A moneyless economy or nonmonetary economy is a system for allocation of goods and services without payment of money. The simplest example is the family household. Other examples include barter economies, gift economies and primitive communism. 1
The Informal or Non-Monetary Economy
Fleming provides the radical but historically-proven alternative: focusing neither on the growth nor de-growth of the market economy, but on huge expansion of the ‘informal’ or non-monetary economy — the ‘core economy’ that keeps our society alive, even today.
This is the economy of what we love: of the things we naturally do when not otherwise compelled, of music, play, family, volunteering, activism, friendship, romance and home. Yet over the past couple of centuries, this core economy has been much weakened, as the ever-growing stresses of precarious employment, debt and rising prices have left people with less time and energy for friendships, family and fun.2
Gift Economy
Social capital refers primarily to relationships and skills, the “services” that people once provided for themselves and each other in a gift economy, such as cooking, child care, health care, hospitality, entertainment, advice, and the growing of food, making of clothes, and building of houses. As recently as one or two generations ago, many of these functions were far less commoditized than they are today.3
Breaking down the myth of barter4
When barter is actually used:
- after a crisis, where money existed but now people don’t have it so they are used to exchanging value
- between strangers who will never see one another again (not likely in a day-to-day economy)
- ongoing trade relations between strangers in moneyless economies
The vast majority of all economic relations in human history have existed between people that lived near each other and knew each other personally, not long-distance traders.
We’re all living together in community. Why does everything have to be this rational, calculating exchange to seek material advantage? Why can’t we just share stuff?
What anthropologists have observed is a system of non-enumerated credits and debts. That means that people owe and are owed to, but such obligations are not quantified or measured exactly, and while valuables are given, there is no explicit agreement for immediate or future returns.
Such gift economies rely on mutual and alternating debts as the foundation upon which social relationships are maintained.
There is still a sense of some gifts being better than others, of course. Canoes take a lot of time and effort to make, so you’re gonna get called cheap if the gift you return is just a chicken, but nobody’s gonna assign a numerical value to exactly how cheap you are for that social faux pas.4