Donating is a market (of debt)

Starting out from a rereading of Marcel Mauss’s groundbreaking study “The Gift” (1924) and its successive reworkings by Levi-Strauss and Bourdieu, and drawing on fieldwork from Africa, this paper proposes another interpretation of the phenomenon of gift-giving as a central modality for the circulation of goods and wealth in community-based societies. Hitherto, most explanations have retained a theoretical core according to which any “generous” exchange – being subject to the obligation to give, to receive and ultimately to reciprocate the gift – could only be governed by a non-economic logic (or, at least, one that negates its utilitarian dimension): a logic that symbolizes and reproduces social bonds, signs of power and prestige, and the relationship between men and their gods. Here, the analysis picks up the problem by taking a simple observation: community-based societies are mutual funds. The exchange of gift and deferred counter-gift are the functional equivalent of modern systems of insurance, social security and mutual credit schemes. They are thus subject to a logic of debt, which derives its strength from its economic utility and from the constraining power of the moral obligation of reciprocity that binds together creditors and debtors (all of whom are keenly aware of their personal interests!). The community is therefore a debt market, regulated by the constant flow of their transactions. Today, however, rising inequalities are causing that market to dry up. The time has come for the predatory state and its oligarchies to pay their debts toward the poor, whose community-based systems of solidarity can no longer provide them with effective protection