What would be the value of Jewelry and diamonds in a world not based on trade but need's. Apart from their scarcity what would be their true worth - gold won't be used as reserves to give peices of paper(money) value.
By the way it is because money is not worth the paper it's written on that we have inflation.
Four Winds! check out summit to do with Marx'x theory of Historical Materialism - it doesn't have to be some biased extremist text, a good appraisal by some independent academic would be good.
From what swims around my head - I'll try and give a brief synopsis.
Trade didn't always exist, and as Stray points out it still doesn't in some tribes. People lived a hunter gatherer existence, dubbed Primitive Communism, where the neccessary means of survival were shared amongst the tribe.
Times of shortage for one tribe may have lead to taking form another tribe so rivalry developed.
The big change was when man developed agriculture so land was enclosed and out of this developed private property. Agricultural Goods needed to be exchanged so barter developed and so did the concept of trade. Also rival tribe members when captured were put to forced work so the system of slavery developed. The biggest civilisation being based on slavery being the Roman Empire.
Ownership of the land developed and in the end some person (eg. a Baron) owned large amounts of land and people (peasants) were alloted their piece of land which they worked on for the rest of their lives. So they were tied to thier bit of land and the Baron for all their lives. Also the peasants had to have knights to protect their land. A hierachal hereditary system system developed - Feudalsim.
Now we come to capitalism. This came about when the ownership of wealth became more important then just owning the land. Across Europe the emerging capitalist class overthrew the Feudal order - first to happen in England with The English Civil war. There's lots more to mention but space and attention span doesn't permit me. The Industrial Revolution followed due to the new freedom of the capitalist class & advances in Technology. The ordinary person could now choose to have a different boss exploit him, while under Feudalism he was tied to his land and his bastard Baron.
Anyway, Marx envisaged Socialism as a progression from capitalism. Where the workers actually owned the means of production and where goods where produced for needs and not for sale.
Marx saw Socialism as an advancement from Capitalism which utilised all the previous systems progress in terms of the means of production & technology but would be organised in such a way that it would overcome capitalism's inability to provide for everyones needs.
Marx gave socialism (as well as Capitalism) a real scientific analysis. So much so that even pro-capitalists took on board some of his theories. There is nothing Utopian about Marx's theories.
He pointed out that the contradictions inherent in each of the previous sytems (or stages) sowed the seeds for it's own downfall and with each system the class that developed under it formed the new ruling class.
Yours
MonkeyBoy
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