Giving – carnage, gifts and singing about it

It is no exaggeration to say that among the ancient Greeks, famously the inventors of our civilization and prototypes of modern bourgeoisie, the entire social life revolved around give and take. Or more correctly: about taking and giving. For a millennium, the Hellenes celebrated the raids of their plundering ancestors, who sometimes razed entire cities to the ground when one of their ringleaders “had something taken away” – that is, the woman moved to another city. The riches that were stolen during revenge campaigns like the one in Troy were then given away with grand gestures at home. Homeric Greece practiced, as historians say, an “aristocratic economy of gifts.”

In David McNally’s book “Blood and Money” you can read about the motivation behind this behavior: “The social status of nobles depended on ‘competitive generosity’, that is, on the ability to bestow lavish gifts on their fellow human beings and to be charitable towards one another “To show those who were below you in the social order.” Because the gifts created bonds and obligations, the Canadian historian continues, the Greeks wrote about them in detail in stories Gifts remembered. One could also say that ancient Greece was a constant succession of slaughter and gifts and recitals about both.

If you believe bourgeois economics, everything soon changed because barter became a more regulated form of giving and taking. In markets, one value is exchanged for another – supposedly for the benefit of everyone.

But in reality the story was somewhat different in this respect too. The markets in Greece were initially viewed as an extension of the war. Or as the writer Xenophon put it in the fourth century BC: “Wherever we come and find no opportunity to buy, whether in barbarian or Greek land, we must take the food, not out of arrogance, but out of necessity.” Shopping and pillaging – for the fathers of our civilization, two sides of the same coin.

An economy without robbery and markets – what should that look like?

Against this background, the question naturally arises as to whether an economy could not function entirely without robbery and markets. In his classic work “The Great Transformation,” economic historian Karl Polanyi marvels at the fact that markets are now seen as a natural form of social interaction. In most non-European societies there was no such thing as an independent economy, said Polanyi. The production and distribution of goods were based on two non-economic principles: reciprocity and redistribution. If someone was negligent in providing for their relatives and neighbors, their reputation would suffer. It was simply good form to let others share in the fruits of gardening and fishing.

Entire trade networks also developed from this form of gift economy. The Kula trade in the Western Pacific is famous. On the islands of Melanesia, every person had a partner on another island who was regularly given gifts. In this way, communities strengthened their connection and commodities circulated between the islands. Sea trade without markets.

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But gifts also have a problematic side. Through the gift, the recipient is indirectly obliged to provide something in return. For this reason, some cultures had a particularly beautiful form of gift-giving: in order not to embarrass the other party, gifts were simply dropped inconspicuously during a visit.

So if you want to do something good this Christmas, look to Polynesia rather than ancient Greece. Simply put the new salad bowl you got for your cousin in the kitchen cupboard in an unobserved moment. In this way, you ensure a general sense of well-being that has no specific addressee. And please don’t write songs about it boasting about your generosity.

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