kojin karatani's "the structure of world-history" sheds light on the uneven development of historical forms, as well as graeber's book, "debt: the first 5000 years". if we reconceptualise sociality, not in terms of production, but exchange, then we see how mutual recognition is achieved therefrom. the basic marxist orientation is around the object of surplus production in all ages, but what is particular to each age thus is how we mediate this primal object. so to say, economic formalities are inconsequential of how we orient around this excess, called by bataille "the accursed share". all scarcities are artificial, since wealth and poverty are inverse functions. one is rich when another is poor. thus, the only economic (and therefore historical) question is how we deal with this debt. forces of production become relations of distribution. to karatani, there exists 4 exchange forms;
(A) reciprocity (gift and countergift)
(B) plunder/redistribution (protection)
(C) commodity exchange (money)
(D) X.
this will bear resemblance to marx's formulation of the 4 value forms:
(A) elementary
(B) expanded
(C) general
(D) money
graeber in his debt book also devises alternating cycles between credit-societies and money-societies (from gifting to money). marx likewise sees how modes of production develop unevenly in each age and so different modes of exchange arise.
we can see what baudrillard saw also, of a sort of transhistoricity (or overlap) of modes of exchange, like his example of the gift-exchange (or even the death exchange in the case of terrorism). on the internet for example, we see how we freely gift each other these helpful posts, while others may troll or harass, thus inciting a malignant form of exchange, which like ragebait, has its reciprocal nature. with the internet we also get online commodity exchange and redistribution (charity). so then, if to marx, history means mediating the surplus product by more and more advanced means of exchanging (or interfacing) with society, we must also see the ways in which society fails to formalise its own historicity (like how in marx's own time, the "proletariat" was and always remained to be a minority of the population, yet to marx, they signified the burgeoning of weltgeist). today also, labour is disunified in dispirate industries, with artisinal, feudal and even primitive forms of existence persisting alongside the modern capitalist regime.
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