r/Anarchism • u/Senior_Ad_6799 • 3d ago

Barter in small towns

Is there still some form of barter in your small towns?

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7

u/Sargon-of-ACAB anarchist 2d ago

Your phrasing implies that 'barter' is what existed before capitalism or money. I know I'll come across as an insuferable know-it-all but I feel it's useful to point out that barter is what happens when a society or community that's used to money suddenly can't use money anymore. It's not some intermediary step towards modern currency or anything.

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u/Senior_Ad_6799 2d ago

I didn't mean as an intermediate pass, I meant both barter and money at the same time

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u/organizedpotatoes 11h ago

There are roughly a billion people without electricity and a great many people that exist without even gift economies.

There are absolutely those that do not even barter.

Let that imagination run wild.

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u/Crusty-Key anarchist 2d ago

Yes, more than most probably. 

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u/EDRootsMusic 2d ago edited 2d ago

In what small towns? In small towns that currently exist, under capitalism? Yes. My family grows mushrooms and we always traded our unsold mushrooms for other food at the end of the local farmer's market. I've bartered, for example, ten bottles of maple mead in exchange for five bottles of the maple syrup I used to make 30 bottles of maple mead. I've bartered a few packs of shiitake and a pack of porcini for two pounds of ground bison. I've bartered building someone a new throwing table for their pottery, for their old pottery wheel. I've bartered building someone a new queen-size bed, for their grandfather's old balalaika.

In anarchism? We don't have small towns. We haven't made anarchy happen. That requires a revolution.

Barter has pretty much always existed and probably always will. But it's never been the primary means of exchange. Before money, most economies were gift economies, sometimes with ritualized trading that often served to cement relationships between groups. Graeber wrote about this a lot in "Debt".

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u/AmericanaCrux 2d ago

Build out the infrastructure for it now. You’ll find that a lot of different sects of people would be thrilled to grow local bartering in small towns.

We are building a local Community Resource Inventory document with resources available for either donation, barter/trade, or discount cash sale. We do it for Sustainability, but there is functionality too for anarchism.

I’ll add the necessary disclaimer to always check local tax codes, accounting details, and legality before engaging in large scale bartering or trade. Do your own homework. Not what anarchists want to hear, but just double check on specifics before getting too carried away.