Jeff Russell

Hmmmm, maybe I heard someone call him a marxist and mistook his anti-(modern understanding of) capitalist stance as evidence that was right and then misremembered him calling himself that? Anyhow, if he was applying an anarchist lens (even a "left anarchist" lens), that's still different than my conception that he was intentionally and explicitly using a Marxist or Marxist-derived analytical framework, so thanks for the correction.

Also, for what it's worth, I also agree that the Adam Smith and Mises-flavored idea that money derived from barter are historically wrong. There's a fairly reasonable argument to be made that the logic they describe is helpful for understanding some of the likelihoods and necessities of a monetary system once you have one, but that it's utterly wrong as to how actual living folks went from not having money to having it (similar to how Locke's and Hobbes's arguments from a "state of nature" describe no actual historical time, but might still have some utility for understanding how folks should think about organizing themselves, if they get to choose).

My current favorite attempt at understanding the actual historical rise of money is Nick Szabo's "Shelling Out". He's also coming at it from an anarchist perspective (but an anarcho-capitalist one, admittedly), and he also incorporates ethnographical observation and archaeological findings (though he is not an anthropologist, and so did none of the fieldwork himself). The core of his argument is that "exchange" (trade, barter, and such) was the smallest part of what proto-money and early money was used for. Instead, it was more often used for rare, large transfers of wealth between parties with some reason not to trust each other - tribute, weddings, and inheritance.

I haven't come back to this in a few years, despite my views and knowledge on a lot of things changing, so I can't guarantee it's not wrong in important ways, but if nothing else it's a fascinating case of "but what if it did work that way?"