed about human nature - could deter them from their course.  If anything, they were even more passionate about their belief in human transformability, the certainty of a better, more accommodating, more collaborative and just world. 

'What do you think about the Negev?' Corinne Muzelle asked her husband, a lifelong, dyed-in-the-wool, imperturbably progressive advocate for social reform, justice, and world peace.  'Bullshit', he said, uncharacteristically departing for his usually measured and temperate speech, even with his wife; but she knew that the discovery had rattled his cage, and that she would hear no end to his banging on about perfectibility. 

As far as Corinne was concerned, her husband had been chasing shadows for decades.  She loved him for his promise, but wondered why she was still married to this doddering, irreconcilable political fantasist.  'Economics', she muttered to herself.