In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example, payments were frequently made by means of a common standard unit, or measure of value, such as copper, silver, or grain, in which the values of goods or services could be expressed. On the contrary, these were widespread in the ancient world, as were a variety of special-purpose monies, items that performed a range of monetary functions, such as measuring the value of things, without operating as universal currencies. Not that markets and commodity exchange were unique to Greece. The luxury of having slaves allowed the ancient Greeks and Romans to create “civilization.” Ultimately, as Nietzsche recognized, slavery is a condition of “every higher culture.”Īncient Greece is rightly recognized as the first extensively monetized society. Snatched from their tribe or community, slaves, most often women and children used as domestic servants, were kin-less, no longer human, living “pieces of property” (Aristotle), like cattle. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, slavery, markets, and money evolved in tandem, each indispensable to the other. It began with enslaved, commodified humans, taken as plunder and readily translatable into a monetary equivalent. In all class societies money is enmeshed in practices of domination and expropriation. Blood and Money: War, Slavery, and the State by David McNally, 2020
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