Historical Approach to Shifts in Modes of Exchange

Discussion

Michel Bauwens:

"According to Kojin Karatani in, The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange, there are four fundamental modes of exchange.

• The first is Mode A, which is based on the reciprocity of the gift and on the “community”.

• The second is Mode B, which is related to ruling and protection, and based on the “state”.

• The third is Mode C, which involves commodity exchange mediated by the “market”. Capitalism only emerges when the market becomes dominant and subordinates Mode A and B to its own needs.

• The fourth is the hypothetical Mode D, which transcends all the other three. Each modality changes as it constrained by the domination of other modalities. For example, the form of community is first the band (under nomadism), then the tribe, then the agricultural or territorial community under imperial systems, which eventually becomes the nation under the domination of capitalist systems.

...

Concerning mode A, Karatani stresses that Marx did not distinguish between the pooling of resources in nomadic bands, and the reciprocity of the gift in tribal systems. He makes that distinction very clear, though he still uses the overall name and concept of mode A (the reciprocity of the gift) to refer to this joint period, which can sometimes cause confusion. But it becomes obvious that his description of mode D (the transcendental one) is very congruent with the thesis that we may currently be at the threshold of a new type of civilization and economy based on a new mode of exchange. Very specific about the argument of Karatani is that mode D is not just a return to the reciprocity of Mode A, nor a pure nomadic band structure, but a new structure which transcends all three preceding structures. Mode A is dominated by a new form of gift exchange based mainly on the pooling of resources, i.e. the digitized commons which enable all kinds of pooling of physical and infrastructural resources. In other words, mode D is an attempt to recreate a society based on mode A, but at a higher level of complexity and integration.

What this means in our context is that Karatani marshals considerable evidence for the existence of each modality, sourced in both anthropological and historical literature.

He thus recognizes different major transitions:

A first transition occurs when the pooling of resources in nomadic bands is replaced as a dominant modality of exchange by the reciprocity-based gift economies of tribal systems. This allows a scaling from bands to clans, tribes and inter-tribal systems and, therefore, creates a world that consists of a collection of tribal mini-systems.

A second transition occurs when the reciprocity-based systems of tribes are replaced by state systems, based on the logic of “plunder and redistribute” or “rule and protect”. This allows scaling to inter-tribal and inter-community levels and, thus, creates a world of world-empires that compete with each other.

A third transition occurs when these systems are replaced by the market form as the dominant form of exchange. This creates a global world-market system in which nation-states compete with each other, which Karatani characterizes as a world-economy.

Finally, he posits, and we agree with him, a new transition towards mode D, a mode of exchange that integrates the preceding ones but is dominated by the pooling that was originally dominant in the early nomadic groups. Karatani calls this modality “associationism”.

It is important to stress the following point made by Karatani. To begin with, all systems are multimodal. The four modalities (or five according to our adaptation of Karatani’s scheme) exist in some form in all systems and it is only their mutual configuration which changes. This means that transitions depend on struggles for dominance among these modalities. This opens up thinking about the value shift or value transition, not just as the replacement of one system by another, but as an ongoing inter-modal struggle.

The question then becomes, How can we think about a commons transition as a way for the commons to engage the other modalities? Just as the logic of capitalist markets attempts to commodify, the logic of the commons is an effort to commonify. There is evidence of this type of value shift in the current practices of peer to peer based, commons-producing communities."

(https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-we-are)